Economic Calls to Action

One of the defining principles of Indivisible is that there are 198 (or so) means of non-violent resistance to tyranny.

Another is that there is SOMETHING for EVERYONE to do. No one has to, or can, do everything. Not everyone can do marches or knock on doors, but for those who are prevented from doing one activity, dozens of other activities await.

Empty shopping carts. Photo by Michal Dziekonski on Unsplash

Introducing Economic Calls to Action

Ever since Indivisible Central Indiana launched our e-newsletter in March to our first 300 subscribers, each issue has included a Legislative Call to Action … a recommended top few issues on which to call your state or federal elected officials, often with scripts and contact information provided by MADVoters or 5Calls.org.

Starting with this issue, as our subscriber base tops 8200, we are going to be adding a weekly ECONOMIC CALL TO ACTION.   Each week, we will be providing suggestions -- and information about the effects of – boycotts, “buycotts,” and divestments that each of us can make, to use our personal monetary decisions to influence the corporations that are either collaborating with, or resisting, the authoritarian regimes in Washington and our state capital.

This has been one of the two major emphases of the national Indivisible “One Million Rising” campaign.  One is the idea of active recruitment, to build the number of people who are becoming actively engaged in the resistance. The other is to inform all of us in the principles of non-violent mass non-cooperation … and the first, most obvious way to do that is to withhold our money from businesses that are complicit in the Trump regime’s assault on our democracy (and redirect it to practices that support the regime’s targets).

Today’s Recommendation:   

Install the GOODSUNITEUS app on your phone, and bookmark the website on your computer.

GoodsUniteUs is not the only app out there that shares information on the political leanings of major brands, but it is a good start. It bases its recommendations on the publicly-reported political donations of the corporation itself, and its board members and executives.

So that is only one data point, but it is a valuable one. Whether you are in the grocery store deciding which brand of beans to buy, or choosing a restaurant, or buying a new home appliance, it only takes a few seconds to find which companies are in bed with Trump, and which are not. In future newsletters we will dig deeper into this tool and others like it. But get it now and at least get familiar with using it!

Economic Pressure Makes an Impact

Two recent examples of the efficacy of boycotts are Target and ABC/Disney.

Target department stores were long-standing leaders in the retail world for their DEI policies supporting women and minority hiring and vendor purchasing efforts. Which is why it was such a betrayal when their executive leadership immediately, upon Trump’s election, renounced those policies to curry favor with a regime that will likely still eventually turn on them. Boycotts of Target began early this year, and have been promoted  widely on social media.

It took months for a cumulative effect to be in evidence. In August, their CEO resigned under pressure, after a third consecutive quarter of 2% losses in year-over-year revenue and a 9.4% fall in the value of their stock. (They also reported a 19% loss in profitability in that last quarter. How do you lose 19% of your profit after losing only 2% of your sales? Hmmm. Expenses must have gone up. Tariffs?)

At any rate, Target (and their executives and shareholders) have suffered real consequences for their abandonment of their ideals. But they have not yet changed their policies, so the bleeding will likely continue, heading into the make-or-break holiday season.

ABC-Disney, on the other hand, was overwhelmed with customer outrage in a matter of days after they suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel for a comment about the death of provocateur Charlie Kirk. In this case, there was no time for a mass communication effort to encourage a boycott. Millions of subscribers to Disney’s online platforms cancelled their subscriptions and hundreds of thousands more dumped their stock, without being urged to do so. We don’t know how much revenue Disney lost from cancelled subscriptions, but the drop in their stock value was almost $4 billion in a matter of days.

This happened organically, without any concerted effort to recruit participation. And it caused Disney to change their mind and reinstate Kimmel.

If that can happen in days with no organization, imagine what we can accomplish over longer periods with coordinated effort!

These two episodes also illustrate, though, another dynamic of boycotting. Is the purpose of a boycott to change a corporation’s behavior, or simply to punish it? The Target boycott has not yet caused the company to reverse course. The Disney boycott did. When we boycott, do we have specific demands which, if met, will it cause us to call off the boycott?

Some businesses will learn that rescinding the actions that got them boycotted will not restore their previous market share. If a million of us make the troublesome effort to change our cell service provider from T-Mobile because they contributed to the demolition of the White House … what action will redeem them, and how many of us will turn around and go through the burdensome effort of signing back up again? Probably very few.

Consequences

Next week, we will use this space to discuss the possibilities of a partial “Black Friday” blackout … and how we can effectively …no, not “cancel Christmas” … but instead redirect millions of dollars from large collaborationist corporations, into local small businesses.

In the meantime, thank you for reading, thank you for getting involved in Indivisible Central Indiana, and thank you for preparing to make some personal sacrifices to save our democracy.