Vote With Your Dollar Every Day
Blackout Tuesday was a fantastic start and had great effects for many black-owned businesses. Let’s double down.
We must demand responsibility from our leaders. If we want change, we must demand they change their positions. Move from honesty, not from the monied interests that have paid them off. We must take our power back.
We have power, we have our own capital, and while it often pales to the capital of those at the very, very top, we so often continue to directly or indirectly send our hard earned money to them through our purchasing. We must be everlastingly conscious of our purchasing, voting with our dollar at every turn.
But even beyond that, what if we orchestrated a worldwide, united boycott? What if we actually held companies responsible by enacting a unified front of a boycott? Hold out, prepare ahead of time, only buy from small businesses and source food from farms or from personal storage. Make demands. The only way we could overthrow anything would be all together. All together. United.
It seems we cannot take our power back through force alone—our state has the most impressive military that ever existed in history. But we can change our own economy by taking the reins. By putting our money where it needs to be and not where it doesn’t need to be. We are showing right now that we can unite, we can pool our resources, we can listen to one another, we can move as one. We can. We can.
Our society continues to remain stratified as well by strapping poverty to precisely the types of businesses which continue to exploit our communities and the world at large. Namely, poorer communities tend to need to rely on Walmart, Amazon, fast food, etc. due to the affordability of their prices. These prices which exist as a result of exploitation themselves. We can band together the way we are now to help supply food to these places. To fix food deserts. And then we can bunker down and boycott. Always make sure the most vulnerable communities are taken care of.
We all keep harkening to the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was a riot and a boycott. It is important to not forget the boycott aspect of why this event was so effective. England lost money and capital, as well as felt the pressure of conflict. So they responded. Now, in addition to the protests, calling out our politicians, bringing it home, drafting tangible change, we should also boycott. We don’t even need to throw tea, we simply can refuse to buy. We’re all together, we’re all organized, we’re all listening. We can.
Social issues throughout time have been changed through protest, riot, and boycott (as well as strike, demonstration, and many forms of civil disobedience). The key point here is that I think we are missing the opportunity to boycott as well. I believe the powers that be will only be threatened when they see us united. We hand away our own money to the organizations that hurt us the most on a daily basis. Blackout Tuesday was a fantastic start and had great effects for many black-owned businesses. Let’s double down. Let’s stop buying from Amazon altogether. All the time.
To move our politicians, who are so swayed by the monied interests that fund their campaigns, we must move our money. To move the needle of power, we must place our own power in different hands every day. The shift may take time, the transition might be slow, but we can, and we must, shift our agency as citizens living inside of a capitalistic system. We must view our capital as our agency and act accordingly.
