Just some additional advertising for todays boycott.
Like, i didn’t buy anything today not because of protest, just because i didn’t need too… Stuff like this will not be noticed
What everyone need to do is target all their stock and funds of a particular company…. And sell that shit. Short it. Buy their competitor’s stock.
Retailers don’t give a shit about nobody buying anything on a particular day, if they’re all back the next.
This is a stupid idea.
“That’s not going to do anything” They said, sitting on their asses, doing nothing, while others fought for change.
You can find this style of argument in virtually all discussions about protests and about whether they are okay or even effective.
Idk & idgaf, but you can’t deny, that this makes the whole issue a lot more visible than just doing nothing.
I mean the point of it isn’t to deprive retailers of one day of profits altogether, it’s to show how much a sustained refusal to shop would hurt them. Whether or not it’s effective depends on how many people participate.
I don’t think it’s going to be effective, but I’m not going to be the reason it’s not. I can pick up my dish soap tomorrow
Yeah, this is basically a trial balloon. How many people can we get to do this thing? Then, once you know, organize something that packs a bit more punch.
Another thing it does is helps people realize what power they have, even if one day of boycotting has zero impact on the economy or businesses. It gets those people who are participating started taking action, and thinking about their actions in the context of politics.
It’s a very easy first step, and if people find that they can do a day, maybe they’ll be okay with trying a week next time, or maybe showing up at a town hall seems easier. This is arguably more about getting people involved in the movement than actually sticking it to the corporations/oligarchy. That will come. But asking people who live paycheck to paycheck to boycott corporations for more than 2 weeks would be a huge ask without building up to it first.
I mean the point of it isn’t to deprive retailers of one day of profits altogether, it’s to show how much a sustained refusal to shop would hurt them. Whether or not it’s effective depends on how many people participate.
yeah but its not a question of whether or not it would hurt them, the answer is yes, you cant make money if people don’t buy shit.
Weird little story, but i’ve never seen a company do any sort of accounting for this kind of problem.
Having worked retail sales earlier in my life and working as a developer in e-commerce in later parts, single day drops mean nothing. They’re often a statical anomalies, even when there is a “reason” for it. If the business is short on monthly or quarterly goals they can always make up a single day loss with a strategic sale or product marketing & placement.
If we really want to hurt these companies, we need to orgaize larger than a single day of “fuck you”. A single day might be good for awareness, but TBH, it’s comes across more as virtue signaling and enabling social media bragging “I’m doing my part for TODAY”.
All that said, I am doing my part for today, and have been doing my part for quite some time now, and will continue doing my part for the coming months and years.
Not only that but I haven’t seen a single actionable demand by the advertisements for this campaign. It’s a hollow, confused threat that simply doesn’t make sense.
Ironically I haven’t spent money anywhere today but that’s just because I spend most of my life trying not to pay giant chain retailers.
If someone wanted this campaign to work they would have united the whole thing under a banner or a brand, declared that this was not the first protest they would be staging, say something like: “this is only a threat, if companies don’t do X in 3 months we will organize a week-long blackout. Then if they don’t do anything after that week-long blackout we’ll do another one for two weeks or a month.”
That makes sense. That’s negotiation and it’s how you demonstrate the power the people hold.
The X should be something policy-based and actionable. It can be a huge sweeping demand but it has to be actionable. It should not be a laundry list of long term demands. Then, when you get that first demand met you can delay action and keep pushing later since you’ve proven the tactics work.
Compare that to what this protest is doing. It’s pretty far-cry.
That’s not true, companies are plenty worried about this sort of thing. Look at how Bud light panicked over the kid rock boycott. If he can do it, anyone can.
Its not a bad idea on its face. A sudden and sizeable shift in public economic activity on a given day would be meaningful if it could be invoked to put on pressure at strategic moments.
But “collective inaction” isn’t enough. I might have taken this more seriously if they were paired with pickets. Perhaps for a reason more explicit than “We’re generically unhappy!” Or if they came from someone I actually know, rather than a graphic plastered on my computer screen.
