Consumer boycotts target DEI divestment, but are they working? What we know.
Consumer boycotts have targeted companies like Amazon and Target that have scaled back their DEI efforts, but are they having any effect? Here’s what we know:
A coalition of grassroots groups is calling for a nationwide economic shutdown during the busy holiday shopping season, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, to protest the Trump administration and economic inequality.
Blackout the System, The People’s Sick Day, American Opposition, The Money Out of Politics Movement, and The Progressive Network called on Americans to stop all spending and refuse to go to work during a “massive blackout” that will run from November 25th to December 2nd.
Avoid travel and restaurants, and cancel streaming and digital subscriptions, organizers said. “If you must spend, please only support local small businesses. Please pay in cash.” Small Business Saturday, Nov. 30, will be exempt from the power outage.
Each group in the coalition had been calling for a shopping boycott independently, but they decided to work together.
“We live in a political system dominated by special interests, where billionaires and corporations make the rules,” Blackout the System founder Isaiah Rucker Jr. said in a statement. “Congress serves donors, not the American people, and the norms of democracy are being dismantled before our eyes with the help of corporations. This campaign is about showing, with the American people, where the power truly lies.”
Carlos Álvarez Alaños, founder of the American opposition party, told USA TODAY that the coalition is “nurturing the power of Americans toward boycotts and blackouts as a way to leverage economic power,” with the ultimate goal of leading a general strike.
“We don’t see this battle as left versus right. Rather, we see it as top versus bottom,” Álvarez-Aranhos, who helped organize the “No Kings” protests and the Tesla boycott, said in an interview. “This is the story of Black Friday, because, frankly, what we’re seeing is just unsustainable. We’re being taken advantage of. Prices are going up. Inflation is through the roof.”
The boycott targets the year-end sales season.
Several national boycotts targeting the holiday shopping season are underway.
People’s Union USA, a grassroots organization that advocates for “economic resistance, corporate responsibility, and real justice for the working class,” is implementing Black Friday and Cyber Monday blackouts from November 28 to December 5.
The ‘Full Week of Economic Resistance’ urges shoppers to avoid big retailers and businesses and instead support local and independent businesses. John Schwartz, founder of the American People’s Union, asked his followers on Instagram to “remember we are the economy.”
Grassroots groups like Black Voters Matter, Indivisible, and Until Freedom are calling on shoppers to boycott major retailers like Amazon, Target, and Home Depot, which they say have caved to President Donald Trump and reneged on their pledges to support diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
We Ain’t Buy It, a national economic pressure campaign, wants shoppers to support retailers that stand up to Trump, as well as black, minority and immigrant-owned businesses and local small shops, rather than patronizing retailers that have supported Trump.
Are shopping boycotts effective?
Big retailers are increasingly embroiled in the nation’s culture wars as shoppers of all political persuasions wield their wallets to make their beliefs known at the register and on social media.
A pressure campaign accusing Cracker Barrel of succumbing to “wokeness” and distancing itself from its roots and conservative values has forced the company to scrap plans to sport its classic vintage logo of a man wearing overalls leaning on a barrel. Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and Tractor Supply have also scaled back their DEI efforts in response to consumer pressure.
The target has been met with grief from both ends of the political spectrum. In 2024, the Minneapolis-based retail giant will scale back its Pride collection and remove it from all stores. Sales fell this year due to a nationwide boycott over the company’s withdrawal from DEI.
A new study on the Tesla boycott suggests that billionaire and former Trump DOGE Secretary Elon Musk’s “polarizing and partisan” political activities alienated the electric car maker’s customer base, costing the company more than $1 million in U.S. car sales from October 2022 to April 2025.
But will a power outage work?
Boycotts that ask shoppers not to patronize stores during power outages may not be as economically effective as sustained boycotts, Braden King, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, previously told USA TODAY.
He said shoppers will buy before and after the power outage. King said that during a prolonged boycott, it may also be difficult to “convince enough consumers to make changes to their purchases to improve profitability even slightly.”
