As someone who was diagnosed with hypertension almost two years ago, part of me maintaining healthy blood pressure is to do a home check several times a week and keep track of it. I’m on the lowest dose of hypertension medication possible, a choice I made to force me to stay compliant with the changes I had been making—but that weren’t quite enough to keep my blood pressure below the hypertensive mark.
On January 20, aka Inauguration Day, I did my beginning of the week check and my blood pressure was 116 over 78. A nice respectable reading for a 50-plus-year-old perimenopausal woman. After the first few days of Trump’s second term and the flurry of executive orders that had been issued, including the one that will have some implications for my work, I did a reading on Friday, and my blood pressure was 131 over 87.
Nothing in my daily rounds had changed. I was sleeping, eating okay, and exercising, but I was once again waking up with a sore jaw, indicating that I was again clenching and grinding my teeth. A thing I do when I am feeling super stressed out. Technically, nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed.
While I am genetically predisposed to hypertension on both sides of the family, it was in Trump’s first term that I first started displaying signs of hypertension. So, I wasn’t entirely surprised to see the physical manifestation of stress once again showing up in my body this time around.
Friends, we are all on edge. It has become abundantly clear that that this latest iteration of Trump is far more skilled and proficient in achieving maximum cruelty at a breathtaking pace. Surrounded by an army of loyalists, the support of the cruelest and wealthiest humans on the planet—and with seemingly no guard rails in place—they are prepared to change the fabric of this nation in ways that few ever imagined. It is utterly frightening, and we are playing into their hands.
The uncomfortable truth is that any type of pushback on the fascism that is bearing down on us will require us to be as rested and grounded as possible. It may seem impossible to get grounded given the gravity and speed at which things are happening, but we are in a battle. We must be strategic.
It is easy to fall into doomscrolling on various platforms and taking in every single action that is coming out of the White House, but how is that helpful?
It’s all bad—very bad—and we the people need to organize on how to push back so that their plans for reshaping America don’t gain enough traction to hold. We also find ourselves leaderless as the Democratic Party appears to be still caught in the culture of politeness and are failing to recognize the existential threat that is at hand.
Online, we are inundated with various actors telling us what to do. Most of what is suggested is nonsensical busy-work that will not hold because there is no foundation or structure to the ideas at hand. There is also no trust or relationships to keep us grounded.
In the wake of Trump’s attack on DEI efforts across the country, we are seeing nonfederal entities comply with the announcements that they are doing away with their DEI initiatives.
The latest corporation to comply is Target, a beloved store for millions of Americans. As the list of compliant corporations grows, many held to the hope that Target would not fold given their reputation and DEI initiatives in recent years. But they did … and they didn’t. In some ways, they have shifted their language, which is a move that has been discussed by many of us in DEI or DEI-adjacent spaces. However, as this is a public piece, that’s post for another day in a not-public-space.
The reaction to Target caving has been swift, with calls for boycotts, like previous calls to boycott corporations such as Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Starbucks, and others. Boycotts that overall have fizzled out but leaves individual boycott participants feeling good about their moral choices. The problem with individual boycotts and moral choices is that these types of actions are self-serving and rarely move the needle in a systemic way. For starters, what are we asking for?
No, seriously, what are we asking these corporations to do in exchange for our support? Also, what are we hoping to accomplish?
One of my many pet peeves about most online activism is that it fizzles out and never accomplishes the changes we want. This moment is a failure to keep our collective boots on the necks of corporations.
The activism of 2020 was short-lived. After George Floyd was killed, the massive protests led to corporations and organizations making promises and pledges, most of which we now know was bullshit. I will let you in on a secret: None of what is happening around DEI is a surprise to me. In the last two years, I have watched organizations pull back, it is also the second year in a row where I and countless others who used to be booked for workshops or speaking engagements between MLK Day and the end of Black History Month have no work. An associate of mine was telling me how their agent said they had zero billing hours for several months late last year. That means that no organizations were hiring speakers or trainers for DEI work.
