• KiloGex@lemmy.world
    14·
    3 days ago

    I honestly don’t know what the “don’t buy anything” protest is supposed to do. Everyone is going to buy extra stuff on the 27th and then just do all of their catch-up spending on the 29th. This isn’t going to affect companies at all.

    • stopdropandprole@lemmy.world
      14·
      3 days ago

      you have to crawl before you can walk.

      the point isn’t to impact companies… no one’s expecting a single day boycott to end capitalism. that’s ridiculous.

      small events leading up to bigger ones is part of growing a movement, of testing how far you can count on people to support your cause. these types of actions are test runs to see if people have any capacity whatsoever for organizing and acting together in unison.

      some leftists (other commenters in this thread who were gatekeeping) are too smart for their own good, and think that we can get millions to go on a general strike overnight or enact some dramatic v for vendetta moment. turns out, deeply individualist Americans conditioned by a lifetime of isolation and atomized existence need a little gradual coaxing sometimes.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
      4·
      3 days ago

      It’s a show of support and organization. It’s a warning that “We are able to organize enough people to make this much of an impact for 1 day, if nothing changes then next time it will be longer.”

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
        14·
        4 days ago

        If a lot of people do it, it could have a bigger impact than all 1000 of us or however many who are on a permanent boycott. You have to meet people where they are at and give them the next step in the process.

      • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz
        10·
        4 days ago

        It’s a start. Just boycotting for a week, while a small drop, serves two purposes. First (assuming it registers), it’s a warning shot to the powers that be saying, “We are asking politely that you pick our side. We will get less polite.” Second, it gets people who would otherwise not resist more comfortable with it. Just as with evil, if one can go from A to B then B to C because C is not much more than B, the same incremental approach can be used for pro-social behaviors, too. In other words, not buying from Amazon for a week makes it easier to talk to friends about resisting, which makes it easier to go to a march, which makes it easier to…so on and so forth.

        That said, I doubt that this will have much of an effect on Amazon or the other powers that be. If it registers, it will be a small blip. With continued action, that blip will grow.

  • chaitae3@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 days ago

    I wouldn’t know how to distinguish all of these calls for protest lately from astroturfing campaigns.

    Are there really no institutions left in the US you can rally behind and who are big and experienced enough to call for organised protests? What are the biggest non-governmental progressive or liberal institutions in the US anyway?

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
      12·
      4 days ago

      The fact that we can’t advocate for the only obvious solution shows that systematized mass censorship has worked, they just know where the line they really care about is.

      Maybe you could get away with it in some Lemmy instances, but any sort of mass organization around the issue would be done on platforms that would squelch the opposition before it even formed.

        • Donkter@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 days ago

          That’s my point. That program is even more esoteric than Lemmy and Lemmy already would not be a large enough platform to do anything with. Even if people might agree if you laid out a long list of arguments for the movement, you couldn’t get it in front of enough eyes because you’re not allowed to post it to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube.