Just some additional advertising for todays boycott.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Open letter to everyone who pooh-poohs this:
Participation is never useless. If you're looking at this through the lens of "will this fix everything," well of course it won't. That's because small efforts by themselves are not impactful.
But lots of small efforts, cumulative, over time, can be, and you have to start somewhere. Everyone who resists does so by taking on some amount of personal risk. Yes, this boycott is a very small personal risk. That's fine. It will get people involved who were previously not involved. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
We need those people. We need their support, in whatever ways they are able to offer it. If your message is "don't bother, it won't work," you are telling people not to be involved. If your aims are, for example, "armed revolution," and you're only considering the people who have the weapons and use them, you are completely ignoring all other aspects of conflict. In war, the people who pull the triggers are a minority of the opposing forces.
You have to produce equipment, food, clothing, shelter. You have to deliver those things where they are needed. You have to know where those things are needed. You need to plan and organize and communicate. You need to provide medical services.
And you have to do all those things not only for the "front line troops," but for everyone.
Today's boycotter can become tomorrow's marcher, next week's smuggler, next month's partisan. Or medic. Or kitchen. Or driver.
All efforts, great and small. [email protected]
I like how Douglas Rushkoff put it at Bretton Woods:
This is an incredibly reductive shit take that only serves to absolve you of any responsibility or criticism.
You may as well say "I am beyond criticism and reproach because I have good opinions."
I'm sorry, I flat out reject the idea that any action is good action and that actions cannot be criticized or critiqued. Bad protest is not without impact, as it can disenfranchise and fatigue those who wasting efforts on futility. These people are going to think "but I've already been trying and nothing is working!", when in reality it is not the lack of effort that is the error but the misplaced effort.
Might just inspire some people to try something different, take on more risk. Maybe "don't gatekeep resistance" and "this is going to take a long time and a lot of effort by a lot of people in all kinds of ways before any results are seen" are mindsets which end up being necessary to effect real, lasting change. Time will tell.
That you have only criticism and not ideas speaks volumes.
Boycott permanently.
March on your capital, daily.
Refuse to perform work.
Close your bank accounts and open credit union accounts instead.
There are hundreds of actual actions; that I didn't list them doesn't automatically make your shitty option good.
Those are all great ideas for people who have the latitude to perform them.
Are you marching on your capitol daily, refusing to perform work, and if you are, how long before you run out of money to pay your bills?
Some of the people who are moved enough from "being frustrated and not knowing what to do" into "joining a one-day purchasing freeze" are going to ask themselves, "What's next?" And they might march next time. They might switch to a credit union. Then ask "What's next?" Some are going to become connected into networks that provide them with new opportunities and ideas.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Everyone is not you, or me. Gatekeeping is divisive.
And likewise some are going to mistakenly thing this meaningless impact is meaningful and feel fatigued and defeated when they quickly realize it's all just self-congratulatory.
I too can present convenient hypotheticals
People are going to feel more fatigued and defeated when marching on their capitol daily doesn't produce results in days or weeks.
Of course some people are going to check out at some point. People have their own lives to attend to. That's okay. They can check back in later when they're able.
You think that this particular action is counterproductive. No one is forcing you to participate. I think that opposing participation in general is counterproductive.
I'm not opposing; feel free to continue these meaningless protests. I'm just refusing to participate in the performative part where we pat ourselves on the back and act like this is accomplishing anything.
Feel free to waste your effort, just don't expect praise for it.
I must have been confused when you said
You must have been talking about yourself in third person.
So anything less than full endorsement is opposition?
People are free to waste their time, but telling them they're wasting their time is not prohibition from doing so.
I'll sidestep that question like you sidestepped mine:
Because unlike my question yours is irrelevant. Whether I'm out every day or not, hell even if everyone is out every day, either way this "no buy day" will still remain entirely non-impactful and entirely self-congratulatory.
We need to spend less time coddling people and trying to massage away their legitimate anxieties and more time focused on having grown up conversations with people like adults about the realities of our situation - even when said reality is starker than a couple warm-fuzzies can solve.
