Protestors hold signs during a rally for a nationwide economic blackout Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
By A. Bruce Crawley
People of virtually every nation on earth had an opportunity to view the ceremonies on the January 20 as Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States.
Few of the millions who were able to attend the event, or to watch in real time via live coverage on television and online platforms, could have had any idea that they were viewing the first official day of what has turned out to be the beginning of a rapid-fire, historically disruptive process which would encompass executive orders initiating mass deportations of immigrants,most of who happened to be people of color; the abrupt mass firings of tens of thousands of federal employees. including those at the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the FAA, and the country’s nuclear defense agency, and the dissolution of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Also targeted for immediate dismissal was Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., the African American four-star general who headed the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff as its chairman, among numerous other respected federal agency heads. Trump fired Brown on February 21.
Even amid the sweeping, Trump-generated chaos that impacts Americans at every level of the country, we believe that the following information carries the potential for creating a meaningful, grassroots resistance to those plans.
We are convinced that, with the support of everyday Americans, especially those from the nation’s targeted Black, Hispanic and Asian communities, we can be successful in implementing a national campaign that can dramatically reduce the financial capacity of the president’s corporate and wealthy enablers to further implement his self-destructive national agenda.
We also feel very strongly that the proposed consumer spending initiatives now being considered may very well be the last meaningful, amicable, citizen-driven opportunity to prevent the further dismantling of what has been the world’s leading democracy, and its role as the primary protector of global human rights.
If these efforts, designed to be driven by strategic changes in consumer spending patterns with Black, Hispanic and Asian communities, are not successfully carried out, we believe that flustered Americans might be drawn into a series of more severe, confrontational tactics in defense of their families.
Without minimizing the negative impacts that the new administration’s illegal actions have also had on other communities, we are at the same time making an unvarnished call to have Black, Hispanic and Asian consumers join the nationally organized boycotts against businesses that have withdrawn from their DEI commitments.
Indeed, we will be inviting Americans of conscience, from every other community, to join with us and to increase our impact, if they so choose.
It appears, now that Donald Trump and his minions have begun to believe, mistakenly, that millions of beleaguered and frustrated Americans have no options available to them, other than to “cave in” obediently to the president’s ongoing, illegal and insulting efforts to subvert the country’s national electoral processes, and to systematically lessen the quality of government services that the world’s most respected democracy provided, without meaningful disruption, since its establishment in 1787.
On the contrary, many of us believe that there is no better time to finally inject an emphatic, course-changing action into the mad dash to racist autocracy that Trump’s illegally managed second term is proving itself to be.
That emphatic course-changing action, we believe could certainly be a plan that would include the organized encouragement of our consumers — nationwide — in a strategic, “selective patronage” campaign.
Such an effort has been proposed by two national, activist organizations — the Public Union and the recently founded Latino Freeze Movement.
Designed strategically to change the spending patterns of the nation’s Black, Hispanic and Asian consumers, it is an effort to cease the purchases of goods and services from national corporations and retailers that have publicly announced the termination of their DEI-related commitments.
Choose to make purchases only from businesses that support us
The campaign organizers are also recommending that consumers patronize Black, Hispanic, and Asian businesses, as well as others who have not wavered in their support of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at every level of their operations.
In addition, the organizers are recommending that consumers deliberately seek out and patronize Black, Hispanic, and Asian-owned businesses to make their purchases for goods and services, rather than to do so at businesses that have branded themselves as “DEI-deniers.”
Lists of supporting businesses and those that are boycott targets
Please remember that the “selective patronage” organizers, and our local Philadelphia supporters will be developing and distributing — in both printed material, and on social media platforms — separate lists of companies that are “DEI-deniers” and “DEI-supporters” as well as businesses owned by Black, Hispanic and Asian entrepreneurs for use by participating consumers as alternative sources for the purchase of goods and services during the campaign and afterwards.
The combined consumer spending power of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians
Those who might wonder whether organized community spending power can effectively impact sales and profitability levels at “DEI-denier” businesses, should be aware that the combined spending power of Black, Hispanic and Asian consumers nationwide, now stands at $5.3 trillion, a substantial increase over previous-year levels.
We also completely understand that there is no better time to leverage the fact that, together, our national communities now constitute more than 42% of the total US Population, and 66% of the total population of Philadelphia.
We have faith that these facts can provide a foundation for relieving our current socioeconomic challenges and for ensuring the continued growth and prosperity of the nation.
Philadelphia’s leading Black- and Hispanic-owned media outlets SCOOP USA Media, the Philadelphia Sunday SUN, Al Dia news media, and the “Dishing’s” daily audio podcast (dap) have agreed to be key supporters of the two, national, game-changing, “selective patronage”/boycott campaigns that launched on February 28, 2025.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, The Philadelphia Sunday SUN, the author’s organization, committee or other group or individual.
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