There’s an “economic blackout” scheduled for Friday, February 28. This is a resistance-minded effort to give ordinary people a chance to strike a blow against—well, take your pick, really. I’m as concerned about the state of the nation as anybody. But I won’t be participating in this day of buying nothing. Let me explain why.
A nonprofit called People’s Union USA, which describes itself as committed to “economic resistance, government accountability, and corporate reform,” organized the economic blackout. Participation is simple: You don’t spend any money for 24 hours, except maybe at a local business. Going 24 hours without spending money is no hardship; I do it all the time. And government accountability and corporate reform are high on my list of priorities.
But I like to know what I’m boycotting, and People’s Union USA doesn’t really answer that question. I’m especially put off by this:
Are you against Trump, Elon Musk, or any specific individuals? This movement is not about one person. It is about the system as a whole.
Both political parties, both past and current leaders, and billionaires have manipulated the economy and profited off the working class. We will hold them all accountable. Our focus is systemic change, not political drama.
You want me to boycott “the system as a whole”? Do you mean capitalism? I don’t want to bring down capitalism; I just want to make it behave. There are people (Jeff Bezos appears to be one) who think it’s anti-capitalist to favor (as I do) more regulation, higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor unions, a more generous welfare state, and a larger government presence in the economy. Bezos may think believing these things means I oppose the free market, but I don’t. I’m just a New Deal liberal trying, like Franklin Roosevelt, to keep capitalism from destroying itself and taking the rest of us down with it.
People’s Union USA’s sneering reference to “political drama” is my biggest problem with this boycott. Aside from making no logical sense (surely a movement that wants the entire country to engage in protest intends that protest to create political drama), that phrase commits the same sin of both-sidesism of which the mainstream media frequently stands accused.
Why is it wrong for The New York Times to be even-handed (its mission is to report news “without fear or favor”) but okay for People’s Union USA? I’m a partisan for the Democratic party—not because it’s perfect, but rather because it’s the only major party that’s remotely sane. I’m in no mood to hear it even hinted that, as George Wallace famously put it in 1968, there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans. There’s a billion-dollar difference. The GOP has completely lost its mind.
We’re in an emergency, but the emergency isn’t that “the system as a whole” is unsatisfactory in some ill-defined way. The emergency is that Donald Trump is president, and he’s trying to turn this country into a dictatorship. Let’s focus on that. As they said in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, “keep your eyes on the prize.” The prize in this instance is preserving the rule of law, which Trump defies at every turn. The civil rights movement, Thomas E. Ricks argues in his excellent book Waging A Good War, was plotted with the precision of a military campaign. We need to apply that same military-style discipline to fighting Trump.
People’s Union USA acknowledges in a backhanded way that Trump is the problem by making the boycott partly about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, programs. These are in eclipse largely because Trump and his fellow Republicans are bullying corporations to drop them. But boycotting all of corporate America doesn’t work here, because not all of corporate America has abandoned DEI. Apple, Ben & Jerry’s, Costco, Delta Airlines, and Microsoft are all standing by their DEI programs. To whatever extent this protest is about DEI, punishing good actors (on this issue, anyway) along with bad ones defeats the purpose.
It may be argued that the February 28 blackout is intended just as a shot across the bow, a sort of digital general strike to alert bad actors that consumers are organizing to resist them. And indeed, People’s Union USA plans future one-week boycotts against individual corporations, for various specified reasons. But kicking these off with an Everybody Boycott invites critics to write the movement off as a woolly-headed protest against “the system as a whole,” like the Yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon in 1967. As for the future individual boycotts, I wish People’s Union USA would spell out in greater detail, with links to reputable sources, their purpose. An Amazon boycott planned for March 7-14 requires little explanation, but before I boycott General Mills I’d like to know more about “food industry corruption and the poisoning of our families.”
Even these more targeted boycotts are ill-timed, because they take us away from the emergency of the moment, which is Donald Trump’s presidency. What can we do to fight that? Plenty. Start by reading a web page from the nonprofit Choose Democracy, titled, helpfully, “What can I do to fight this coup?” The nonprofit Indivisible’s “Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink” is also quite useful. Boycotts can play a role in Trump Resistance 2.0, but let’s boycott the right targets. People have lately been picketing Tesla dealerships to pressure Elon Musk to get the hell out of the White House. Good idea—keep it going! I’ve previously urged New Republic readers (and The New Republic itself) to get the hell off Twitter. (TNR, I’m sorry to report, ignored me.) Advertiser boycotts of Twitter should expand.
I’ll have more to say going forward on how to mobilize against Trump’s corruption, his illegal actions, and his abuse of power. This isn’t how. If you really, really want to join the February 28 blackout I guess go ahead, because it’s basically harmless—but that’s the problem. The Trump opposition needs to impose pain at carefully chosen leverage points. It needs (in a nonviolent sense) to do harm.
The post Why I’m Not Joining the Economic Blackout Day appeared first on New Republic.
