hey US americans and adjacent ppl,
home depot is allowing ICE onto its properties to raid and kidnap customers, employees and day laborers? they say their hands are tied and they can't do anything, but we know that's corporate speak for "i don't give a fuck."
target never reinstated their DEI policies after they revoked them earlier in the year after pressure from far-right culture war freaks?
amazon donated to the trump campaign and conveniently secured historic corporate tax breaks afterward. what a coincidence!
there's a national boycott that starts TOMORROW, Wednesday, November 27th, and goes through MONDAY, December 1st, called We Ain't Buying It.
it's happening specifically on this weekend because:
almost 20% of annual retail sales happen from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. 196.7 million Americans shopped on Thanksgiving weekend last year. black friday sales make national news - it's a cultural event (end-stage capitalism is a hell of a drug).
the majority of americans actually disapprove of ice, and that is an all-time high. people are fucking fed up with this secret police force that kidnaps our neighbors and are looking for a way to fight back - this boycott comes at the exact right time to mobilize people.
moving our money from big retailers to small businesses on the biggest sales weekend of the year will make an incredible difference. billionaires don't need our money, but your fav creators, artisans, and artists do. craftspeople make the world go round and deserve to make their living through their work!
it's time to hit back on the weekend they think is an easy profit weekend. we can make the news instead of them and send them a clear message: if they profit off our pain and cave to fascism, they do not deserve our money.
1. click through, sign this pledge,
2. boycott TARGET, AMAZON, and HOME DEPOT between 11/27 and 12/1, and
ok, time to do some inb4 u ask:
aren't boycotts a little libbed out?
yes and no. "voting with your dollars" individually lacks strategy. you personally choosing not to shop at amazon is an individual moral choice; thousands-millions of us boycotting them on their biggest sales weekend of the year is a strategic organizing tactic that sends a huge message to them. the more we practice this, the more nimble we are to do bigger things like a future general strike.
besides, the last boycott of target over this cost the CEO his job and investors $12 billion. this works when we work it.
will these corporations even care?
they'll care, but they won't admit it. they'll spin the story with their shareholders to try to keep stock prices up - but numbers don't lie, and with a boycott this big we have the means to tell the true story: that we're exercising mass noncompliance as a show of our power and we can do it again if they don't meet our demands.
i already don't shop at any of these places.
good for you for being a conscious consumer! nice! and, if you sign on it shows that you're part of the movement, so please sign on anyways. the more people that do, the more we're able to calculate our impact and tell the story of this boycott for ourselves instead of letting these fuckass corporations do it for us. give it a sign and spread the word, won't ya?
lots of organizations. if you look this up on social media, you'll find indivisible national and local, 3.5% movement, 50501, working families party, showing up for racial justice, black voters matter, and so many more. the thing is: you don't have to be aligned with any of these orgs. the point of this boycott is to show people power, not total political alignment. if you agree that ICE doesn't belong in stores kidnapping people, that corporations shouldn't be able to get tax breaks on their billions of dollars, and that there should be consequences for cancelling promises to protect black, brown, and lgbtq+ workers, then this boycott is for you.
what about the boycott of starbucks, spotify, and others?
no yeah for sure, fuck those guys too. this boycott is targeted to send a mesasge to the top black friday retailers, but more than one thing can be happening at once. no contract no coffee, motherfucker.
why not boycott permanently?
honestly, the majority of people wouldn't agree to that, but if we ask them to hold off for just one weekend (the most strategic weekend of the year), they're more likely to agree. and, this is a flex of our power, not a permanent turning our backs to these corporations. we can get them to meet our demands if we say "we might give you money again if..." for instance, the national day laborers organizing network isn't calling for a permanent boycott of home depot, because many day laborers still use home depot locations to find work - but they agree that temporary actions like this 5-day boycott or buying and returning ice scrapers en masse at home depots is a great way to show the corporation that we hate what they're doing and we have enough people power to permanently hurt them if they don't do what we ask.
can you sign the boycott pledge and take your spending elsewhere from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday this year, and reblog this post to spread it?
disclaimer: signing the pledge does add you to an email list for one of the organizations participating (showing up for racial justice). they do good work! but, if you don't want to get texts or emails, i suggest not giving your phone number and then unsubscribing if you want. up to you! sticking around might help you get involved in more work, too, so make the choice right for you.
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
blakekathryn
prguitarman
pixelskylines
vaporwave