But to answer your whataboutism anyway: daily? No sir. But I have been out in the streets, and I will continue to do. And I will continue to encourage useful collective actions while reminding you that I can only participate in the collective part of collective action, as I am not myself a monolith; critiquing individual efforts is wildly different than critiquing collective organizing effort. But to be clear, feel free to criticize me because unlike defenders of this wasted effort protest I do not believe that the mere goodness of my intentions makes me beyond criticism.
So back to the question posed to you - the suggestion that anything less than full support is the same as opposition is bullshit. First off we're leftists - we have reason, logic, decency, literally all the immutables on our side - we don't have to default to ignorance and happy feel good platitudes. Telling people that they're wasting their efforts, not prohibiting them, isn't opposition, it's respecting them enough to talk to them like grown ups instead of placating them like children.
It's not at all wrong to be realistic about the relative impact of a given effort. Hell, even marching daily isn't going to be very impactful. Remember Occupy Wall Street? How long did that go on, and who even really things about it now? Did it effect real change? Based on what we see today, I'm going to say no.
Does that make those efforts "wasted"?
The fact is that nothing an specific individual does today is going to have any effect at all, by itself, today. The cumulative efforts of many people, over time, might. Big picture, one person's marching on their capitol every day is going to have essentially the same effect as participating in this one-day spending freeze.
I haven't. I disagree with the particular tactic you've expressed, because, as I said, I think that gatekeeping participation is counterproductive.
Feel free to point out where I said that. Again, what I think is that telling people who want to get involved in a way they are able to is counterproductive.
I don't know who you mean by "we," and it depends on what your definition of "leftist" is. I've seen lots of tankies wearing that name proudly, and fuck them.
I know I've said, perhaps not so clearly in this thread, that the efforts one individual makes are unlikely to produce recognizable results any time in the near future. I think that people have been conditioned to expect instant gratification, and I don't think that's something that will happen here. No matter what actions you take, you're highly unlikely to receive any gratification from them in the form of "things are better." There's an unhappy feel bad platitude for you.
I hope you do. All efforts, great and small.
I'm past feeling obligated to keep going around in circles while you try to convince me that just sticking your toes in the water will somehow ever help you cross the English Channel, but I do feel inclined to clarify one point:
I don't think you have criticized me and wasn't trying to claim you have, but I do see how this reads that way. My point was only that good intent doesn't absolve us from criticism and that I hold myself to that same standard. I do think you were attempting to undermine my point with your whataboutism as if the state of my participation would somehow have any material impact on the substance of my argument, but I don't think you were outright criticizing me and don't want you to think that I think that either.
Ah --
Just doesn't, but you cannot cross the Channel without sticking your toes in it at all. I mean, unless you fly or take a boat or the Chunnel ... but if you're a good swimmer, it's free.
I'm looking at things like this through the lens of: There are people who want to start doing something. This is something. It's a start, for someone, maybe a lot - not an end.
I meant that as pointing out that not every effort is suitable for every person. People have to make their own decisions about what risks they are willing to take on, and I think that even a risk that's closer to inconvenience is better than nothing at all, that it can be the start of something more. More people, more efforts, over more time is the only chance of effecting real change.
We're probably on the same page that this particular thing for one day is going to have a very limited impact towards ousting fascism from the US or anywhere. Today isn't the end, and a lot of people have to start small. Let them start.
It's not though. It's the illusion of a start. Hell it doesn't even encourage collectivism because it is an entirely individual and isolationist protest. You make no connections, you further no interests, you do literally nothing aside from pat yourself on the back for participating in a viral trend.
Yes, no shit you can't cross the English Channel without getting your feet wet, but dipping your toes in from the shore is never swimming. That the two both take place on the beach does not make them equivalent.
My point remains that we gain nothing by coddling adults like children and telling them they're doing good works when they aren't. We're past playtime; this is grown up time. Either put on your big boy pants and come to the table or shut the fuck up because all you're (I'm speaking in generalities here, not about "you" personally) doing is muddying the waters and distracting from real efforts and making people feel like they're already doing the necessary actions that they just simply aren't.
