Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?
Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?
One day at a time. Isn't that what the 12 Step groups say? People in this thread saying this won't do anything. You have to start somewhere. Don't be defeatist. Get involved. Unless you are just trolling to keep people from doing anything.
Doomer do-nothings are so incredibly frustrating. I get the frustration, but spreading apathy is not useful. Authoritarianism flourishes when apathy takes root among the populace.
Real doing something is a long term boycott. Not a one day thing. Real doing something is labor organization, unions allow collaboration at a higher level, and allow you to strike back at the throat.
Even protesting at a leftist capital is doing more than a single day's blackout.
Go exercise your second amendment by a conservative senator's house if you really want to do something (and I don't mean that as a shoot them euphemism. Make them uncomfortable.)
you are doing nothing.
this is not resistance, it's embarrassing. you all deserve what you get.
For real. Most Americans have probably never even participated in a “buy nothing” day, much less a pocket book protest against a government.
I don’t see what’s wrong with starting with one day, letting people get used to the concept, then dialing up the frequency once word of mouth has spread.
They show up on every single issue and I want to just interview these people and post it online. Like who are these fucking losers
🤡
I just been not buying things most days. Anti-consumerism 2025
If everyone just holds off buying their shit until March 1st, or buys everything they will need Feb 27, then this blip won't have any effect.
You've got the right idea, if we want to actually hit them where it hurts. I'm doing the same, but not really by choice. I'm just broke.
They don’t care. It’s a game about holding out the longest. Protest all you want.
That's not actually true.
It looks true on the surface, but because of the way global shipping and trade is set up, they are predicting how much products they need, how many workers they need, on any given day. If folks don't buy anything on a day that they are expecting to sell stuff, they waste all of that labor. They waste all of those resources, in the sense of keeping the lights on. Keeping the heat on.
Companies have overhead. A day with depressed profits throws off their expectations and that costs them money.
Yeah, I've cut back my spending dramatically. Reminds me of how it was in 2020 when I bought next to nothing except food and essentials for like 12-18 months. Once you break the habit, you stop thinking about it and it just becomes easy.
Yep. Learned to farm. We should have an overabundance of food this year. I've been teaching my local communities to be self reliant and collectively bargain. We're close to community policing, community gardens and expanding firearms training.
Did you know Grainger and other companies are willing to make a deal with large groups, like HOAs or Recreational groups, and offer discounts on services and tools?
Power to the people. This is what real change looks like.
Since Amazon doesn’t actually MAKE anything, just resells stuff, can’t we get a delete and cancel Amazon day too?
I canceled prime already. I'm also sourcing locally and from Canadian owned corps where I can.
I too buy Canadian owned corps. They're hard you come by though.
There is in the making. https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
This is the start and will keep growing.
Spreading defeatist comments and pessimism, saying that this won't accomplish anything anyway and undermining the power of the collective is exactly what killed this movement in Croatia.
The movement started with a general spending boycott on fridays (so no money transactions - no stores, bars, gas stations, bank transactions etc), and a week long boycott of three supermarket chains that had the most egregious prices compared to other countries (those chains operate all over Europe, and their prices in other countries are far cheaper for the exact same products - despite lower operational costs in Croatia). After that, we switched to boycotting one chain every week.
The boycott was very effective. On the first friday of the boycott, the state financial department reported a 43% decrease in sales volume in the country. Just think about that for a second. And no - there has not been an increase in spending in the days before or after the boycott. In fact, they were still lower compared to the weeks before and the sales volume decreased in the following week by about 10%.
But like I said, unfortunately it died out over the next 4-5 weeks, with each boycott achieving lower decreases. And it died out exactly because of trolls that spread this defeatist attitude thinking they're so smart for seeing the "real" picture. Laughable
Of course, the astroturfing has been insane, they really went berserk after the first friday. There's been an insane amount of bots posting comments that this doesn't work, that we should be protesting the government instead (as if holding signs in front of government buildings hurts them more than 50% less money flowing into the state piggy bank), that this hurts the citizens more than the conglomerates, that this will cause them to increase the prices to cover the losses etc etc. Just ridiculous claims all over social media
And yeah, people got deflated and the movement died out.
