It's Time to 'Black Out Black Friday'

A political strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is calling for Americans to skip the shopping frenzy this Black Friday as a way to fight back against corporate greed—or, in his words, "black out Black Friday." Writing at the Hill, Michael Starr Hopkins argues that the time has come for Americans to reject the consumerism that fuels corporate profits, which "have doubled over the last 14 years," putting nearly half of all wealth in the hands of the top 1%, "while the rest of us trade hours for survival."

Hopkins draws a parallel to the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, when residents "walked instead of riding and brought a city to its knees." The weapon then was withdrawal, he writes, and it could work again today. "What if, this year, on the day they expect us to spend the most, we decided to spend nothing at all?" he writes. "Just quiet—the kind of quiet that feels like power." He adds that "if 10 million Americans withheld their spending for one day, the losses could reach billions."

He also takes a moment to apologize to Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom he once criticized as divisive. Instead, Hopkins now sees Sanders' advocacy for economic justice as prescient. "He saw, long before most of us, how the machinery of capitalism was quietly strangling democracy," writes Hopkins, who describes the Black Friday pause he's seeking as not a boycott but a "benediction—a reminder that our worth is not measured by what we buy but by what we build together." Read his full column.