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.
It’s been an amazon blackout since Bezos was front seat at the inauguration.
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.
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.
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!
A boycott will be more effective if we laser-focus our efforts:
- Focus on Amazon, Tesla (anything Musky), & Meta
- Make the boycott permanent
As for me, I’ve done my part. I will never shop Amazon again, or purchase from any online store that uses Amazon for shipping, and all my Meta accounts have been permanently deleted. Done.
Why restrict it to a few days or a week “blackout” or whatever? That’s weak sauce. Everything you can find on Amazon, you can find elsewhere. Stop giving them money.
i deleted my Twitch account. I felt bad because Im my friend’s only paid subscriber but I cannot support Amazon
You can help your friend in better ways, for both of you.
That’s what I figured
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
Have you ever had a single issue on eBay where you bought something, complained, and eBay didn’t side with you? Even if you lie about the issue. eBay is notoriously difficult as a seller because they 100% always cater to the buyer and force you to accept returns.
It is true. eBay knows that it’s buyers who drive their site and will always make thing right with them. eBay isnt perfect by any means, but I’m realizing that perfect is the enemy of the good more and more often.
50501 is ready. Are you? https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
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.
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.
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.
I think you’re missing the point of this criticism.
People buy stuff, and then they use it. If they don’t use less, they won’t buy less, even if there’s a specific day where they choose not to buy anything. That day’s avoided purchases just get moved to another day, and the seller doesn’t feel any effect.
A real boycott takes money that would’ve been spent on a specific seller and takes it away forever. It’s a shift in purchase behavior to a competitor, or a shift in consumption behavior to not need to purchase that thing anymore.
As an extreme example, someone who boycotts Tesla every day for 5 years but still buys a Tesla once every 5 years is not effectively boycotting Tesla, even if that boycott covers 1825 days in a row.
Same with people who normally grocery shop on Friday, who shift their purchases to Saturday.
I would advocate for boycotting specific companies instead, and steering that money you would’ve spent to someone else (even a charity, so as to reduce one’s own consumption). The boycotts need to shift recipients of the money, not dates of when that money changes hands.
This isn’t an economic protest. This is slacktivism. One day or a handful of days will have exactly zero effect. Every one of you advocating for it and defending it is actively hurting the effort. You are the fascists best friend.
I don’t think this makes people the facist’s BFF but it is ineffective if you don’t just stop buying from these companies
Right but shifting purchases one day forward or backward isn’t going to affect anything when business operates on the financial quarter.
It does send a message but it won’t hit then economically.
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.
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.
So
I mean
Isn’t that just bad for everyone? How does this help them?
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A bunch of idiots who think Trump owns every business.
No, this is about harming the businesses that support the destruction of the American democratic republic not just businesses owned by Trump.
No, this is about harming every single business everywhere. The event organizers and their leader Schwarz specifically do not want targeted boycotts.
Some postings for the event created by online supporters have suggested a targeted boycott of retailers like Ford, McDonald’s, Meta, Target and Walmart that have ended their DEI programs to comply with an executive order signed by President Trump in January. However, official messaging from The People’s Union suggests a boycott of all major retailers, with the goal of enacting broader economic change.
From the article above.
Ok buddy, how does your quote differ from mine in a meaningful way.
me- this is about targeting large businesses that support Trump not just Trump businesses.
You- that’s wrong this isn’t targeted
Your quote’s last sentence “However, official messaging from The People’s Union suggests a boycott of all major retailers, with the goal of enacting broader economic change.”
I added emphasis as this is in fact targeted. It targets larger retailers. How is that different than my claim.
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.
I’m sure it will do something, I’m sure it’ll lead to overstock at large stores and force all the low wage workers to suffer a little extra. That’s what it will do.
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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.)
George Washington would tell you to stand outside the homes of the representatives and demand action.
This is it. If we want to have any effect it needs to be much longer than a day. One month would make a statement. You could even cave out food. You could also have people cancel their endless list of subscriptions or just scale back their lifestyle for a greater effect than a one day pause.
