The economic blackout movement trying to stop capitalism in its tracks

For weeks, I’ve been seeing calls for a February 28 “economic blackout” spread across my social-media feed like dandelion tufts in the wind. From midnight on February 27 to the following midnight, anyone participating in the blackout should avoid spending money at Amazon, Walmart or Best Buy. Do not buy fast food or gas, says “the People’s Union,” which is organizing the blackout. Don’t shop at major retailers. If you have to shop, make it only for essentials, like food to feed your kids, and emergency supplies, and only do it at small, local businesses.

It’s possible I could participate in the blackout by accident, but I wouldn’t ever do something like this willingly. Obviously, I’m not the target audience. This movement has metastized into something that’s hard to ignore, getting all kinds of mainstream press coverage.

 “The People’s Union” is led by John Schwartz, who refers to himself online as “the One Called Jai.” He is fifty-seven years old, a former “professional online drum instructor” from Queens, who has lately dedicated his life to meditation and “guiding others.”

“Everything I had felt since I was a child, that this system is rigged, that we are being used, that human beings were not born to be industrial slaves, was true,” he writes on the People’s Union website. “And it didn’t matter what religion, spiritual belief or political affiliation someone had. The system is designed to keep all of us trapped.”

If this sounds like standard fringe far-left agitprop, that’s because it is. But the One Called Jai has clearly found some traction online with Americans who are desperate to show some tangible opposition to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the whole DoGE and MAGA project. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose popular Facebook posts have become a sort of Trump 2.0 InfoWars for disaffected liberals, picked up the boycott and put her label on it, as did the perpetually triggered Stephen King, who posted on BlueSky, “Don’t buy stuff on February 28. Money’s the only thing these dicks understand. #resist.”

There’s some recent precedent for these sorts of boycotts — on the left and the right. Conservative activists were successful in knocking Bud Light down a few pegs after the beer brand partnered with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a series of obnoxious endorsements. More recently, a liberal black minister in Minneapolis has been leading a boycott of Target stories in response to the supermarket dumping its DEI policies, which seems to have directly impacted traffic in the stores. Chick-fil-A has long been a target, from liberals who protested the company’s opposition to same-sex marriage, and, more recently, from conservatives, who opposed the fast-food chain’s adoption of DEI programs. Neither boycott has laid a finger on Chick-fil-A, showing that if people want a product badly enough, no political movement can persuade them otherwise.

But no recent boycott movement has come close to what the People’s Union is trying to do, which is basically stop capitalism in its tracks. The One Called Jai followed his call for a general blackout with proposed week-long boycotts of Amazon, Walmart, Nestle and General Mills, as well as a second day-long economic blackout on April 18. Enough people seem into it online to indicate that this isn’t going to completely fizzle. It will steam in the background, Occupy-tinged radiation.

Meanwhile, the Heather Cox Richardson “community” has begun circulating a list of more than 100 companies that are “openly supporting Project 2025,” indicating that a super-boycott may soon be in order. These range from big hitters such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Papa John’s, to football teams such as the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to several big beer brands and fast-foot chains, and a few more specific product lines, like L.L. Bean, Maidenform underwear, Grey Goose vodka and the George Foreman Grill.

People have the right to be upset as they want about the current political situation, and can spend or not spend their dollars wherever they choose. But the economic blackout movement seems sort of misguided, and even elitist. In the highly unlikely event that the movement succeeds and strikes at the heart of the capitalist order, what happens to people who work at Tito’s Vodka or The Popcorn Factory when boycotts bring their companies down? If someone accidentally orders something off Amazon on February 28, are they being counter-revolutionary? What’s the penalty?

It’s a pointless movement, and a futile one. If these companies are evil now, then they were evil five months ago when Joe Biden was president. But I didn’t hear a lot of calls to end capitalism back then, at least not like this. If you’re really looking to drag General Mills onto the carpet, then there’s a powerful and controversial secretary of health and human services in office who, more than any government official in recent memory, might actually be willing to read your protest email.

Like with so many things these days, it’s hard to tell who’s wearing the white hats, and who’s wearing the black. The powers that be will brush off this blackout like a bull swatting away a fly. But if you want to declare an economic boycott on all Smucker’s Products because you don’t like how the company spends its PAC dollars, it’s a free country, despite what you might think — and that’s your jam.