Spotify, SNAP, and the Looming Holidays

Learn about the boycotts and holiday shopping choices that can make an impact. Also, find ways to support our neighbors while SNAP is shutdown.

Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash

Boycott Spotify

The national Indivisible organization has called for a consumer boycott of Spotify, the audio-streaming app and online service that millions of Americans use to listen to music, podcasts, and other content.

In late October, Spotify began running recruitment ads for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that under the Trump regime has evolved into a masked domestic army that has been kidnapping American citizens and legal as well as undocumented immigrants and deporting them without due process.  

Last summer’s Big Ugly Bill increased ICE’s budget from about $8 billion to about $28 billion per year, for each of the next four years – roughly the same as the entire national defense budget of Canada.  Ostensibly much of the funding is for building more detention centers and hiring more “agents,” but currently it is financing recruitment bonuses and massive media buys.  Many listeners have described the ads as dystopian, dishonest, racist, and violations of the Hatch Act, and individual subscribers began announcing that they were cancelling their subscriptions even before national organizations began promoting organized economic action.

Why Spotify?  Spotify is not the only media entity raking in the cash to promote this destructive propaganda.   Others include Pandora, Hulu, and HBO Max.  However, Indivisible’s analysts believe that Spotify’s subscriber-based business model makes it a good candidate for a successful economic action.   Sixty-seven percent of its revenue comes from its 276 million paid subscribers, most of whom live in the US and Europe (which may well join in the boycott).  

And the goal of this boycott is to effect a change in a corporation’s behavior.  The message this boycott is sending is, “We don’t approve of you accepting ICE’s blood money to distribute propaganda, and as long as you do, we will discontinue buying your service.  Stop running those ads, and the boycott will end.”   Our goal is to cause one viable target of economic action to change its behavior, and to send a message to others by doing so.  It is not to burn the company down and plow salt into the ground where it once stood, or to deprive ourselves of an enjoyable product for the rest of our lives.

Yes, other companies are doing the same thing.  Spotify is the company we are targeting because the numbers suggest a chance to make an impression, to get a “win.”  It isn’t the only company we could be avoiding; it won’t be the last.   Economic action isn’t without its inconveniences.  (But if you think doing without music-on-demand is inconvenient, you’re really not going to like the Republic of Gilead.)  

If you are one of Spotify’s paying customers, log into your account, scroll down to Subscription, and click Cancel Subscription.  On your way to the confirmation message, there will be an optional survey where you can say why you are cancelling.   Or, better yet, just Google (or Duck Duck Go, or whatever search engine you use) “How do I cancel Spotify?”   Rest assured, they are monitoring how many times this question is asked.  This is something that even people who use the Free version of Spotify (or don’t use it at all) can do.   And free users … take a break.  You won’t hurt their bottom line, but they are certainly tracking their daily page views.  The sooner they drop those noxious ads from that one problematic advertiser, the sooner we can all go back to listening to The Spectacular Alex Harvey Band’s “Vambo.” 

SNAP Has Stopped. Find Ways to Help. 

At the time of this writing, the Trump regime had used the government shutdown as an excuse to cancel funding for SNAP (federal food program) benefits for 42 million Americans, despite the fact that over $5 billion in contingency funds had already been allocated by Congress to maintain the program.  

Two courts have ruled that the regime must use those contingency funds to keep the program running; so it is possible that there might be a temporary respite to this pending disaster.  But even if so, the contingency funds won’t last past Thanksgiving, and the regime’s cruelty certainly will.

In the meantime, many of us are seeing our social media feeds fill up with posts urging us to contribute to various local food drives.  And of course, we should do that, whenever and wherever it makes sense.   Sharing the extra dry goods in your pantry is good.  Throwing a few extra cans of tuna or bags of rice or beans into your grocery cart is a great way to model caring and sharing to your children … even if you ARE paying full retail for the lesson.

But the best way to use individual charity to combat hunger is to make cash donations to organizations that can then buy in bulk at wholesale prices and acquire items like eggs and frozen meat that meet the greatest need, and that food pantries can’t accept at their back door.   We recommend the Central Indiana United Way’s Food Relief Fund (https://www.uwci.org/central-indiana-food-relief-fund) and Indy Hunger Network (www.indyhunger.org).

If you want to volunteer, or donate food or money directly to a food pantry in your own neighborhood anywhere in central Indiana, check out this resource:  https://www.communitycompass.app/home.

Meanwhile, this immediate crisis might be temporarily resolved by this time next week, through some kind of Congressional agreement on a continuing resolution that reopens the government … for a while.  Long term, the most vulnerable among us will continue to be in the crosshairs of Project 2025.   We may have more specific actions in the hunger relief arena by next week, designed to apply political pressure.  Stay tuned.

Rethink Holiday Spending

We are just over three weeks away from Thanksgiving, followed by consumerism’s highest holy day, Black Friday.  

You may already be seeing posts and memes on social media calling for a Black Friday “Blackout” (or even for a month-long economic boycott of the entire Christmas season).

Indivisible is NOT promoting the idea of a Total Blackout.  If you see a graphic calling for “No Department Stores, No Grocery Stores, No Gas Stations, No Restaurants” – that is not us.  (Actually, at some point, the notion of a “General Strike,” including a consumer strike, shutting down the economy, may be an effective tactic.  But we are nowhere near having the numbers to pursue that now.)

We do endorse the idea of a massive re-orientation of our holiday spending, away from national chains and brands, and toward locally-owned small businesses.   No matter how appealing the Black Friday sales seem, or how long we may have been looking forward to them.  

Late-stage capitalism is like a shark – not only is it predatory; it has to be moving forward to keep from drowning.  One percent growth isn’t enough.  Ownership and shareholders demand at least three times that.  Three consecutive quarters of a 2% decline in sales cost Target’s CEO his job.  Right now, we have not yet reached the mythical point where “3.5 percent” of the population is “actively engaged” in sustained resistance.  And we won’t be there by Black Friday.  But if we could get half that many people to alter their holiday shopping habits – move ALL of their holiday dollars away from Walmart, Target, and Amazon to locally-owned bookstores and gift shops – and recruit one or two friends to do the same as their FIRST act of active resistance – a shortfall of a couple of percentage points during the most critical month of the year for mass retailers would definitely get their attention.   

Progressive voters may be only 32% of the electorate, but geography suggests that they (we) represent considerably more than 32% of the discretionary income in the “non-yacht-buying” economy.  If tariffs alone aren’t causing the major retailers to reconsider their support of the Trump regime, then losing a measurable share of their most lucrative market on top of that might start to have some effect.  Ultimately, the goal is for the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican party to start withdrawing their support from their bought-and-paid-for GOP Congressmen, and start pressuring them to resist the MAGA factions that are beginning to do lasting damage to the economy.

Start considering it now.  Start thinking about alternative approaches to your holiday shopping and dining.  Download the GoodsUniteUs app and join a Blue Business Facebook group for your area.  We will share more specific suggestions in this space next week!