The organization that organized the economic blackout has longer-term boycotts planned in the coming weeks. This is just the opening salvo. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You’re not getting “good”. A one day pause is not an effective strategy in any sense. It’s slacktivism. It’ll placate people who would have otherwise taken actual action.
You say placate, I say practice. People who have never protested a day in their lives aren’t going to start out with a multi-month blackout. They need to get used to protesting by starting small.
Don’t let nothing be the enemy of good either. That’s all i need saying.
You need everyone in line for longer ones. Single day ones only serve to make the companies more prepared for longer ones.
Let them prepare! Effective organized protest and resistance isn’t something that happens overnight. It can sometimes take months or even years of concerted effort.
you are doing nothing.
this is not resistance, it’s embarrassing. you all deserve what you get.Americans have not had to protest like this in many many decades. That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population to not really do anything, so there is no system that people can tap into like in France. So thinking that you are going to get a million+ people to go into the streets and shut everything down for a few weeks isn’t realistic.
American protest opposition also has a great response to these gatherings by getting them to turn into riots so there is justification for military style responses. Which makes people on the fence hesitant. Getting people to dip their toe in the lake of resistance is the best way forward. It’s slow, it looks silly and limiting but if it works it emboldens more people to do more.
Stopping for one day isn’t a protest.
“That is it’s been “good enough” for a large part of the population”
There’s the selfish ‘as long as it’s not me attitude’.You also think it was ‘good enough’ and didn’t need to protest is even more telling and comfirms my view.
You were OK with having no healthcare, mass incarceration and de facto slavery in that system.
Authoritarian police with an unrivaled murder rate, mass drug abuse and homelessness.
ANY of those things would be reason for a population to revolt and resist.
The US simply doesn’t know better and think this is normal and mistakenly believe other countries are worse off.
Imagine being so pacified that they take all this.
And yes, real resistance is hard and difficult.
They are not going to give you anything by asking nicely.
The US population is like an abused housewife that stays with her bully would rather not make waves in the hope it will get better and doesn’t get another beating. If she doesn’t resist and leave she doesn’t deserve saving.Yes, Americans have been pacified - though I think most western countries’ populations are to some extent. And because of that pacification they are not going to jump up and do the really difficult stuff of resistance until it starts effecting them more - this I agree with. But your argument or your complaint sounds like if Americans don’t jump from pacification to doing the hard stuff nothing else matters. It’s all or nothing in your mind.
But that isn’t how it works, small protests and boycotts on large scales do have some impact. They also demonstrate to Americans that resistance does work and possible get them to do more. If there is small successes then larger, more difficult resistance has the chance to grow and be sustained.
should these protest happen sooner and more often, sure but they didn’t and that is arguments for history - So maybe this administration will actually prompt more people to start doing more uncomfortable actions to change the country for the better?
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.
One day will do nothing. This is slacktivism. Every one of them is a useful fool for the fascists.
pacified slave mentality.
i despise you all and will enjoy seeing this accomplish nothing.
i have no respect for slaves without will, you don’t deserve savingGood, I’m hard, keep going
oh you’re getting kinky now?
You’re not supposed to enjoy this!
That’s a caning!
🤡
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
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.
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.
Really, that’s still weak. Why go back to Amazon at all after a week or two? Anything you can find on Amazon, you can purchase elsewhere.
I say, delete your goddamned Amazon account already. Don’t give them one more penny. You certainly don’t have to. They’re not the only retailer in town for fuck’s sake.
It’s the very least we can do.
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.
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
And what are they doing for that? Because there’s no plan for that right now.
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.
Since Amazon doesn’t actually MAKE anything, just resells stuff, can’t we get a delete and cancel Amazon day too?
There is in the making. https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
This is the start and will keep growing.
There are some Amazon Basics branded stuff. Is that not making? What about the books that they print on demand? Not defending, just curious what the definition of “makes” is.
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.
I saw one the other day by the river. Some kids were poking it with a stick.
I swear I’ve tried to cancel my account like three times now. Why is it so hard?
Just buy shit elsewhere, Jesus Christ.
Where did you buy stuff before Amazon? Just do that.
you know there are adults born after Amazon started and know little else
Well, they need to harden the fuck up and embrace a little bit of inconvenience, if they wish to keep our Republic.
