You know what’s even less impactful? Doing absolutely nothing and saying “it won’t have any effect” every. single. time. someone mentions a coordinated effort to resist. Even if it ultimately does nothing, we don’t have to make their destruction of this country’s democracy easy or fun!
It’s a first step to gauge the amount of support for the cause. If you can’t convince people not to purchase things for just one day your sure as fuck not going to be able to convince them to not go to work.
If you support a boycott or general strike then I hope you’re willing to do the bare minimum of not making purchases on one specific day even if you think it isn’t going to much.
How exactly do you gauge the effects? Do you have access to their daily financials? Because just gauging the support and nothing else feels like the literal definition of performative action.
Not sure why the next step after not purchasing for a day is to not go to your job. Seems like it would be to not purchase for a week, or month, or permanently stop giving companies your money.
If the general public lacks the focus to do anything more than a day, then the specific action that one day should be radically different. Something very simple that overwhelms stores and forces your hand tomorrow and the next day. For example, everyone could go out that day and intentionally get trespassed from a store they don’t like. Not as a group, individually throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be violent or even illegal, just break policy - go in without wearing shoes or something.
everyone could go out that day and intentionally get trespassed from a store they don’t like. Not as a group, individually throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be violent or even illegal, just break policy - go in without wearing shoes or something.
“How exactly do you gauge the effects? Because just gauging the support and nothing else feels like the literal definition of performative action.”
I guess my response is the entire middle part of my other comment that you just cut out to try to make a point. I’m just not going to bother copying things around.
Ill try to spell it out a bit better though. The one day of protest causes a permanent change - you’re banned from a store. And the store does all the fucking work for you after the first day to keep you from buying there.
If you want paperwork to gauge the effect, ask the police for the trespass in writing.
So not purchasing from a store for a day isn’t going to affect the store, but getting yourself kicked out of the store for not wearing shoes will?
Your saying not making purchases for a day will have no effect, but your counter suggestion will have no greater impact on the store but require a greater buy-in from the people taking part.
I’ll try to spell it out again: this is the lowest possible bar to get people to take part. If successful, it shows everyone how many people are willing to take at least some action, which makes it easier to organize more meaningful action in the future.
It demonstrates organization and support. If a significant number of people make no purchases on one day it shows a lot of support for the cause and it’s a warning that there are enough people paying attention that it can get much worse.
Conversely, if you can’t even get people to stop buying things for 1 day what are the chances you can have a successful strike or boycott?
We need more than a day, most likely. if they know it is 24 hours, they won’t freak out and send police and the national guard or whatever nonsense. Then we’ll know they’re listening. It needs to be indeterminate.
We need to general strike across the board.
Also worth noting, Feb 28 is the economic blackout protest.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/economic-blackout-feb-24-hour-february-28-2025-peoples-union/
Not really. Not buying things for one day isn’t going to have any impact on anything.
Having a strike or boycott with an end date is completely pointless.
You know what’s even less impactful? Doing absolutely nothing and saying “it won’t have any effect” every. single. time. someone mentions a coordinated effort to resist. Even if it ultimately does nothing, we don’t have to make their destruction of this country’s democracy easy or fun!
Agreed. Might as well call the next day the ‘buy twice as much as normal’ protest, because that’s all that will happen.
It’s a first step to gauge the amount of support for the cause. If you can’t convince people not to purchase things for just one day your sure as fuck not going to be able to convince them to not go to work.
If you support a boycott or general strike then I hope you’re willing to do the bare minimum of not making purchases on one specific day even if you think it isn’t going to much.
How exactly do you gauge the effects? Do you have access to their daily financials? Because just gauging the support and nothing else feels like the literal definition of performative action.
Not sure why the next step after not purchasing for a day is to not go to your job. Seems like it would be to not purchase for a week, or month, or permanently stop giving companies your money.
If the general public lacks the focus to do anything more than a day, then the specific action that one day should be radically different. Something very simple that overwhelms stores and forces your hand tomorrow and the next day. For example, everyone could go out that day and intentionally get trespassed from a store they don’t like. Not as a group, individually throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be violent or even illegal, just break policy - go in without wearing shoes or something.
“How exactly do you gauge the effects? Because just gauging the support and nothing else feels like the literal definition of performative action.”
I guess my response is the entire middle part of my other comment that you just cut out to try to make a point. I’m just not going to bother copying things around.
Ill try to spell it out a bit better though. The one day of protest causes a permanent change - you’re banned from a store. And the store does all the fucking work for you after the first day to keep you from buying there.
If you want paperwork to gauge the effect, ask the police for the trespass in writing.
So not purchasing from a store for a day isn’t going to affect the store, but getting yourself kicked out of the store for not wearing shoes will?
Your saying not making purchases for a day will have no effect, but your counter suggestion will have no greater impact on the store but require a greater buy-in from the people taking part.
I’ll try to spell it out again: this is the lowest possible bar to get people to take part. If successful, it shows everyone how many people are willing to take at least some action, which makes it easier to organize more meaningful action in the future.
Or the day before
Maybe it is pointless, but bless 'em for trying.
And I’ll be right there with them, because maybe it is pointless… But maybe it’s not.
It demonstrates organization and support. If a significant number of people make no purchases on one day it shows a lot of support for the cause and it’s a warning that there are enough people paying attention that it can get much worse.
Conversely, if you can’t even get people to stop buying things for 1 day what are the chances you can have a successful strike or boycott?
It’s a first step, it’s not the last one.
It’s not much of a protest when many of the people participating are doing so involuntarily because they can’t afford to buy things anyway.
I see these “don’t buy anything on x date” protests every few months. I’ve never heard of them actually having any impact.
March 14!
We need more than a day, most likely. if they know it is 24 hours, they won’t freak out and send police and the national guard or whatever nonsense. Then we’ll know they’re listening. It needs to be indeterminate.
I agree. It’s a start at least.
It’s a warning. If you can get enough people to do it for 1 day to cause an impact, then you can do it for 2 days, then 3…
Generalstrikeus.com