A group called The People’s Union USA has called for an “economic blackout” for at least 24 hours today, and it has been a successful enough effort to get the attention of major media. The activist group is trying to promote weeklong boycotts of companies like Amazon and Walmart, as well as fast food and gas companies. On their website, there is no concrete ask of these corporations to do anything in response to the boycott, and it isn’t clear what the goal of this is outside sending an amorphous message to the American oligarchy.
In 1791, pamphlets were distributed by abolitionists in England encouraging people to boycott sugar produced by slaves, and to purchase their sugar from “freemen” in India. Estimates suggest that around 300,000 people followed, with sugar sales dropping by a third to a half. The ask was very clear: abolish slavery and don’t support any institutions associated with it. Contrast that to today’s boycott, where there is absolutely no specific demand of these companies, and the goal is seemingly just to try to make them feel pain for a weekend (which is pretty pointless given the immense revenue these companies generate, they’ll barely notice this boycott in their financials, if they even see it at all).
While it is both understandable and admirable to try to do something to combat the complete collapse of American democracy, this ain’t it, and it actually reveals some deeper problems with our conception of politics. Namely, that they are inextricably tied to consumerism, and we are encouraged to express our political priorities by buying or not buying things, and much of the populace has been trained to express their politics in the market. This has a way of flattening politics and filtering out more radical movements that strike at the heart of the American economic engine that is literally funding our existential political problems. Avenues for the American people to hold politicians accountable have been curtailed over the last half-century of neoliberalism, leaving just the market as the sole lever that people feel like they can pull on to get the elite to listen to the people’s concerns.
Just 27 out of the 435 House districts were considered toss-ups in 2024. The presidency has become something of a monarch this century, while the Supreme Court awarded itself God-like power in Marbury v. Madison and is wholly unaccountable to the public. Our “democracy” is a sham, and it has insulated itself from any kind of real public accountability. Diverting our political activism to the market is both by design and a natural conclusion of a broken polity wholly dedicated to the whims of our deranged billionaire class.
To be fair, The People’s Union USA says this is “our first action,” and they have the outline of a larger plan to “unionize the people” with a list of specific demands that this movement will be pursuing like abolishing corporate lobbying. This would not be the first protest movement to start off with a clunky message and hone it into something sharper, but this first action is not likely to have any kind of tangible impact outside hopefully inspiring more actions. Targeting companies with $638 billion in 4th quarter sales is certain to make any kind of boycott look like a drop in the bucket at best. A sustained boycott could eventually make a dent, but that is not what this action calls for, and the lack of any kind of concrete demand for Amazon and Walmart and other goliaths of capitalism simply gives them permission to ignore the protest. As the 1791 sugar boycott demonstrated, one simple and straightforward ask is a lot more effective than a laundry list of political priorities, many of which these corporations have no control over, like “mental health reform.”
Boycotts can be very effective tools to use against the capitalists crushing our society for profit, but they must be focused. Given how enthusiastic America’s fetid capitalist class has been over the death of our democracy these past several weeks, we must both fight smarter and harder. The passion for a real pro-democracy movement is already there, as exemplified by the cowardly Democrats freaking out over an avalanche of their constituents demanding they do their jobs, but unless we make specific demands of our capitalists in these boycotts that need to last longer than just a weekend, they will ignore us and continue along with their half-century long project of destroying American democracy in service of the almighty dollar.
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