If people want to pull in generally the same direction I want, I’m not going to discourage that. Present company included.
I'm sorry, but this just feels naive to me. We aren't in a simple world with clearly defined teams and easily recognizable allies, and not every well-meaning idea towards progress is going to be a good one. We need to be able to discern viable action from not, and we need to remember that the actual opposition wants nothing more than for us to waste on our time on futile efforts so we're too fatigued to fight the real fight.
I'm sorry, but some of you need to more realistic and more pessimistic.
I'm not trying to "Pooh pooh" anything, but I do wonder if the old way of doing things is really effective in today's political arena?
Politicians these days only seem to care about re-election and since people now vote party over individual, I'm having a hard time seeing the effectiveness of such demonstrations. Other then letting like minded people know that other like minded people exist. Something that I think social media has been doing for a long time. But I don't think politicians really fear this kind of thing anymore. I think they know that people are entrenched in their parties and once it comes down to filling out the ballot, they wont care who the person is as much as they do that they are voting for "their side".
But maybe I'm wrong, which is why I'm participating today regardless of my ignorance.
And I'm not saying "don't bother". Try everything you can. I'm just saying that maybe it's time we figure out new ways to do things?
I think the reality is no one knows what will work, and that's why it's important to try things.
It's good to suggest new things too, but who are you addressing when you say maybe it's time we figure out new things? I'm frustrated with the old ways too, but to do new things requires organizing and community building around a new idea. I don't think it's very constructive to hand wave at the internet and say "we should do something new" without any suggestion or effort to plan something.
Organizing isn't my skill set either, so I think it's important to support what does come along even if it isn't the ideal thing we'd like to see. Nitpicking every effort for not being perfect will drain energy out of the participants, and it's good people are trying things. Just my 2 cents.
oh man I have this in a lot of comments but businesses keep track of metrics down to the second. If it works there would be a severe drop in the graph today for businesses. Think in terms of how people react to the stock market diving three thousand points in one day. There is also a knock on effect in that lean pretty much won over six sigma for most bussinesses and they are highly reliant on historical metrics to do their ordering and supplying their spots from the supply chain. The leaner and more efficient the operation the larger the effect of an unusual drop in activity for a day. That is secondary again. Mostly its about making the graphs drop for the daily, weekly, monthly c-suite meetings.
I don't think you realise how much noise there is in that data though. Things as simple as traffic, weather, sports games etc can have a huge effect on retail spending.
Even with the metrics these companies collect, I doubt you could conclusively say any change in sales was due to this.
When they can account for the anomaly, such as in the case of a blizzard or planned and openly discussed protests, they can easily account for the anomalous entry. If at the end of the quarter their books still balance because everyone spent the money on Thursday they would have spent on Friday then there is no actual impact being felt here. You are vastly overestimating the response to a single dip in the books while entirely ignoring the context around the dip.
sure if this is the one and only thing. its the opening salvo. a shot across the bow. they can ignore it but they can't say they were not warned.
You don't even have an outcome you want to achieve. No goal, no demands, just a generic grumpiness.
It's like a Monty Python skit.
But again, you're operating under this naive idea that any action is good and holds no potential for detriment. That's just not realistic. If I need to get to France from the UK there are tons of valid methods to get you closer but donning concrete shoes with the intention of walking across the ocean floor isn't going to work for obvious reason.
You're not just suggesting folks brave the channel in their concrete shoes, you're also trying to tell the rest of us that we're not allowed to point out the obvious flaw in that plan.
That's bullshit.
Ideas come from people. The larger the pool of people who are engaged, the greater the likelihood that a "new way" will be invented. And that new way will need support in all kinds of ways from all kinds of directions, by all kinds of people. At some point, it's a numbers game.
As long as we're all pulling in generally the same direction, that's a good thing. I don't 100% agree with everyone who's pulling generally in the direction away from fascism, and I know that some of those same people have various disagreements with me. That's okay.
We don't have to be in perfect lockstep to be pulling on the same rope.
The same people who complain about this will come back tomorrow and say "someone needs to do something about XYZ". They never planned to do anything, they just like complaining.