Can shoppers save our country by not shopping?
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It is no secret that the response thus far to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s “shock and awe” assault on democracy has been tepid and uncoordinated.
Whether because they are shocked and awed or just exhausted and discouraged, millions of Americans who are watching the world they took for granted burn have not settled on an effective set of actions to stop the madness.
Some believe the courts, wigged-out congressional Republicans, or maybe even what’s left of the generals will save us. Many seem to believe resistance is futile. Others just can’t figure out what form of resistance has the best chance of success.
Though several — like Govs. JB Pritzker (D-IL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — seem to be auditioning, no great leader, of MLK stature, has thus far emerged to rally millions to an anti-Trump, pro-democracy banner.
Marches and demonstrations have been widespread but underwhelming.
A Powerful Political Weapon?
Organizers of what is being billed as a One-Day Economic Blackout on Friday, February 28, are trying a different approach: Let’s see what a little consumer power can do.
The People’s Union USA has asked Americans opposed to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI edicts — along with its attempts to gut federal agencies, weaken or destroy democratic institutions, and ram through a host of other grossly unpopular domestic and foreign policy moves — to pledge to halt their discretionary spending for that one day.
That is, to purchase only essentials but forgo the flat-screens, smart-phones, and the rest of the goodies festooning the aisles of Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, or the cornucopia available with one click on Amazon.
We have seen that even the mightiest corporations are exquisitely sensitive to even the tiniest nibbles at their revenues and bottom lines. A 2 percent drop in sales is enough to send a corporate board room into a panic.
The specific outrage driving this initiative is the widespread corporate rejection and abandonment of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies — in seemingly instant submission to Trump’s actual banning of “illegal DEI” throughout the federal government and his call for investigation of its presence in the private sector.
But what is at stake this Friday extends far beyond the fate of DEI.
Consumer spending, for both goods and services, is a largely untapped but potentially potent political weapon, in a time when the more familiar weapons of marching, lobbying, and even voting have proven problematic or ineffective.
Such spending accounts for over two-thirds of our nation’s entire GDP. It is, quite obviously, essential to our overall economy. Beyond that general impact, we have seen that even the mightiest corporations are exquisitely sensitive to even the tiniest nibbles at their revenues and bottom lines. A 2 percent drop in sales is enough to send a corporate board room into a panic.
And we have seen that corporations are quick to change course when they find themselves blowing against angry political winds. Witness the vanillazation of this year’s Super Bowl ads.
No corporation worth its marketing department wants to incur the wrath of half its customer base in a country split down the middle and getting angrier and more tribal by the day. Unfortunately for them, that is just the position corporations — from Costco, which has so far resolutely maintained its DEI policies, to Musk-towing Tesla — find themselves in. (Speaking of which, you can find a galvanizing call to punish Tesla, and thereby Musk, here.)
As a bonus, it might ultimately teach us all how much less we really need than we have come to believe. While this could do real and permanent damage to our growth-dependent economy, for those of us who believe that perpetual growth model is unsustainable, it might just be seen as hastening an inevitable reckoning and overdue course correction.
While the February 28 Blackout campaign mentions certain retailers, it is intended to be a general no-buy day — essentially a non-targeted, or very loosely targeted, economic boycott.
Such a tactic has its upsides and downsides.
Ticking Off the Pluses and Minuses
On the positive side, for starters, it’s not a time suck: It doesn’t place any time or travel demands on participants. Relative to traditional demonstrations, it is a time and travel saver; and even in absolute terms, some people just might find good use for time not spent shopping.
There is also, potentially, real impact — as opposed to ordinary protest demonstrations, which generally have zero immediate consequences.
And there is no threat that such a protest, unlike in-the-street marches or demonstrations, will become violent. Which means no counter-violence, no prospect of triggering Trump’s itchy finger on the Insurrection Act.
As a bonus, it might ultimately teach us all how much less we really need than we have come to believe. While this could do real and permanent damage to our growth-dependent economy, for those of us who believe that the perpetual growth model is unsustainable, it might just be seen as hastening an inevitable reckoning and overdue course correction.
There are, to be sure, some significant downsides.
Such actions have proven really hard to organize at effective scale. Messaging can get muddy: Does it apply to in-store purchases or only online? What does the directive “shop local” actually mean? Does it include service or only goods?
It’s also just about impossible to compel compliance or even measure it in real time, although businesses pay good money to measure the smallest ups and downs in sales, so we may know fairly quickly what impact the boycott has had.
There’s no spectacle — the whole action is effectively invisible, and it’s hard to rally to an invisible flag.
If successful, such actions are likely to cause economic injury that may also indirectly impact the participants.
And there is the very real prospect that angry MAGAs respond in kind, or with more targeted actions. Then you risk a kind of economic total war — not a toy a nation bent on survival wants to take out of the box.
An Empty Quiver?
These downsides are not easily dismissed. Yet I believe the bottom line is that this is a potentially powerful weapon, especially in light of the paucity, if not outright absence, of effective alternatives.