Thanks idiots.
People will stock up the day before and binge the day after. It's not effective or realistic. This is slacktivism. It's not pessimism to tell you that it's a dumb plan.
Like I already said, no, they do not. The sales volume was lower on the days before and after too. The boycott actually changed consumer habits for a while there - people were buying only what they needed and refrained from all other spending.
I mean if you refrain from going to a cafe bar on friday, it's not like you are going to make up for it on saturday. Same goes for all "luxury" items basically.
it's going to take a much larger blackout. No one will notice one day. it's a start I guess but it's not going to accomplish anything. I've ditched amazon, walmart, target, etc,.. Buy local or even better, don't buy at all. You don't need the latest shiny distraction. vote with your wallet.
Got to start somewhere. Start small, send the message, get the word out, then dial up frequency and reach.
Also will have no idea what the possible participation rate could be if you don't have a trial run first.
May I present you all with the secondhand market. Please go back to using craigslist everyone. Craig never did you dirty and you left him hanging.
Any time us plebs do something en masse it freaks them out, even if it's just for a day
That’s like saying “one vote doesn’t matter”, it MATTERS WAYYYYY MICH MORE THAN YOU THINK. think about it how everything works and then what happens if one thing were to stop and how that chain reaction might go. Start educating and more positive conversations and that will increase a better change than your current comment.
I see so many of these protests and blackouts. I wish there was a nationwide, unified voice for this stuff so its not so piece-mealed together. If only there was an opposition party.
Look up the 50501 movement that this nationwide economic blackout is a part of. They also have a next nationwide protest planned for Mar 4th
The big labor unions could form a labor party and run candidates in rust belt congressional districts and probably win.
I've been cleaning out the cupboards this month. Just going through all the random food stuff we have in the freezer and cupboard instead of buying anything
I never understood these "don't buy stuff on day X" things. Ok, then you will buy on the next day. It doesn't make a difference. What am I missing?
The idea is for it to be material enough that it shows up in reports about earnibgs for the day.
And also to get people accustomed to the idea of participating in mass actions. You don't go from barely having protests to a multi week general strike in one go. You do things like this, first.
It's a threat. Nobody likes the idea of crippling the economy with an unending general strike. But the people who watch the daily numbers use them to predict future behavior. A big blackout in the second month makes them think really hard about what is coming 6 months down the road. If the blackout is small, they know they don't have anything to worry about. If it shifts 50% of sales to another day, they know they're having a conversation with a giant that can move their numbers a lot.
It does make a huge difference. Their analytics gets effed, some people rethink their choices where they buy, or not even buy at all. Just don’t think negatively, there is positive outcomes. Share those comments instead and then we can lead a bigger educational conversations about everything else.
It does make a difference.
Companies have overhead. Labor costs, heat, etc. they use expectations for the business they will do on any given day to determine how many resources to invest into that day.
If everyone buys nothing on February 28th, and then buys everything they would have bought on the 28th on the 1st, not only do the companies get overwhelmed by having twice as much business on the 1st. All of the overhead for the 28th is still spent.
Not only that, this is just the beginning. The Amazon blackout is March 7th through the 14th.
Amazon blackout, March 7th through March 14th.
I'm personally making that my cut off point for using Amazon at all. And if it wasn't for their return policy I would have stopped quite a while ago.
i deleted my Twitch account. I felt bad because Im my friend’s only paid subscriber but I cannot support Amazon
Well I explained why I was still using them. Buying something off of eBay that's several hundred dollars and then not being able to return it if it shows up broken.
Not that I'm really disagreeing, I'm just explaining that there are things that make Amazon desirable for many folks.
