NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin (202) 387-8030
For Immediate Release: October 16th, 2001
Ad Slam Contest Will Award $5,000 Prize for Removing Ads from School
Commercial Alert today launched the National Ad Slam Contest, which is a nationwide contest to award a $5,000 prize to the school that makes the best and most creative effort to expel advertising and commercialism from school premises during the 2001-2 school year.
In recent years, corporate marketers have invaded the schools. Their ads waste valuable school time, corrupt textbooks and curricula with marketing, promote junk food and soda pop despite skyrocketing levels of childhood obesity, and peddle boorish, violent and anti-social entertainment.
“The Ad Slam is a civic contest to throw the hucksters out of school,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “We’re going to have plenty of fun as we rid the schools of Channel One, Coke, Pepsi and the other marketers.”
Anyone in any school community is invited to participate in the Ad Slam Contest, including students of all ages, parents, families, teachers, and other school employees.
For information about the contest, or to find out how to participate, see Commercial Alert’s website at http://www.commercialalert.org, or call (503) 235-8012.
The contest will award a $5,000 grand prize to a school. But, “Everyone’s a winner when we expel the hucksters from school,” Ruskin said.
The National Ad Slam Contest is endorsed by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, Adbusters Media Foundation, Bioneers, Center for a New American Dream, Center for Media & Democracy, Center for Media Education, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Citizens’ Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools, Citizens for Media Literacy, Commercialism in Education Research Unit, Consumers Union, Junkbusters, The Motherhood Project of the Institute for American Values, Mothering Magazine, New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Obligation, Organic Consumers Association, Public Citizen, Seeds of Simplicity and the TV-Turnoff Network.
Commercial Alert’s mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.
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