These seem like political action cosplay. If you’re not in a movement and you’re not using this time to coordinate further actions… hell, you’re not even asking where this meme came from or who authored it… then what are you doing? How is this different than Valentine’s Day, where you see a bunch of memes that tell you to go out and spend extra money? Who are you sticking it to?
That’s the other reason I dislike this idea, “we’re generically unhappy” isn’t really going to change hearts and minds.
You need a specific, actionable goal if you want something to actually change.
Boycott the companies that ditched their DEI initiatives until they bring them back.
Funny enough the only people who are going to feel it are the low level retail managers who are going to get yelled at for not meeting their YoY, and then not a peep the next day when they do double the sales
I already minimize the amount of money I spend on superfluous shit and I’m going to need food sooner or later. 🤷
The image fits, a kid throwing a tantrum, cause it’s really all they can do. I mean it’s nice to give the staff a slow day but the corporation and the people on top won’t even notice it
P.s. sabotage costs them more
if they’re all back the next.
Don’t worry, nobody is going to buy anything on February 29 either.
First I’ve seen extending this to restaurants. That seems a bit much. Most restaurants around me are small businesses. Not cool for the folks trying to keep a single place afloat.
I think it means more applebees and tgif and chilis and such
And if you go to a locally owned restaurant, pay with cash. Fuck visa/mc/banks and their marchant fees.
Small business owners are for the most part Republicans and are a large reason trump got elected. They may have closer ties to the community but fundamentally they still are capitalists and will vote for and support monetarily the party that cuts regulations and taxes. Restaurant owners, big and small, are the backbone of the campaign to stop minimum wage increases. They need to know, just as much as the big business owners, that austerity like this has consequences.
If you want to support the staff, which may struggle through this, buy the cheapest thing on the menu and leave a huge tip.
“small business owners are for the most part Republicans”
What?
If your protest is convenient it’s a shitty protest. I’m sorry, but this is a shitty protest.
That an corporations don’t care about their daily numbers unless they are trending. Like, people won’t buy stuff today, so they will just go buy the stuff tomorrow. Monthly and quarterly profits took no hit.
Businesses tend to notice trends during economic upswings/downturns. To date, consumer spending has been steadily rising in no small part thanks to upward pressure on wages and inflationary pressure on prices. If we’re entering a recessionary spiral, you won’t need to have a “No Spending Day”. People will reflexively cut their spending when they lose their income.
Something like this might have more teeth if it was paired with protest marches or sit-ins or other actions intended to signal that prices had run away from incomes. But that doesn’t seem to be the message this meme is sending. Nobody is getting encouraged to stand outside a Target and wave a big sign that says “Stop Bird Flu! Make Eggs Cheap Again!” or picketing an Amazon Warehouse over low wages and long hours.
Fully agree. While I wholeheartedly support the intent of this protest, it is entirely performative for the sake of the participants, not for the sake of actually affecting change.
Honest question, what is an accessible first step for a population that has basically never performed any collective action that isn’t performative?
Is standing outside a local government building holding a sign to protest federal policy affecting change?
In my view, at least this one day action has a marginal economic impact. Holding a sign on your lunch break so you can post some pictures to Instagram is way more performative.
But it doesn’t have marginal impact. It has zero impact. Whether you spend money on Thursday or Friday, the bottom line is the same. We are starting from the false premise that this has any impact, when the smallest amount of critical thought renders that false immediately.
Yes, get the hell out and stand in front of government offices with signs. Make noise. Be seen. Do anything other than pretending keeping your items in your shopping cart for one additional day has any impact.
That’s completely backwards. It costs elected officials and our corporate overlords LITERALLY nothing to ignore your protest. It’s bad PR at best. Even then, manipulating news coverage, headlines and soundbites is second nature to these people.
How long would an economic strike have to be for it to have an impact you won’t handwave away? There could be prepped food on shelves today that gets thrown out tomorrow. Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show. Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Standing around and making noise without any other change to your lifestyle or attempting to organize your efforts is completely hollow. Not to mention, infinitely less accessible to people who can’t afford the time or don’t have the physical ability to attend.
Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Yes, change the entire nature and scope of the protest and it might be impactful, I agree with you.
Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show.
…do you think people are still primarily buying event tickets from in-person box offices same day?
The point is that it has an impact that you’re arbitrarily ignoring. If you scale your sign holding and chanting up to 3 million people in a state capital then it might be impactful as well.
The key here is which of these is a more accessible and reasonable thing to ask people to do as a first action? Is it easier to organize 3 protests of 50,000 people in a month or have 500,000 cut their spending in half for a month?
Gotta start somewhere with people. The point is that anyone can do this, and it’s easy to do, but it isn’t really any more difficult to show up to a town hall. And while yes, you and I can (and probably do) take larger, more effective steps, longer boycotts, etc. We need numbers, and that, I think, is the real value of this.
A million times zero is still zero. We gain nothing by entirely performative action. Start somewhere, but make it somewhere meaningful.
Organize something better and shut tf up or just shut tf up. You’re just as bad as them with your piss poor attitude towards people that are at least trying to do something whether it complies with your own personal standards you fail to deliver on yourself, if you weren’t your own biggest failure you would be presenting your initiative piggybacking on this one instead of trying to downplay others.
No thank you. I’m going to instead continue to rally against treating adults like coddled children and placating them in ways which dis-motivate them from actual collective action by convincing them that they’re already doing collective action. And I’m going to keep criticism bad ideas because good intention alone is not enough. I don’t give a shit about making people feel good or participating in the latest fun leftist trend, I care about meaningful impact.
Feel free to block me if your find your feathers unable to be unruffled.
I disagree with both the premise and the conclusion. Even if skipping corporate stuff for a day is only a mild inconvenience, that is still obviously not convenient. Second, there’s no reason to suspect convenience should strongly impact effectiveness. How much did it inconvenience anyone to boycott South Africa in the 80s?
Maximizing effectiveness for unit of effort is smart. And when a tiny change in share price can make a big difference in CEO compensation, we’d be complete masochists not to use that in our favor. But also even if you’re into maximizing pain, if we wanna talk about permanently going after these corporations then it’s gotta start somewhere. And it’s best to start with getting people to do what’s easy.
This does literally nothing unless you make it a consistent thing.
Ok. Make it a consistent thing then. Starting today.
I might agree if I believed there was any viable impact here, but even 1mil multiplied by zero is still zero.
It only Bugs them if enough people stoppen getting specific stuff alltogether. Like no Nestlé, Selling the car and stop the need for Gas (if possible of course).
One day off is just another days top. Doesnt hurt them at all.
why not boycott all major corporations every day? it does require a bit of work, but the more money you spend locally, the better your local communities will be
That’s just not how our economy works. “Local” business is not making toilet paper from trees they cut down in their backyard.
I’m probably getting downvoted for this but I hate hate hate this “consumption is power” bull shit boycotts. Consumption is NOT power. LABOR is power. If you work at these large companies you have a million times more power and influence by organizing.
Boycott today if it makes you feel good. But it’s so incredibly missing of the point that I have to assume it is purposely missing the point of collective power.
Your power is in your ability to withhold labor. Not withholding consumption for one day that you’ll just buy the next day. Hell, if these planned organized single day boycotts, if they actually had an impact, would be a way to maximize profits to reduce labor requirements for those days. It’s so silly.
Organize your workplace. That is where your power is!
An example of spending as power being a fallacy is high-quality products that everyone who buys them loves them. Then, to boost profits the company uses a lesser quality metal (like pocket knives, guns, etc.). It is short-sighted, but it may increase profits. If buying exerted power, companies wouldn’t trade out materials that people liked.
The engine of the modern economy is mass consumption just as much as labor, especially since a lot of labor is done overseas these days. Everyone not buying stuff from Amazon is just as much an existential threat to it as the entire work force striking. Either way you deny them there profits and force them to pay there fixed capital costs with no revenue.
You could argue it’s less feasible to organize the mass of consumers then it is to organize a workplace, but the power is still there either way.
We need maps of what helps, and how much.
No more saying stuff doesn’t work and misses the point. Only pointing to where it is on the map. Better for organizing.
