This Thanksgiving weekend we can still help American democracy live to see another day by withholding our buying power from corporations that are bending the knee to MAGA. If you must shop this weekend, try to buy from locally owned small businesses. For four days only if you can, just say no to Target, Home Depot and Amazon.

Why these three?  Because in order to be successful, a boycott campaign needs to have a focused target. Because it would not be effective to try to boycott all of the corporations that are bad actors. These three companies have supported harmful policies from the Trump administration, including rolling back diversity initiatives, enabling immigration raids, and donating to political campaigns.

With that in mind, here is an important historical message relevant to today from Heather Cox Richardson and Joy Reid.

Every day, I am struck by all the ways in which we are reliving the 1890s.

In that era too, consumers organized, using their buying power to affect politics. As the first general secretary of the National Consumers League, Florence Kelley, put it: “To live means to buy, to buy means to have power, to have power means to have responsibility.” – Heather Cox Richardson

More from HCR:

Today, the relationship between consumption and reform has taken on heightened meaning after the Tesla and the Disney boycotts. The day after Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday shopping season, and like their predecessors of a century ago, reformers are focusing on consumers’ power to push back on the policies of the Trump administration, launching a campaign they call “We Ain’t Buying It.” “We aren’t just consumers; we’re community builders,” their website says. “We’re driving the change we want to see, and demanding respect.”

As Joy-Ann Reid put it in an Instagram video: “Dear retailers who’ve decided you don’t like diversity, equity, and inclusion, or you really love ICE and you have no problem with them busting into your establishments to drag people away: Here’s the thing. We ain’t buying it. I mean, for real, for real, we ain’t buyin’ it.”

She explained: “We’re gonna spend our money with businesses who actually respect our dollars, respect our communities, and respect our diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are going to buy from people who respect immigrants, who respect immigrants’ rights, and respect freedom and liberty. We are going to buy from establishments that respect our right to vote and our right to live in a free society. And if you ain’t that, we ain’t buying it.”

“Let’s show them our power,” she told listeners. “Let’s show them what we can do together.”

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Happy Thanksgiving, patriots!