By: Arpan Josan and Livia Daggett
It’s maddening to watch the government choose corporations over people. Government agencies that care for Americans and our environment are being dismantled left and right.
The courts have blocked illegal actions— including suspending refugee admissions, pausing all foreign aid, withholding equity-related federal grants, and allowing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access student loan data—, but the damage has been done and continues daily.
With rising costs of groceries, rent, and education, it’s impossible for ordinary people to make it in this country.
Yet meanwhile, billionaires and multi-millionaires continue to thrive.
It can feel helpless, but this Friday, February 28, you can let your political paralysis work for you, by boycotting.
BUY NOTHING.
Billionaire corporations need you, the customer. If we all withhold spending together, the economy will take a temporary hit. It will be noticed. In turn, this temporarily hurts our economy. By boycotting, you will send a strong message to the Trump administration.
What Exactly Should I Do?
People are struggling just to pay rent and pay taxes to a government that doesn’t return the attention. With this in mind, a growing numbers of Americans are planning a boycott on Feb. 28th. The idea of this boycott is to spend nothing on non-essential items for 24 hours. The blackout aims to remind corporations and policymakers that the people have the power, the organizer said. That’s why consumers are targeting major retailers that will be most affected by the boycott’s, like Amazon, Target, Walmart and fast food chains, sending a strong message that Americans will not accept corporate greed and price gouging. For essentials like food and medicine, the boycott encourages people to purchase these items with local small businesses or only with cash.
Although Feb. 28th is one day, big corporations can continue to feel its effects if consumers continue the habit of spending locally and reducing unnecessary purchases. These actions reduce reliance on market monopolizers, minimizes overconsumption, and places value on sustainable enterprises. These may seem like small actions, but every investment into local communities makes a statement that gets the government to listen.
Who Called for this Blackout?
This blackout was launched by The People’s Union USA, a consumer-activist group founded by John Schwarz. The union’s main goal is to resist government corruption by organizing a movement that exposes the corruption of our system. By boycotting in-person and online, you can hold CEOs and lobby-funded politicians accountable for the harm they cause the everyday people who suffer the consequences of their greed.
How do Boycotts Work?
People boycott institutions whose actions they disagree with by refusing to patronize them. This can mean refusing to buy a corporation’s items or choosing not to participate in an event on principle. By causing profits or participation to take a hit, the idea is to force institutions to address the issue. Boycotts have been used for many years, all around the globe, with some successes and some failures. Famous ones include boycotts against segregated businesses during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the economic boycott of apartheid-era South Africa and even the push to boycott Chick-fil-A for donating to groups with anti-LGBTQ ties.
“I’m glad that more people are realizing that we have power over major corporations; that we don’t need to passively accept unaffordable prices and unethical business practices and that we can actually resist them. But this is only a small step in changing the current economic situation–I think we need to boycott like this more frequently and on a much larger scale to remind these companies that without our money, they have no power,” Winthrop University sophomore Sophia Moore said.
The Wealth Gap in America
Wealth inequality in the United States is higher than in almost any other developed nation. In 2024 it looked like this:
The 10% wealthiest households had an average of $6.9 million. This accounts for 67% of total household wealth in the country.
The bottom 50% had an average of $51,000. This accounts for only 2.4% of total household wealth.
That’s a large gap between thousands and millions.
Inequality has grown in other ways, too. From 1983 to 2022, white families went from having three times as much wealth as Black families to more than four times as much. And contrary to the common narrative around government assistance, and programs aimed at building wealth (like tax incentives and deductions), the bottom 20% receive less than 1% of these subsidies, while the top 40% receive a whopping 80%.
In other words, the people who would benefit most from wealth-building subsidies don’t receive them, putting things like home ownership or saving for retirement out of reach for millions. This boycott of major retail corporations makes the message loud and clear to policymakers and huge corporations that this staggering wealth inequality is not acceptable.