The scattered demonstrations we have witnessed thus far — along with the passionate letter-writing and calling of representatives and senators, and even the angry, anti-DOGE earfuls aimed at GOP officeholders in town halls in the heartland — are not yet giving the Trump-Musk panzer divisions second thoughts, let alone stopping them in their tracks. It’s all too clear that it will take a whole lot more than the usual expressions of “grave concern” to do that.
Thus Politico Playbook’s Sunday headline: Will Anything Slow Trump Down?
And it may be worth recalling the truly massive demonstrations of February 15, 2003, in which millions of protesters, myself included, took to the streets to say NO to our prospective invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush famously wrote them off with the comment, “It’s like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group,” and proceeded to invade one month later.
Millions. It’s not clear what “critical mass” numbers would look like in the Trump era, but it is a pretty sure bet that he would invoke the Insurrection Act long before anything approaching the 2003 numbers could be reached. We may, alas, wind up there anyway — staring down the barrels of a MAGA-captured military — but it is worth noting that the Insurrection Act and other forms of coercion and intimidation are pretty useless against shoppers who simply refuse to shop.
I’m not saying this thing will work, just that it has potential to tap a very untapped and latent power that the powers-that-be have reason to fear — way more so than marches, which, unless they are absolutely massive (and there’s no sign yet of that), are worse than useless.
Which brings up another, subtler critique of the Blackout approach — that what folks don’t buy Friday, they’ll just go ahead and buy Saturday, or Sunday or Monday; that purchase volume will just be slightly deferred or even, as some studies of pent-up demand seem to show, increased.
I’m not so sure about that. I may be an outlier but I’ve found that often when for whatever reason I don’t buy something on Wednesday, I’ve lost interest or thought better of it by Thursday or Friday. Remember that these are only non-essential purchases being targeted — stuff we don’t need.
Can Consumer Power Be Political Power?
But I think far more important is the qualitative impact — planting the seed that buying is a choice and can be a political choice.
I’m not saying this thing will work, just that it has potential to tap a very untapped and latent power that the powers-that-be have reason to fear — way more so than marches, which, unless they are absolutely massive (and there’s no sign yet of that), are worse than useless.
Yeah, most may go back to Walmart/Costco Saturday for that flat screen or jump right back on Amazon at 12:01 a.m., but perhaps they do so with a prick of conscience, or at least a raised consciousness of their role in making Trump’s economy go.
And just maybe it grows from that seed — bigger, wider, more determined — not just a one-day affair, but two days next round, a week, a month… a money-based movement.
The common denominator is the power of money. Right now, it’s being used against us but, collectively, nonMAGAs have orders of magnitude more wealth than Musk and his billionaire cohorts.
Kamala Harris spent over a billion dollars to lose, but I’m not talking about money’s power in buying votes. Rather the direct power that money has to sustain an economy.
The economy cannot run on MAGA money alone — it requires that everyone participate, spend. Does that not translate to enormous latent power to stop this normalization of fascism?
Granted, it’s a blunt tool, not the ideal weapon in a functioning democracy. But we have good reason to question whether our democracy is still functioning, and, crucially, whether it will be in 2026 when we next, as a nation, go to the polls. Waiting around for a dubious, if not outright rigged, election in 2026 seems to me rather too patient.
In conclusion, there is a real challenge in trying to convert economic power into political impact. Right now, with very few exceptions, corporations fear Trump — and take us for granted. If we can’t do anything to change that equation, we might as well get used to life in the Fourth Reich.
The odds of a smashing success for Friday’s planned Blackout aren’t high. But even a modest success might get the ball rolling toward a nonviolent, economic critical mass. It makes sense to ask whether there are better options, perhaps overlooked, or whether right now this is the best and most potentially effective alternative to sitting around feeling helpless.
I see a potential here for a mass awakening to consumer power — which really does exist, if a way can be found to harness it.
It hasn’t been tapped before because things weren’t desperate enough — other guardrails did the holding. But if desperation awakens this sleeping giant, watch out! It can spread to mass boycotts, tax revolts, general strikes (a la Europe), etc. These are the power tools of an oppressed people.
The common denominator is the power of money. Right now, it’s being used against us but, collectively, nonMAGAs have orders of magnitude more wealth than Musk and his billionaire cohorts.
Yes, it’s diffuse and disorganized and that is a huge problem. But light was also diffuse and disorganized before someone figured out how to build a laser. It’s a very steep hill, but I see this Blackout Day as one step up in the right direction.
To turn the tables, we must get people looking at their spending through a different lens, as something other and more than mere personal acquisition and wish-fulfillment.
It’s not perfect, maybe not even good, but, as I noted above, right now, in a vacuum of helplessness and inaction, even a slim chance of catching fire should, I think, be fanned.
As for me, if it’ll help us get our democracy back, I’m ready to go the rest of the year without purchasing a single nonessential. It’s really not such a big sacrifice when you think about it, put it in historical perspective. Want to join me?
