What comes after a one-day boycott?

So there was a one-day boycott. It’s impossible to know how many people participated, but millions liked, posted, and shared the message, and quite a few probably withheld their money from corporate America for a day. Today the question some people are naturally asking is, now what? But, before we answer that, we have to tackle one or two other issues.

Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash

The first hurdle here is how we talk to each other, and specifically how people who have a little more organizing experience talk to folks who suddenly got excited about an event that some of us were understandably skeptical of. For those of you who are blissfully unplugged, this “Economic Blackout” took place on the last day of February, after being spread far and wide on social media. It was advertised as a one-day boycott of corporate America specifically, with a deliberate exemption for small businesses.

And, as happens a little too frequently, some folks took to critiquing it immediately. They said it would have no impact, was a poor substitute for real organizing, and that the organization, or really the one guy, launching it didn’t know what he was doing. These points have merit, as I’ll get into, but the way thousands and thousands of people immediately criticized this effort is what struck me as counterproductive. If that was you, stick with me for a sec, because the goal here is for all of us to accomplish more together, not to make you or anyone else feel shitty.

A glance at the FAQ of “The People’s Union USA” shows that there are some decent ideas here, including week-long targeted boycotts of Amazon, Walmart, and more. Historically more targeted efforts are much more impactful and successful, and seeing the call for a longer time period is encouraging. At the same time, the FAQ page also talks about ‘The Command Center,’ which is an “exclusive members only section where you get early access to movements before they are publicly announced.” It’s unclear why the push for a national boycott of massive corporations would have a members only section. It’s also unclear why the founder is raising unlimited funds. There’s a breakdown of fundraising and spending on the site, and it’s not exactly encouraging:

Link

You’ll note that nearly half the actual spending has gone back to GoFundMe. You’ll also note that the vast majority of funds raised are allocated for “future fund allocation.” So, again, while withholding money from corporate America is not a bad idea, and longer, targeted boycotts in particular have merit, this might not be exactly the way to go about it all.

For people who got involved, or even donated, I don’t write any of this to make you feel bad either. The impulse here is good. People want to resist fascism and oligarchy and we want to do it in a way that’s organized and effective. The idea of an “Economic Blackout” sounds pretty damn good. But there’s at least one harsh reality we all need to face, and that’s the fact that our real power is as workers. We’ve been trained to think as consumers, thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that our true tastes and values and power lie in how we spend money. And there’s a kernel of truth here, but it obscures the larger fact that it takes an organized working class to wield actual power. A general strike, where workers shut down the economy by withholding our labor, would be infinitely more powerful than a consumer boycott attempt. We have more power to fight the Walmarts and Amazons of the world if every worker is a militant unionist than we do in asking people not to shop there.

The reasons for a union movement and ultimately a general strike being more powerful are many. But the one I want to focus on here is that the unions that would be instrumental in withholding their labor are organized in a very different way than a viral boycott campaign. I’m in a union, and my dues are taken out of my paycheck. My union contract is in writing and affords me legal protection. My solidarity with my coworkers is formalized in the institution of the union, and we are bonded together through shared struggle. When an issue comes up at work, I have established channels I can use to talk to my fellow union members, work out answers, and escalate if necessary.

A viral campaign, and this boycott in particular, has one guy running a website. Maybe he’ll hire someone to help him with those six figures that have been donated, maybe not. There is no accountability, no elections (like we have in our union), and no input. There's also no clear long-term vision or political strategy.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Again, if you boycotted on the 28th, more power to you. I mean that very sincerely. But, I now have an equally sincere ask of you. What is an organization you can get involved in where you can collaborate with other people to make decisions democratically? What’s an organization that you can dedicate time to, where you can get to know people as you engage with them on a regular basis, where you can build power as a worker or an organizer rather than as a consumer?

Fascists and oligarchs rely on our spending, in part. There’s no denying that, and I will continue trying to give them as little of my money as possible. But they also rely on our labor, our compliance, and the power structure of the United States. Withholding funds is a piece of the puzzle, but we need to build power in our neighborhoods and our workplaces. There is no getting around the long-term struggle necessary to defeat fascism. There is no getting around the sometimes grueling, tedious, and extensive organizing work necessary to take a population that’s depoliticized and misinformed and turn it into a force capable of taking down an oligarchy.

If you’re someone who’s already engaged in this work, you know that bringing millions more along is a massive part of our task. Talking down to people who get excited about a one-day boycott isn’t how we do that. When we pause and turn off the part of our brain that was trained on online conflicts, we know that we need to reach out to folks instead of dunking on them. We know that when millions are excited about taking mass action it’s a significant organizing opportunity. We know that people who want to engage in economic warfare against the oligarchy, who want to fight back in the class war, are the exact people to recruit into the long-term struggle.

All I’m saying is that how we talk to the unorganized matters. How we talk to each other matters. All of us need to think and act as organizers, not critics. In this world it takes work to figure out who to work with, who to resist with, who to organize with. Will people desperate for a solution turn to imperfect answers? Of course. But it’s very much the task of those of us who have more experience to help guide people into productive channels that will lead to meaningful struggle and outcomes. That means reaching out. That means explaining stuff. That means leading with compassion and care for our fellow travelers.

Some of us need to kill the cynic and the doomer in our heads. I know there’s so much to be cynical about that it’s almost physically painful at times. I do social media for a political journalism outfit eight hours a day, five days a week. So it can be hard as hell to dodge the bitterness and the pileup of demoralizing news. But that can’t seep too much into our organizing. We have a world to win, people to recruit, and a long-term struggle to wage.

The only way we win is together, in organizations that welcome new people into this work so that we can learn and grow and become more powerful as a collective. For some the next step is improving our ability to welcome in those with less experience, for others it’s dedicating ourselves to sorting through the many organizations and opportunities to fight fascism and oligarchy and improving our ability to discern which are serious, viable paths to fight this beast and which are not worth our time, money, and effort.

Sifting through it all is hard work, but this moment demands a level of seriousness and dedication. We can’t afford to be misdirected, to engage in unserious efforts. We must be disciplined and engaged in long-term organizing that can both see us through this dark period and allow us to comprehensively beat fascism and oligarchy and build a better world in its place. That is our task, nothing less will suffice.

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Some links for long-term organizing.

UAW General Strike: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/may-1st-2028

Check out Dream Defenders: https://www.dreamdefenders.org/

Join DSA: https://www.dsausa.org/get-involved/

Unionize your workplace: https://workerorganizing.org/

Talk to your neighbors and form a tenant union: https://tenantfederation.org/tenant-unions/

Federal workers (and others) check out the federal unionists network: https://www.federalunionists.net/

Organize against the war machine: https://wearedissenters.org/

Fight the coup: https://indivisible.org/coup