"This month’s action is just one more suggested avenue to bring us closer our shared goals. We hope it empowers our readers to walk softly and make an impact every day. We feel strongly against waiting for some future generation to solve the big problems with our systems. This is a problem we didn’t create, but we clearly see its devastating impacts and cannot continue to perpetuate it. We’re taking this direct action because for us the buck stops here, and to that end we’re doing all we can to stop the flow of money to the big businesses and oligarchs that usurp the people’s power.
Get in on the action:
- We’re prioritizing needs-based spending and reducing our consumerism.
- We will each pick our own 3 days each month to break our needs-based spending only fast but still minimize our spending in general.
- We will always shop as consciously as possible.
- We will purchase new goods primarily from small businesses and buy locally.
- We will favor credit unions over big banks and be conscientious in our banking choices.
We are ramping up our resistance as we engage more intentionally as consumers, and encouragingly, there is a lot of this in progress already. Information is readily available on who’s got billions while millions starve, and who gleefully announces they don’t want diverse and equitable systems with their company policies and monochromatic leadership teams. We will continue choosing carefully which corporations we give our dollars to, and we’ll favor supporting small businesses and credit unions instead. Focusing on needs-based spending will help redirect our dollars, and ultimately our industries, towards community care.
Forming these new habits around our consumerism and convenience levels will be hard, and we’ll all take things at our own pace. We recommend partnering with a buddy as you carefully examine and realign your spending in service of the future we’re building together. It will not be easy to consistently resist the instant gratification offered by faster shipping or access to the widest variety of options. Some of us will not have the capacity or the fortitude to participate, but many of us will. We’re hopeful that, through all our collective efforts, sacrificing luxuries in favor of retaking our government from corporate and moneyed interests will soon be seen a mark of nobility in these trying times. We must all set our sights higher and redefine our visions of success.
The everyday changes we make together will force a change in our country’s course.
We’re calling for the long-term lifestyle changes that will characterize the next chapter of our nation’s history. Eventually we must strive to completely disengage from purchasing new goods from wasteful, exploitive, destructive, violent, and polluting industries. It will be up to the people to sunset the industries that harm our planet and society. So, we’ll continue to build this muscle of resistance and then build upon this foundation in the coming months. We won’t stop until we take our power back and break the yoke of corporate control.
Our long-term goal is a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and take mega-donors out of our politics, our short-term goals are building community, and funding community care. Those of us who are privileged enough to have excess funds should redirect luxury goods spending to mutual aid and community-building programs to help create the better world we all seek.
Though we’ve long been sold a story of scarcity and the idea that the growth required to support decent lives for all was beyond what the planet could sustain, recent studies and advances have revealed these ideas to be either outdated or outright lies. Economics experts have revealed that the measurement methods used to indicate the health of our economy appear expertly designed to mask human suffering and overlook conditions of poverty. Modern scientific studies reveal that when we focus our efforts on needs-based growth, de-commodification, luxury industry de-growth, community care, and decolonization we have more than we need to provide decent minimum living standards for all. And we can do so without negatively impacting the life of our planet, nor impeding our ability to reach our climate change mitigation goals."
We also have a related post that offers a bit of creative political education on the recent U.S. History that brought us to this moment, A Tale of Two Wolves. We hope it helps further acquaint you with our shared perspective. A story to help us identify our comrades and co-conspirators as we fight the good fight and find our moments to get into some "good trouble".
It’s the little everyday changes that stack up to a changed life, and eventually a changed world. If that weren’t the truth of the matter the powers that be wouldn’t try so hard to convince us to do nothing instead. These recent years have thrown a lot at us and tried to break us, but we still have each other. We need each other, and now, as always, we are stronger together.
A better world is possible, and we’re building it together for each other.
In solidarity and hope,
Unite Against Evil