The problem I’ve found with the “Buy nothing days” is that it’s not really encouraging buying less. With the possible exception of a few in the moment things, it’s really just pushing purchasing to the day before or the day after. Someone seeing economic data for that specific day might notice something, but even just factor in the day before and the day after and it’s not going to make much of a difference. It didn’t cost the corpos anything, so they won’t even notice.
I keep saying exactly this. It needs to be longer than a week and it can’t be things like groceries or you’re basically asking people to starve. And so many people who are supposedly fighting for the less well off don’t seem to get “living paycheck to paycheck” and the idea that working 5 days a week and taking care of yourself/kids means that when you shop is largely dictated by factors out of your control. Its got “oh, just make your coffee at home to save up for a new house” or “blame the average person for climate change and not the massively polluting corporations” vibes.
Making it longer doesn’t help.
You need to boycott specific products (with ready altenratives) and have specific demands.
No, making it longer would help if your only goal is to crash the economy thinking that a tantrum will solve the core problem and not just lead to a bunch of bandaid appeasements.
For the record I’m agreeing with you. We need more directed action and more specific demands. These demands need to be things that have a clear roadmap to being implemented as well, not just “I want X”. Cool. Nifty. How do you expect X to be implemented in today’s world? What will the steps look like?
If you could rely on supporters to actually abstain from buying things for the duration of the protest, and you had enough supporters then ok extending the duration of the protest might “help” crash the economy.
What I was kind of getting at is that you really can’t rely on supporters to abstain and you don’t have enough supporters.
The longer the protest (or… the more inconvenient the protest), the less dedication you’re going to have from supporters.
I whole heartedly agree with the screen cap in the post suggesting that protesters seem to think they can just observe some rite and all of society’s ailments will be resolved. Real actual change is going to involve real actual pain, and unfortunately the plebs always carry that burden.
My feeling is that presently people are dissatisfied but not really desperate enough to undertake the civil disobedience required to invoke meaningful change. For example, could you organise enough people to boycott starbucks until they allowed employees to unionise? It would take time, organisation, and dedication. This is just one teeny tiny example of a potential first step, a rallying cry, a way to demonstrate a proof of concept. However, I just don’t think it’s achievable.
Look at what the right is doing. They go after targets with disproportionate force to force change. “Don’t buy anything” is easy for a day and hard for long. “Refuse to purchase anheiser Busch products because they caved to bigots” is less difficult and leaves a message.
My favorite restaurant is not a chain, I’m a regular there, and they have a once a month special on one of these days. I would rather support them on one of these days than buy nothing.
To be fair any excuse to eat there is good. Greek food is awesome.
Man this is something I struggle with outside of politics too
imho the chapter on “Tactics” in Alinski’s Rules for Radicals provides a lot of ideas on how to avoid performative activism.
I grew up in a protest to save my neighborhood from being demolished for a highway.
What the news reported was the protests in front of city hall to finally convince them to move the highway.
What you didn’t see was the incredible legwork getting dozens of local businesses to support us. Getting bake sales in schools to fund billboards. Doing social disobedience by blocking traffic and having people arrested. Disrupting city hall over and over and over. This was my life for months.
And it finally worked.
Can’t let people know where their power lies. If enough people believe in the ritual magic of peaceful, ignorable protests, then they will justify violence against protestors who actually put real pressure for change and the system can just overlook acts of violence against protestors rather than having to actually commit them itself.
It’s easy to imagine yourself as a hero with a molotov cocktail. Not as much fun walking door to door with a petition.
What is not usually mentioned is the psychological effect protests have on the people attending. The feeling of being one of many who care about an issue gives people hope and energy to keep tring to change it.
Rule number 1 of protesting is always that if the protest can be suffered or ignored, then it will be.
The key to non-violent protest is that you don’t plan on going home afterward. You go, you stay, and you don’t leave – until somebody drags you to the jail, the hospital, or the morgue.
The key to nonviolent protest is that they have to be an alternative to violence - in other words, both sides must be fully aware that either nonviolence works or violence follows.
Certainly. But of course, when the state has a much higher capability for violence, command of professional martial organizations, mature systems of espionage, infiltration, and surveillance, as well as vast propaganda resources, non-violence is a decent way to start. Not the kind of “non-violence” that takes an Uber to Denny’s after the march – the kind of non-violence that won’t simply “blow over,” but the kind of non-violence that absolutely will not stop until it’s dealt with, one way or the other. Not everyone who goes to a protest needs to be a martyr, but there should be a core of people who believe enough in the cause to put themselves at risk of winding up with a criminal record, a hospital bill, or… worse.
I’m not arguing for pacifism. I just don’t like that people have an idea that non-violent protest is the cowardly, half-hearted strategy of dilettantes and tourists.
That’s certainly not how Gandhi imagined it would work.
I don’t think that’s fair, the fact that enough people care enough to show up and protest can have an effect by itself.
Yes, and it can have an effect on the people doing the protest. I was supposed to go to dinner on 2/28 with four people. I canceled that morning when I realized it was “buy nothing” day (and told them why). Those four also canceled and became curious about where to learn more about protest movements. We’ve now committed to supporting each other to escalate our efforts into more impactful actions. So, keep in mind some protests are more about rallying the troops, creating cohesion, educating, and supporting each other than impacting direct change with that particular action. Protests are just one tool in the arsenal.
What do you mean by “ground level infrastructure?” Like educating people? A forum for communication? Everyone is on social media and social media is censoring that stuff. Civil rights era people eere in churches because those were the social venues of the day.
Ground level infrastructure meaning the ability to get people out to do anything from marching to rioting to picketing to canvassing to voting. The Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it hadn’t actually mobilized people and thus made people aware of / afraid of organized resistance. The Black Panthers deserve a lot of credit as well for being the armed hard core of the movement.
We’d get a lot more of what we want peacefully if oligarchs were afraid we’d rally and fuck up their businesses bottom lines AND that they might get assassinated by radicals.
I see it as good practice and normalizing not shopping at those places
But people think it’s activism to not shop when it should literally just be the default. Get out of the consumerism mindset.
It’s wild how much everyone looks like a sucker and a mark once you’ve been out of the consumer mindset for a few years. You start to see between the lines a lot more and realize how much dumb shit is pushed on people. Buying a new phone every two years made a lot of sense when they doubled processing power and functionality. New flagships though? Forget that, why the hell would I want an AI powered advertisement and tracking machine in my pocket? The non AI powered tracking machine that’s 4 years old in my pocket is fucked up enough lol.
