Champaign, Ill. — The Feb. 28 “economic blackout” — in which consumers were encouraged not to spend any money for 24 hours — may have gone viral on social media, but what effect did it have in real life? Emily E. LB. Twarog is a professor of labor and employment relations and the co-director of the Regina V. Polk Women’s Labor Leadership Conference. Twarog, also the author of the 2017 book “Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America,” spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about the latest wave of consumer activism.
Are there parallels to today’s economic blackouts targeting big-box stores and popular online retailers and the pantry boycotts of 1935, the consumer coalitions of the New Deal, and the wave of consumer protests between 1966-73?
In some ways last month’s 24-hour economic blackout wasn’t all that much different than previous consumer boycotts. The common thread is that they all started small. The most recent economic blackout started with an individual activist on social media calling on people not to shop at major chains for 24 hours. His idea eventually gained traction with public figures, who, in turn, amplified the message on social media and the whole thing went viral.
For the pantry boycotts of the 1930s, it was a neighborhood that got upset about the price of meat and they started organizing — and it eventually evolved into a very strong regional campaign that went nationwide.
Obviously, the big difference between then and now is social media. It’s a double-edged sword, though: You can dramatically expand your reach with social media, but it’s also so hard to know who to trust. Is it an organic grassroots movement, or is it fake?
Before it was people talking to each other, one-on-one, at church and on the street. You could trust your neighbor, and if your neighbor was engaging in an economic boycott, it might influence you to do likewise.
Nowadays, the question is, “Are people talking about this in public, in real life, or is this an entirely online phenomenon?”
Even today, you still need to talk to people when you’re organizing something. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have these boycotts, but I think it’s more people reposting it on their social media accounts as a way to call out the current administration. It’s a communication tactic to register that you disagree with what is currently going on in our federal government, or that there’s too much influence by corporations in our government right now.
How effective are economic boycotts?
Well, the truth is they’re not going to really dent these gigantic companies’ bottom line all that much. They’re just too big, so there’s that.
In economic boycotts of the past, consumers were boycotting specific products such as meat, which had gotten too expensive. And the economic impact of that particular boycott was much more pronounced because it was often small businesses — local butchers, Mom and Pop stores — that had to bear the brunt of these consumer protests.
Even if it was just a five-day strike, five days without your regular customers coming in to buy their milk, eggs or meat was a big deal back then, especially when grocery shopping was a much more public experience. Today, you don’t even have to go to the store. You can have all your groceries delivered by an app on your phone. Also, five days is a lot longer than 24 hours.
And consumers in those earlier boycotts were often picketing outside of the stores. So there was a physical space where they were handing out flyers about why you, too, should join the boycott. It was very personal.
Can these types of economic protests lead to increased political involvement?
If there were some kind of larger scale organizing effort to get more people involved, then it would be very different. Then it’s using this publicity stunt — which is what it really is, a stunt, since it’s not going to have an outsize financial impact on these companies — to get people more involved with certain activist groups.
But we haven’t seen that yet. It’s more like targeting these companies to make a statement. You could call it “armchair activism.”
Are they changing hearts and minds, or are they just rebroadcasting memes in an echo chamber to a bunch of people who already agree with them? If they were to follow the template from previous boycotts, the next step would be to evolve from this consumer protest campaign and organize a get-out-the-vote campaign in preparation of the 2026 midterm elections. It remains to be seen if that’s the direction they’re going in.
The organizers do have more boycotts and blackouts planned, but who knows if they’ll be able to maintain any momentum going forward. It may be a one-time, one-off thing that peters out.
Something else to look for is at what point does this go beyond just being an online phenomenon and people start turning up in earnest to protest in real life. What does the price of eggs have to get to in order for people to take to the streets? What is the tipping point for these inflationary pocketbook issues that we’re all experiencing?