In France, they set shit on fire. In America, we wring our hands about using a retailer other than Amazon.
Dan Bongino, sadly, is right: we really are a bunch of pussies.
I meant on the technical side of things, it’s like trying to cancel a gym membership.
Remove all payment options for it and disable the renew. Piece of cake.
I just been not buying things most days. Anti-consumerism 2025
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.
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.
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.
The theory is fine, but there are several practical issues that mitigate the effect.
First, and most obvious, not everyone is participating. In fact, I’d bet that most people ignore the protest and go about their day without realizing there is a boycott. Nobody can block all the gas stations and supermarkets to keep customers away, so most stores won’t actually experience a perceptible loss, at least not enough to justify closing shop for the day. A lot of people exist without buying anything some days anyway. Stores will occasionally have days with low sales due to weather, or local festivities, or bad press, or
Second, the people participating are being told to get their shopping done the day before or wait until the day after to buy what they need. The boost in sales on either side will average out the labor and heating costs for stores. Most employees are paid weekly or biweekly, and a single day of low traffic something most shops already expect every now and then.
Third, this will mean nothing at all to online sales. Unless you’re Amazon or Instacart, hardly anyone does same day delivery services. Your daily overhead surplus capacity is a tiny fraction of the operating costs for the business. Online retailers measure activity in quarters, they don’t care about slow days.
Lastly, it’s far too diffuse to result in effective change. The loss is spread out over all commerce which means that nobody specific will be affected. What are the grievances? Who are you asking to change? What specifically are you asking them to do? If the demands for people to return to shopping are simply “wait 24 hours” then the ruling class can wait it out. The is exactly what happened with Occupy Wall Street. There was no clear endgame, so all they had to do was wait while the effort collapsed on itself. If it’s a hostage negotiation, you need demands. If it’s a show of force, then it needs to have more impact. If it’s an effort to educate consumers on the value of consuming less, then it needs to not be described as a temporary protest.
To be meaningful, it would help to be
- Targeted
- Longer
- More impactful to business
- Accompanied with specific demands
I’ll be participating because I agree with the sentiment (and I’m cash poor, so any excuse to save money), but I’m not holding my breath that it will make anyone change their behaviors.
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either. I think it’s a start. I don’t know if it’s the greatest start but it’s a start.
Targeted blackout March 7th through 14th, Amazon.
I used to do production coordination. This isn’t an issue. If Tony expects to sells two peaches a day, but this week he sold three yesterday and one today it’s all the same. The amounts average out over time. You will have to hit them for much, much longer than a day to have ANY effect.
One day or a handful of days is meaningless slacktivism.
Perhaps it wasn’t an issue for the company you worked for. A large distributor may only have so much room in their warehouse, and expect inventory to clear in order to receive shipments that are due. Peaches can rot. Etc.
I mean, you’re right it’s going to be a drop in the bucket overall. But it is a beginning.
And the more folks who participate, the bigger that drop is going to be
They don’t care. It’s a game about holding out the longest. Protest all you want.
The idea isn’t who can hold out the longest, obviously the billionaires can. It’s the idea that we can all join together to do one so insanely simple event that the next one will just have all the more support.
The next events I’ve heard are the ones that actually start pushing boundaries, like walkouts, nation wide protests, and general strikes.
Still not enough. None of them care about walk outs and strikes. They’ll just get new employees.
Sure, it’s something, but it won’t happen at a large enough scale. People need to eat.
It’s gotta be something bigger, and hit home. And unfortunately, it’s probably not entirely legal. I’m not talking full-on Luigi. There’s a middle area of non-violence to other people, but to property and mental state.
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.
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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.
A lot of people fail to see how “encouraging change” by “intentionally harming the economy” is a positive thing.
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.
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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.
i sentence this user to Buy Everything Day
Also the cocaine?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Any time us plebs do something en masse it freaks them out, even if it’s just for a day
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 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.
I’m sure your “both sides bad” approach has helped, so much. /s
The big labor unions could form a labor party and run candidates in rust belt congressional districts and probably win.
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