I'm also right there with you with meta and x. I've deleted all of my meta socials, not that I was very active on them anyway. And I haven't logged into Twitter since Musk took over.
That said, blanket economic blackouts, can also be effective. They can show business administrators that cow towing to The regime will cost them money. Wich can in turn put pressure on Washington.
And March 7th through 14th is a targeted blackout
For many of us, every day is Amazon blackout day. It really isn't that much of an inconvenience to shop elsewhere. You can do it too! I believe in you!
It's been an amazon blackout since Bezos was front seat at the inauguration.
Remember that you still buy the same stuff you normally do, you just don't get them from Amazon and bezos. Specialty items can be bought directly from the manufacturer. Give them the full value for their products, don't make them give Amazon a share just because you are too lazy to log into a non Amazon site.
I often do do that. And prefer to order from the manufacturer when possible.
However, there are expensive niche items that are very difficult to find other places and that are prone to damage in shipping due to their bulk, and the other places you can find them have shit return policies or extremely high markups. Because they are manufactured in China, shipped here and then relabeled.
Don't assume other people are lazy because you don't see their point of view.
I used it when I needed it, I got sucked into the convenience and I use it more than I like, I was planning on stopping anyway as my account is about to expire. March 7th gives me a good excuse to do it.
Please be civil, don't tell people they're lazy. I get we're all outraged but let's not target each other.
Costco has a better return policy and still supports DEI. Though I’m not convinced Costco can replace some of the more niche items I order from Amazon.
I'm planning on participating, but it's not going to work. And it won't work because it's not popular, and it's not popular because it won't work.
It won't work because people are just going to stock up the day before and binge the day after. No one is going to feel anything.
^^ Lame comment.
Do you think everybody just has to go out and buy stuff everyday? I certainly don't, and there are probably days in every one of my weeks where I buy nothing.
Economic protests are effective, so we should all encourage participation instead of making wet blanket comments to discourage participation.
The better solution is targeted rolling medium-ter. boycots of specific companies/products that we won't realistically drop entirely.
Roll between boycots of Amazon, Walmart, etc for month each to impact their quarterly reports and fuck up their stocks.
That's the plan afaik.
Bigger stuff does need to happen. Nobody in power is even really opposing the bad stuff happening.
But this movement will still have power. It doesn't have to be a fatal hit, to be effective. The power doesn't come from striking, it comes from engaging the masses and giving them direction, people are scared, they're not going to go from 0 to 100, it needs to start small. People want to do something and doing something will give them hope, which is desperately needed right now. One day may not feel like much, but the companies would feel it, and be scared, especially if a lot of people participated. They would feel the absence, and know how huge the numbers are, against them. It's a shot over the wall. It's a display of power, it's a warning shot.
It also has the power to get people on board for longer term methods, people start thinking about what they're buying and what they can go without, on an individual basis, re-examining what they're buy and from who. It might cost $5 more from the small seller, but the small seller makes it themselves and doesn't support fascism.
We have all the power really, we just need to unite in one flock of movement. You're right, we could all go in for the death shot, stop buying from one company entirely, one by one, collapsing them, but how do you organise that when algorithms are controllable and all the social media are owned by these people who are, essentially, the enemy. (except tiktok, that was popular / populated enough and not owned by the same people, hence the hostile take over, they were organising over there, and Bam, instantly organised a hostile take over. Look up tallgirl6234, on tiktok, she organised a massive 3 month long boycotting set up, starting with Kelloggs and including all the other evil overlords)
Big movements, can and do start small. People need to hear about it, and more will join, that alone has ultimate power. The most important thing is numbers. Plus those billions in profits, come from the billions of people. Getting billions of people together, and then doing some capitalism damage, starts somewhere. Join every movement. One or more might be the steamroller that takes it all down.
Hey, we're finally getting their attention!
