Dissent, resistance, and shopping habits
NO BUY on February 28, 2025 and a note about the newsletter name change.
Earlier this month, I found myself with about 200 other people in my town standing in a snow storm before the Courthouse protesting No Kings on President’s Day. Despite the cold and the wet, it was not a bad way to spend a few hours on a dreary Monday.
But I really have to wonder how useful and important these protests are in the grand scheme of things.
Protest in America seems to have become something of a normal mode of political participation. It is expected, and — with the current powers running the country — it seems it is entirely ignored.
I have spent significant amounts of time in the last few months reading books on activism and civil disobedience, ever hopeful that I will land on some glint of hope and clarity. Much of what there is to read focuses on the morality of civil disobedience: Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many similar change agents of the past. These figures stand tall but they do so from their moments in history. What worked in Birmingham and Selma in the 1960s may not be the way to protest today.
I recently found some of my writings, including this post from Walden Pond in July 2017 and an unpublished piece I wrote in 2020 after talking to (and photographing) a couple of homeless men in Cesar Chavez Park in Sacramento and reflecting on my meeting Cesar Chavez in 1986.
The night I met Cesar Chavez in 1986, he spoke to a small group of only 15 people in a home in Colorado Springs, Colorado about organizing and activism. His words stressed the importance of leveraging economic power as much as encouraging political voice. Now almost 40 years later, the one thing I have come to accept is that protest only has effect when it disrupts the bottom line of those holding power. If expressions of dissent hurt the ratings, or the profits, they are effective. If they don’t, they’re only good for the morale of the protesters.
If you are like me, and concerned with the current direction of executive overreach, and the insertion of billionaires in the processes of government, I encourage you to read and share information about activism that targets the powerful by targeting their profits and their power. I’ve found there is lots out there worth reading, from Peter Staley’s recent memoir Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism to Isabel Wilkerson impressive study of social inequality in America, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
It is vital to acknowledge that some actions are highly effective without having large numbers of participants. Case in point is the ACT-UP demonstration — wonderfully recounted in the opening chapter of Staley’s memoir — on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on September 14, 1989. Only seven people were engaged in executing that demonstration against pharmaceutical giant Burroughs Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT. While some 350 protesters did march with blow horns and signs through lower Manhattan that day, the unfurling of a banner over the trading floor itself by 5 activists, and photographed from the floor by two others (my old friend Robert Hilferty was one of them), proved to be a mighty blow which helped lower the price per patient of AZT.
And speaking of Robert Hilferty, I strongly recommend his 1991 short documentary film Stop the Church. This film is currently available on Kanopy, a streaming service that many public libraries allow access to, so you can access for free with your library card. Stop the Church has not only been praised as a powerful work of documentary filmmaking, (some even call it early “citizen journalism”) it remains a masterclass in how to harness the power of the camera for protest. We need much more of this in the world today. Much, much more.
Some acts of dissent can have greater effect because they are small. The recent story about Sheryl Crow selling her Tesla and donating the money to NPR is a good example of this. Hopefully it gets more people to sell their Teslas and point their pocketbooks away from Elon Musk.
But we should never forget the economic power of the many, and that is what No Buy activism is all about. Simply by agreeing to not buy anything from major retailers — especially Amazon and its affiliates like Whole Foods, and Target on one day, we can send a strong message that consumers are paying attention and expecting better. Both of these companies have recently taken inspiration from the Trump agenda and disbanded their corporate diversity programs.
I would encourage you to participate tomorrow February 28 in the No Buy Economic Blackout, and I would encourage you to always use your wallet as much as possible in exercise of your political voice. Make an effort to shop local, and shop intelligently.
Obviously, one day of restraint from buying is not going to disturb the economy too much. But mass demonstrations which show up on profit & loss reports are far more likely to be taken seriously than the ones taking place on the courthouse lawn. Not that I want people to stop doing that.
(Crank up the Public Enemy)
Stay focused. Stay safe.
NOTE: You may have noticed, but this week I formally dropped the “Neutral Density” from the name of this newsletter. It is now just Lost In America. It seems a much more appropriate title considering the state of things. It certainly describes my feelings as much as it does my lifestyle. I hope the change doesn’t cause any confusion.
Robert Hilferty died in 2009. You can read what I wrote about him at that time here.
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