There is one wrong thing you can do, and that is to criticize and dismiss an effort to do something positive simply because, in your opinion, it "is not enough." This is a chronic problem currently, and it fails to acknowledge anything other than statistically measurable effects, publicity, visibility, and savvy organization. Critics ignore the impacts on individual participants, the importance of collective purpose and strengthened solidarity, and habituation to action.
The recent spending boycott on February 28, organized by the People's Union USA, was roundly attacked for requiring so little from participants, but considering that we have, as a broad citizenry, become complacent and perhaps lazy over the previous four years of relative calm, not demanding an intensive, personally risky act was probably the right call.
One important aspect of a boycott on purchases is anonymity. When there is the perception of risk to personal safety, the promise of invisibility is a helpful recruitment tactic. The same goes for the gathering of data by corporations and bad actors elsewhere. When you don't spend, you don't leave a digital or paper trail. Perceived vulnerability, real or not, is an enormous disincentive for engaging in protests that demand public spectacle with its potential for confrontation with counter-demonstrators and/or police violence.
The most profound impact of a buying boycott is personal. It causes you to pause your spending, and creates a window of opportunity to reflect on what you need and prioritize, and where you go to fulfull those needs and wants. It gets you to explore local alternatives to the global corporate marketplace, for example. Maybe, like sobriety, you take that one day boycott up a notch and make a habit of it, one day at a time. Extricating ourselves from the matrix of capitalism, at the scale it has become, is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, but it is something we can choose to do. What can I live without, you might ask yourself. What might I indulge in with less frequency?
One social media comment I saw claimed that not all locally-owned businesses are any better in their politics, hiring practices, responsiveness to customers, and impacts in other areas. That is definitely true, but a small business can survive only so long if word spreads that it exercises biases, tolerates or encourages bigotry, or fails to support the local community. It always pays to do your homework, ask your neighbors, and use other resources to inform your decisions on what enterprises to patronize.
Boycotts do affect the financial bottom line of the corporations targeted, but that usually takes time. There is definitely a sense of urgency now, and the critics of the one-day boycott are impatient. What we don't hear from those people are alternatives or complements to consumer boycotts. Well, one vocal critic, on a social media post, claimed that only a widespread labor strike will have any measurable effect. That exposes an awful lot of people to retaliation from their employers, at a time when unemployment benefits are no longer guaranteed. Too many are living paycheck to paycheck. Yes, a prolonged work stoppage would be very effective, but would require near total participation.
What gives me great satisfaction, even if I hear about it after the fact, are spontaneous efforts at disruption, such as overwhelming I.C.E. tip lines with bogus referrals for undocumented immigrants to target for deportation, or emailing human resources at the Office of Personnel Management to frustrate the DOGE request to supply it with five bullet points describing your job accomplishments the prior week. Such little acts also generate a great deal of much needed humor when people post their responses on social media. We need more of this kind of creative monkeywrenching.
Ideally, we need to reach the enablers of the oppressors and anti-democratic players. That means engaging or shaming CEOs and majority shareholders of the companies running the show. Call them out. Demand that shareholders dump their stock. Give these powerful people no peace. After all, they are not giving you any. Call your congresspeople, sure. Go to their town halls, if they bother holding such events. We need to up the pressure, though, maybe as a continued presence at all of their offices, all their public appearances.
I saw a photo, or perhaps a generative AI image, on social media recently that depicted a woman holding a cardboard sign. It read "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept." This is a quote by Angela Davis, an esteemed leader in the Black Panther Party of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This resonates on many levels. I wonder if we need a twelve-step program with that mantra. I would go to the meetings, learning what actions others are taking, and trying them myself.
