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Thanks Erin! I thoroughly agree with you, and appreciate you bringing it to everyone's attention. There is an opportunity to position our businesses as responsible alternative sources to which people can turn as they become ready to take more targeted economic action.
I know we are examining the suppliers we use for a host of things. One of the things that isn't always clear is where suppliers stand in relation to relevant issues and practices; another is the sources suppliers themselves use. I wish I knew a way to better identify that.
Just wanted to let others know it may impact business in a good way. I get that there are a lot of complicated feelings about social movements, but if it helps a push for local spending we should at least be aware of it.
I have seen various versions of this blackout. Some are just focused on large corporations, but many of the messages I have seen say for people to not shop at all -- with some suggesting that people can make it up with small businesses by shopping with them in the following few days. That ignores the rent-date implications of the end-of-the-month.
In terms of extended hours -- Feb 28 from 6 to 9 pm is a Last Friday Art Walk -- it is one of the smaller ones, the Arts Council does do their stuff beginning mid spring (March? April?), but the galleries in town will be open, with new shows and opening receptions.
We (Margaret Lane Gallery [MLG]) have two shows opening -- From Humble Abodes to Stately Mansions with work from 10 local artists, and the first of the 3 Cedar Ridge High School Art Shows at MLG (there is also one at the Arts Council), .... and, if the weather isn't too cold, we will also have live music on the front porch. Lively music, to drive off a chill ... Anyway, downtown businesses might want to piggyback off of that -- if you will be open, let me know, and I will tell people who come through MLG that you are open.
I do have some thoughts about the blackout. Personally, I think it is not well thought out.
1) In all the various messages I've read, I haven't seen one definition of what the desired outcome is. What defines success of the boycott? I have read, if it isn't successful, more boycotts will follow -- but how is this success defined? What are corporations/businesses being asked to do?
2) It is indiscriminate (you might say DOGE-like ... ) -- boycott EVERYONE (DOGE, just fire everyone), without taking time to identify who is behaving in ways that "aren't good" and who is behaving in ways that "are good" (and this gets back to point 1 -- is this about corporations abandoning DEI? backing Trump executive orders? supporting white supremacy? turning their backs on Ukraine? abandoning Palestinians? supporting Russia and N Korea, something else?)
3) (and this is really point 1, restated and extended) it doesn't identify what businesses/corporations need to do to stop being boycotted. If you lump the good guys in with the bad guys, you risk having the good guys increasingly finding common ground with the bad guys because there is nothing they can do to save themselves because they are all lumped together.
And maybe the boycott has been better defined recently and I've missed it -- if so, please please please educate me. But right now, it looks to me like this is one more "protest" that is designed to allow people to pat themselves on their back for doing "something" and while they slide into complacency while effecting no change at all ...