Sorry. If you’re actually asking but I thought I was pretty clear. Labor organizing is where power is. This starts at YOUR workplace. There are plenty of resources and “maps” to get you started but that is often very unique to your location and place of work. There is not a single meme image that I can post. This takes work. The start of that work is looking for labor organizing movements in your area and place of work. If there are no existing unions or labor movements you can contact the AFL-CIO or other organizations in your field. They can help you learn more about your resources.
This takes work. If I could post a meme image like the OP I would. But it doesn’t work that way. You need to be ready to do work. Talking to your coworkers, agitating, etc.
Chris Smalls is your inspiration but we need 1000 more Chris Smalls throughout the country. Not one day of a consumer boycott.
This is not about being a downer towards any movement. It’s about understanding that class war is always filled with distractions like these single day consumer boycotts that do absolutely nothing. People that are downers about them are trying to direct people towards what should actually be done. It’s not one massive movement out of the blue. It takes a lot of local and small work to even get to having any leverage at that scale.
Once we actually have a massive labor organizing movement in this country THEN the leaders of major unions can call for and organize something like a general strike. But that doesn’t happen on its own because someone posted a “general strike” meme on reddit. It’s takes a lot of work, organizing, and very specific demands, and strike funds.
But this all starts with you and the organization of labor in your workplace.
We are fighting capital. It doesn’t just end up with a bunch of peaceful protests and the capitalist class rolling over and saying “ok you can all have healthcare”. They have all the power of the police, state violence, and media agitating. It’s why you need massive organization, solidarity, and funding for your cause. And most of all very specific and united demands. Otherwise these movements quickly die when people can’t pay their rent or buy food.
Okay, what helps? Standing outside Starbucks, Walmart, amazon warehouses, anywhere non-union, and spend your time trying to convince their workers to join a union. There’s a reason that, when the Nazis took over, “First they came for the Trade Unionists”. Don’t say nothing. Let’s Make More Trade Unionists
We need maps of what helps, and how much.
political ground campaigning, probably.
Im guessing many folks or at least more than the usual percent on the fediverse do this to some degree. I have seen other comments about it and have done them myself. Its really not to much work to me but its a continuing thing. Regularly thinking about what else you can cut out or if you think you can finally cut out a particular thing. So im not where I would want to be and im past low hanging fruit and it will be slow going forward of where I am not but I will continue.
Not always possible. In rural areas, Walmart in particular is a mom and pop shop killer. Restaurants maybe, groceries and the like, this is not that universally possible.
This can have an effect in exactly two ways:
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retailers lose a bit of profit because they cannot optimize their staffing for this one day. They might be a little less profitable because they have one person at work who is not needed, for example. They might also get mad customers the next day when everybody goes back shopping and they haven’t prepared for it. Similarly, they might have to throw away a few fresh products and not have them in stock later.
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if (and only if) people buy the stuff they need somewhere else instead. If this is about grocery shopping, well, you need groceries at some point. Doesn’t matter much for the retailer when you buy it (apart from 1), as long as you buy it consistently at their place.
I support the protest, but if you want to make an impact, use that day to find alternative places to do your shopping in the future.
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yet another classic misdirection from doing things politically to improve the political environment. And yet we wonder why everything sucks so much.
Go improve the political climate.
Cool. How?
This isn’t an either or situation, unless you were planning on buying a gun today to go shoot elon with, you not buying stuff today isn’t going to prevent you from doing whatever it is you plan to do to improve the political climate.
By the way, what is it you plan to do?
My wife told her family and all of them are very enthusiastic to join (20 ish people). Unfortunately I still have trouble convincing my family that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to do illegal things
Why tf do I keep seeing posts about boycotts and protests the day they’re happening
Because unfortunately the point of these protests isn’t achieving change, it’s patting themselves on the back for their “positive action” (despite how conveniently non-intrusive said action is their lives and how it requires absolutely zero risk or material sacrifice).
