It’s the birthday of writer and journalist Naomi Klein, born in 1970 in Montréal. Her parents and grandparents were activists, but she wasn’t interested in her family’s leftist politics. As a teenager she rebelled by hanging out at the mall and shopping for brand-name clothes.
She went to college, became interested in politics and journalism, and started thinking about the ways that radical young activists had changed over the years — instead of protesting directly against the government, they were focusing energy on fighting big corporations and their role in the government. She was interested in the World Bank and the WTO, and the way globalization affected consumer trends. She also looked at huge corporations like Nike, Disney, and Wal-Mart, and the power of their brand names to sell an image as much as a product. So she wrote a book about it, No Logo, which became an international best seller….
Klein, the author of eight books, is a Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.
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