A grassroots organization is encouraging U.S. residents not to spend any money Friday as an act of “economic resistance” to protest what the group’s founder sees as the malign influence of billionaires, big corporations and both major political parties on the lives of working Americans.
I get wanting to see people do *anything *. I can’t disagree at all with that.
Something I hadn’t shared is that, the way I found out about this “blackout” was when my partner came home and said “make sure to get any supplies you need tonight, we’re doing an economic blackout tomorrow in protest”, to which my first response was “if we’re just buying everything today that we would buy tomorrow, what is the point?”
Meanwhile, today during the blackout, i assume everyone is getting on social platforms owned by these corporations to conspire about how they’re not going to patronize their services today…
It just wreaks of slacktivism to me, which could be seen as either “better than nothing” or “a psyop deliberately orchestrated BY the corporations to make social groups feel like they’re doing something, when they’re really just spinning their wheels/tiring themselves out”.
IMHO if we’re going to take group action, it’s vital that the desired outcome is clearly defined, and we don’t stop until that is accomplished. The strategy of “let’s shoot our shot, then go back to our lives, and cross our fingers that there’s some latent impact” should be widely regarded as what not to do. That’s why unions have strikes the way they do. You can picket all day, but in order to force change you have to draw a line and all agree to cross it (or not cross it, whatever the metaphor calls for, idk).