This year's #BuyNothingDay stands to be the most critical yet in the activist tradition's nearly 30-year history.
Why? It hardly bears repeating: the coronavirus has decimated the economy and (re-)exposed nauseatingly profound inequalities. In its wake, barely any but the biggest and most ruthless of businesses can hope to survive while the rest drop like flies.
Meanwhile the world's richest keep getting richer, even as their own employees face outsize risk just to make minimum wage (and ends meet). And as the virus rages on, the devastation — to the health and wealth of millions — will only worsen for all but the most affluent.
It didn't have to be like this. The virus merely served as the catalyst for the second economic drubbing in a generation — the severest in a century. Not just four years but decades of bad government and backward policymaking brought us to these depths of suffering and disparity.
Should the economy serve the many or the few? Do we stand for justice and the common good or injustice and mass deprivation? Is ours a government of, by, and for the people, or just the prosperous?
We can't overhaul the whole system in one day. But we can take a meaningful stand.
Corporations have never been more powerful. And amid lockdowns and self-isolation, their one-click hold on us has only grown stronger and stronger. Simply put, however, the source of their might is your wallet — close it up and their sway over you vanishes.
This ̶B̶l̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ Buy Nothing Day, November 27th do the least you can do — for your bank account, your mind, and the planet. Refuse to let parasitic corporations feed off your hard-earned bucks. Cut them off at the source . . . break their spell. Prevent the likes of Amazon — symbols of totalitarian, anti-human capitalism gone off the rails — from crushing the local shops we love, and becoming the only places left to buy everything from food to diapers to TVs.
Buy Nothing during the high-volume shopping season that extends into Xmas and the New Year . . . before the Amazonization of everything is complete.
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