50501 is ready. Are you? https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
Rude. You're not wrong, but insulting us doesn't help.
Something not pleasant to hear is not per definition (ment as) an insult.
It is an accurate observantion IMO.
That’s not helpful. Should be educating and encouraging for change. If Americans don’t fix this, this later will start effecting others. Let’s fix this together.
Listen, I am the others.
Both sides of the US uniparty is horrible and has 'affected' the world since forever.
And not in a good way.
If they for once get a taste of their own medicine and the orange clown expediates the decline even faster I'm all for it.
They have been ruled by this imperialist regime since forever.
They were perfectly fine profiting from it.
Now they don't even get the crumbs since the pie has to be shared with growing world powers.
And their system is canibalising itself.
As always, use other 'friends' for their proxy war, destroy the EU 'friends economy and now their own people.
I doubt these pacified drones will do anything other than this BS or maybe change their avatar.
They will follow the harmless clues and directions from the other side of the oligarchy claiming to be 'the resistance'.
There I've educated.
And I can encourage them to look at France or plenty of other countries that know how to fight for something.
But then they they need to grow a pair of balls and struggle.
I bet they won't, after all they have been told (non-state) 'violence is bad' and like you marvelously embody to VOTE.
Also the cocaine?
Doomer?
LOL I'm European, your shithole banana republic destroying itself even faster with the orange moron is great news for the world.
And your imperialist warmongering, genocide supporting silly 'other side' is slightly less fascist at best.
You really think too much of yourselves.
You get 100% what you deserve.
And as always when americans hear uncomfortable truths and have no arguments to offer, they resort to vulgarities and insult like the barbarians they are.
Buy now, thanks for the entertainment.
Like watching monkeys in a zoo.
how petty to remove that comment.
A 1 day economic blackout will not do shit.
The key thing to remember is that a one day blackout won't have an effect on the corporations. What it will do is get more people comfortable with taking action. If you can go one day without buying from Amazon, two days isn't much more, and then a week, and then a month. The idea is to ratchet up the action.
Just like how fascism has a progression to slowly "boil the frog," collective societal action does, too. This isn't an end but a beginning.
The problem with this approach is that the frog knows you are trying to boil it.
I don't think it's much of a problem. People taking part want to do something to combat Trump and Elon, but many don't know how. And let's face it, it's kinda scary to try to go up against powerful people. This is an easy, low-threat way to get started. It's for Jim and Jane down the street who want to do something but don't know what and are afraid of going all in right now.
So, if they boycott for just a day as a symbol, they see it's not so bad. Hell, they may even make it two or three just on their own. Then the next call to blackout comes a month later, but this time it's for a week. Easy. Now, this time, they find alternative local businesses who align with their positions to get "emergency" supplies from. Then the next call comes for a month's blackout, and they realize that they haven't been buying from the big companies at all, so that's easy.
But, they still feel like they aren't doing enough. Isn't fighting supposed to be harder? So, they decide to attend a small protest. Then a bigger protest. Suddenly, Jim and Jane realize that they are going to city hall meetings, protests, etc., which they never thought they'd get involved in. And it started with just taking a day off from buying things.
Obviously, this won't happen for everyone where they get hyper-involved. For most, it'll probably just be doing the economic blackouts for however long at a time or just finding alternate places to do business so they feel like they're helping. And you know what, that's fine. If people turn away from the big businesses, even just 20%, that will start to show up.
Then you make jumping out of the pot the worse option
Getting people to take part in actions that have no effect on their target can eventually make them feel that all such actions are pointless, though.
It can always be spun as a symbolic statement, but giving it the appearance of an economic boycott leads to confusion about how effective boycotts actually work.
You’re half right. It does affect the corporations but not much. Change is change. Just need to be more proactive about it and keep continuing.
Amazon blackout, that's March 7th through March 14th.
This is a much better plan. Much better. We should be organizing longer pauses with different targets. We should have a different one every week or longer.