Economic Black-Outs and Me

 

Friday is the first Economic Blackout date. The goal here is to show the power of people acting together. The bro-ligarchs have forgotten that their wealth and power depends on the power of our purses. It’s time to remind them where true power lies.

This is about acting together, because we can. We must.

It is NOT about boycotting any of these super-corps indefinitely. Honestly, that’s impossible. Too many independent creators—including writers and small press—depend on Amazon and partners like Kickstarter. (Yes, folks, Kickstarter is in partnership with Amazon. To say nothing of The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos.) If you buy pet food or baby formula, you’re buying Nestle. Period. In some parts of America, Walmart is the only store around. And heaven help the parent who tries to avoid General Mills in the cereal aisle.

But we CAN arrange our purchases to make sure there are carefully chosen gaps in the profit stream WITHOUT harming small businesses or denying ourselves the products we need.

This is NOT about extremism. Even on blackout dates, if anyone in my family gets sick, I’m going to be at the drug store buying medicine and supplies. Nobody would question that. It’s not about harming ourselves. It’s about sending a message. Anyone who says differently is either misinformed or gaslighting you.

Full disclosure, I’ve got skin in the Amazon game. My primary publisher is a micro press. Ninety percent of their sales come from Amazon, and they’ve assigned my next title a March publication date for my new release, Burning Down the House. Another of my publishers is running a March Kickstarter I really want to succeed. If I can’t work out a promotional strategy that recognizes this initiative and encourages people to buy AROUND it, I’m screwed. Doesn’t matter if I participate in the black-out (spoiler alert: I will) or not. There will be a dip in purchases, because people will observe the blackout dates, regardless of what I do.

To say differently is to deny what’s happening. Memes and images like the ones I post are the equivalent of traffic alerts. When you’re listening to the radio and hear there’s an accident on the road you planned to take, do you yell at the traffic report, or do you take a different route? If you’re at the supermarket, and the PA system announces, “Spill on Aisle 5,” do you bullheadedly drive your shopping cart through a puddle of tomato sauce and broken glass?

Some people claim economic blackouts don’t address the real problem. The real problem is corruption. No kidding. Our nation is being gutted by a convicted felon who has been described in official Russian media as a Russian asset, an undesirable alien, a hypocritical band of toady oligarchs, and their shills in congress and the judiciary. Together they hold all the traditional levers of political power.

Traditional methods won’t work. There are no traditional remedies for corruption on this scale. The next election cycle will be too late. We must act together and use whatever legal means we can to right their wrongs. Now.

It’s an American tradition, going all the way back to the founding of our nation. We’ve faced seemingly insurmountable odds before. There once was a mad king surrounded by fawning, corrupt aristocrats and the equally corrupt judges they controlled. They also exempted themselves from taxes and increased them for everyone else to pay for their pleasures and reinforce their position at the top of the food chain. Thomas Paine wrote about it. “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

But right now, the words that resonate with me are those of Ben Franklin upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Let us hang together now.