Since the point is to self-congratulate, no reason to wait, I guess.
not sure but I can say this has been floating around for awhile as part of several on the fediverse with multiple dates. Since this is a cartoon they are just putting this up I think as more support than information. Here is a link from newsweek mentioning it a week or so ago and if you type in google feb 28th blackout you will see how many news places picked it up back then https://www.newsweek.com/nationwide-economic-blackout-february-28-list-stores-being-targeted-2030269 im not wild about the media coverage though as they say its all from one org and define it more narrowly than it should.
Because this is the best people who are trying to be singular in deciding a low impact protest for their followers think of and rush to make it happen because instant gratification of a shorter turnaround time feels better with our shorter attention span.
I’m still quite annoyed that this is still thought of as some community action when it is more or less a small group of people getting some of their friends across a large global space to agree that it sounds good and then hope everyone else just agrees and does it with no end goal in sight.
It’s reactionary action without purpose or action.
boycotts dont work but ill support any attempt at it, sure.
boycotts dont work
South African apartheid was brought down by a boycott. Another example is the Montgomery bus boycott initiated by Rosa Parks which ended in integrated buses.
Of course, these boycotts lasted for longer than one day. I think if there’s enough participation in this single-day boycott, somebody will come up with one that’s more sustained.
Boycotts do work. Starbucks has actually had to admit their sales went down due to the boycott. The problem is that these things take time and doing a boycott for a day or a week doesn’t really impact these corpos bottom line where they actually notice.
It’s different when targeting a specific business as that kind of boycott can continue indefinitely. A boycott against spending any money or going to any business can only last so long and therefore companies will see a downturn and then probably a spike in sales as people buy a bunch of stuff at once that they were planning to buy during the boycott. I agree with the other comments that organizing workplaces to eventually form the base for a real general strike would be a more effective strategy to actually hurt businesses.
It’s totally possible to never shop at any of these big businesses again.
Maybe not possible for everyone, but for many if not most.
Those small businesses you shop at still get their products from big businesses at the end of the day. Or their workers who you’re paying by shopping there will spend money at big businesses. It won’t significantly affect the engine that is the economy at the end of the day. Consumer choice only works against specific businesses you can target which if you wanted to have a campaign to for example not to shop at big chain grocery stores that could be good. If anything though that’s another mixed message I’ve seen with this event, is it no spending in general like what a lot of the original fliers for the event said or is it just no spending at big businesses? Either way if your goal is to shut down the economy to show businesses and the government that the people don’t want what Trump is doing then you’re gonna be much more effective through unions and shutting down workplaces through strikes. If your goal is instead to punish businesses that support Trump that can work depending on the business but needs to be more targeted and there are a lot of companies that even if you try to boycott you’ll still end up supporting them indirectly.
again these are initial salvos. they will notice a massive dip for one day. there are other more targeted ones.
Ok, but what is a massive drop in sales? $100K, $1 billion, $1 trillion? Because Bezos makes $26 million per day, so for them to notice we need to create between $100 million to $1 billion loss, but also we can’t just go immediately back to normal afterwards because they are expecting this.
Its going to depend on the company. The main thing is when they present their powerBI graph that the dip is significant. This would be divisional as well because I believe most of amazons profits now come from aws but not 100% on that but they will have a team that talks just about orders from the site I assure you.
Yeah their sales went down, but did it change anything about the way they do business?
Not yet, but I don’t plan on stopping
Cool, just don’t mistake mobilization for actual organizing.
Ill be sure not to.
Exactly. Withholding consumption is not where our collective power is. Withholding Labor is where our collective power is. These “consumer power” movements are so incredibly capitalist brained. Our working class is so brain rotted by capitalism that they can only think of “power in the hand of consumers” which is one of the biggest most obvious lies capitalist tell.
This implies your power only extends to the company you work for. How are we going to change companies with workers outside of our collective interest? How are we going to change Twitter, we aren’t going to be able to convince the well paid workers over there to strike because there creating a right wing propaganda machine. How are we going to change companies that exploit labor in the third world? If everyone in the u.s. who worked for temu strikes they could still manufacture and send there cheap plastic over here through the mail.
I once read a quote by someone that went roughly like “Voting with your wallet means the ones with the biggest wallets get the most votes” and it has stuck with me ever since.