While you—the public—may be stunned, none of us in the field are stunned. What I am stunned about is the inability for people to organize around a single goal and execute a plan and stick with it until the desired results are achieved. It’s popular to mention the boycotts of the Civil Rights Era that yielded concrete results; what isn’t popular is discussing long-term strategy and implementing boycotts in a manner that will allow them to be successful.
Frankly, a Target boycott could work, if the goal is to get them to reverse course and not shy away from DEI. Truthfully, we need corporations to not comply with Trump and his henchpeople. Given the lackluster performance of our elected officials, we need businesses to push back—money talks and bullshit still walks. Not everyone has Elon Musk money but if enough big businesses who often fund these elected officials who don’t do their jobs start coming down on these officials for fucking with their cashflow and the cashflow of their shareholders, that is one of many strategies that might yield results in the long term.
But to make it happen is going to require a lot more than people on social media platforms telling you not to shop at Target or whatever store. In every community, we need people who can come up with viable alternatives. For several days now, Costco has been thrown around as an alternative to Target.
That’s a marvelous idea except that Costco is not universally accessible to people. Here in Maine, we have one Costco in Southern Maine. Maine is a physically large state, and if you live in the northern half of the state, you would easily be driving four to six hours one way to get to the state’s only Costco. There is also the reality that not everyone has the space for the bulk of Costco shopping. I live in a 1000 sq ft, two-bedroom place. My storage space is limited and millions of others are just like me. Not everyone can afford Costco membership or the gas money to get there.
As you can see, there are myriad reasons why calling for a boycott with no plan doesn’t get us where we need to go. But with planning, we have a chance. In the case of a possible Target boycott, creating regional or state groups who can create databases of shopping alternatives in the local area, as well as connecting smaller households in geographic regions for group purchases.
Your one-person household may not need 87 rolls of toilet paper, but if you could connect with four other small households, suddenly it is feasible to buy that giganto-pack of toilet paper. The other perk is that in this scenario, you start connecting with like-minded folks in your area and building community, that thing that many don’t have access to.
The boycotts of the Civil Rights movement were successful because there were people thinking about all the details and there was an end goal. There were alternatives put in place so people didn’t get on those buses. But for some reason now we think just announcing the plan will make it happen.
To create campaigns for change that can succeed, you need rested and clear-minded people who can take on these tasks. People who are not hyped on the daily dose of anxiety that the news and social media feeds to us. Since the inauguration, I have been inundated with people sending me clips from social media—all well-meaning people wanting to make sure I am aware of XYZ or hearing some content creators’ thoughts. There is a lot of good stuff out there but the reality of content creation as it exists at this moment is that it is still tied to capitalism.
The speed at which people are cranking out content around what’s happening means very little time is given to analysis and synthesizing what is happening and coming up with cogent plans. If we are to create a different way of being, it starts with us. How are we moving? Frankly, a week of Trump and I am still catching my breath and trying to recalibrate my nervous system for our current reality.
Time is of the essence, and we need to make sure we give ourselves a little space and time for processing. We have a lot of work ahead of us and this isn’t going to end without active resistance, so prepare yourselves accordingly.
PS: Also, if you are getting involved with actions that originate from folks you are not familiar with, do your due diligence and find out who is organizing the action. Just a little safety tip.
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I almost feel sorry for you. The era of DEI is over. People are tired of the constant stream of victimhood and grievances. You’re going to get off your butt and do some actual work like the rest of us. The room is empty and nobody is listening to your racist, counterproductive crap anymore.
I almost feel sorry for YOU. One day. you’ll have to answer for the mindset that set your racist comment in motion. Also, you’ll likely reincarnate as a black person, male or female, since you fail to understand the racial and social conditions that blacks are compelled to deal with daily—the oppression and suppression that some whites use to remain superior to blacks and to run the show.
If anyone is coming across as a victim, it’s you.
Not only that, but you sound trumpotized. tRump will go down in history as this country’s worst president. Each day, he’s showing himself to be the antichrist, one who has won over minds like yours.