A single day isn’t going to do shit
Especially if you just shift when you buy something by a day. You still bought it.
it will for the weekly meeting where they go over metrics. its not going to solve all the problems we face. its not boom do this one thing and done. its just a thing for today for those who want to be part of it. obviously most of the whiners will not, at least I assume. maybe they whine and participate I don’t know. likely a mix.
You guys buy things every day ?!
As a family. yes. Especially groceries but often enough other things. Thats not important though. The important part is 50% or more (assuming maga won’t participate) of folks that might get something today don’t so that the metrics shows a massive drop in activity for one day. Company metrics easily show stuff. I worked at one that did superbowl ads and you could see the effect of the ad on the site. This is the time the ad ran and this is how soon google searches trended up and this is when visits to the site went up.
I dont have a car, so buy groceries and things in a lot of small trips of what I can carry. Maybe not every day, but at least every other day. Also keeps me active and walking since I like to have a destination / objective to motivate me.
If you buy one giant load from Costco a month, then I can see not needing to go out much but that’s just not possible for me.
Does seem a bit odd to me. I could fairly easily go for weeks where the only thing I buy is from Aldi.
if I was single I could see that but I do like to do more small shopping trips now buying fresh food. I don’t like the fridge being packed and I don’t like to be deciding if something is to old to eat.
Hardly need to go to the shops every day for fresh food though. Potatoes and cabbage last a while without any real change. Rice lasts essentially forever. Most fruits are good for several days at least.
works out best for us if we shop for that days or next days meals. also when I say fresh food I mean more greens, fruits, and such. I don’t really think of grains as fresh food because they last so long. Unfrozen meat to. Again though we want to use it well before bad so we like small amounts for the next few meals.
Cabbage is green
cabbage and potatoes sorta fall into this middle zone for us. Like with rice and flour we have it on hand because it lasts to long but with potatoes and cabbage they last awhile and there is a lot or reasons to buy a lot (when twice as much potatoes is a dollar more). So we tend to buy them for a meal but then we keep in mind with future meals to use up whats left. Because of that we tend to buy them on a really great sale and then make it a point not to buy once we have used them up. Less so with cabbage where usually any leftovers will just bleed into one or two more meals.
I’m not from America and the answer is still no
Hahaha this boycott was Dead on arrival
“One day boycott with no terms or conditions, that’ll show em!”
I mean, I’ll still do it because why not? It’s easy (which is part of the issue), but like…this will do nothing.
A one day boycott is a start. It will get people thinking about where and when they buy stuff. And maybe thinking about other things and the possibility of doing them. Like a general strike.
The way I see it, you have to start small before you can go big. Get people used to the idea so when you call for a general strike later, it doesn’t seem totally outlandish.
Then there should be a stronger focus on getting people to organize and unionize in their workplace. Cause a general strike won’t work without a strong organized work force and this kind of action focuses much more on individual action that makes you feel like you’re doing something when you’re really not. I’d rather direct the energy that people have right now towards things that will actually have an impact like providing resources and pushing people to unionize to build the base needed for a general strike.
I think the bad guys are actually making it easier to have an effective strike. The bad guys are cutting employment to the bone and beyond- so it’s way worse for them if even a small percentage of their workforce doesn’t show up, and stuff doesn’t get done
It still has to be organized though with a union, you need things like strike funds and the small amount of legal protections that come with having a union such as preventing them from just firing the workers who don’t show up. It has to be a large amount of people that are organized, otherwise the companies can just fire them and find replacements and the strike will be over.
Organizing around denying consumption is the exact opposite of what a general strike would do. This does nothing but make people feel like nothing they do matters because it’s focusing on the exact opposite of what we should be organizing on. We should be organizing around labor.
I can’t tell if these online “consumption power” movements are just a reflection of the complete lack of class consciousness. Or if they are planned distractions that are designed to fail to make people feel powerless. I think it’s a bit of both.
I suppose that’s a decent point. Like I said, I’ll still participate and I’m not trying to be defeatist about it. Let’s see where things go!
