Comic Strips

The poor get mud water called Tim Horton's, as their rents double and they are forced to fund our government buying 50% of all mortgage bonds to reward existing asset holders.

Maybe if we rout out the corruption we can achieve a higher standard of living and allow productivity investment, so Canadians can afford nice coffee from a mom and pop establishment whose rents are also ballooning.

Businesses seeing a drop in revenue as a result of a random patchwork organized online effort for a temporary boycott won't have any effect?

Of course it can. If businesses see it's possible for people to exercise economic control against them, it makes it just that bit harder for them to expect no resistance going forward. People see the result of their actions and are more likely to engage in other boycotts going forward, and businesses then have to be afraid of future targeted boycotts hitting them harder.

You don't successfully get a company to back down on anything with the threat of a boycott, if that company has no reason to believe you're even capable of boycotting them. Doing something like this makes it abundantly clear that it's possible, and thus increases the likelihood of businesses taking future boycotts seriously.

And if you want to say it won't work, then I'll tell you that as a cashier at a smaller local grocery store, today I saw nearly half of all transactions done in cash (usually it's 1 in every 5-6) to avoid giving credit card companies money, an older woman explicitly mentioning that she was disappointed she had to use her Visa card because she didn't have cash on her, and on top of that, I also saw a reduction in purchases of non-necessities (about a 20-30% overall volume reduction in total purchases) on top of people swapping out brands I'd usually see purchased like Coca Cola with smaller local drinks instead.

If this is what's happening at the small local grocery chain, then you might be able to imagine what was happening (or rather, not happening at all due to people staying home) to the large big box store down the road.

"That's not going to do anything" They said, sitting on their asses, doing nothing, while others fought for change.

You can find this style of argument in virtually all discussions about protests and about whether they are okay or even effective.

Idk & idgaf, but you can't deny, that this makes the whole issue a lot more visible than just doing nothing.

if they’re all back the next.

Don't worry, nobody is going to buy anything on February 29 either.

I mean the point of it isn't to deprive retailers of one day of profits altogether, it's to show how much a sustained refusal to shop would hurt them. Whether or not it's effective depends on how many people participate.

I don't think it's going to be effective, but I'm not going to be the reason it's not. I can pick up my dish soap tomorrow

Not only that but I haven't seen a single actionable demand by the advertisements for this campaign. It's a hollow, confused threat that simply doesn't make sense.

Ironically I haven't spent money anywhere today but that's just because I spend most of my life trying not to pay giant chain retailers.

If someone wanted this campaign to work they would have united the whole thing under a banner or a brand, declared that this was not the first protest they would be staging, say something like: "this is only a threat, if companies don't do X in 3 months we will organize a week-long blackout. Then if they don't do anything after that week-long blackout we'll do another one for two weeks or a month."

That makes sense. That's negotiation and it's how you demonstrate the power the people hold.

The X should be something policy-based and actionable. It can be a huge sweeping demand but it has to be actionable. It should not be a laundry list of long term demands. Then, when you get that first demand met you can delay action and keep pushing later since you've proven the tactics work.

Compare that to what this protest is doing. It's pretty far-cry.

Having worked retail sales earlier in my life and working as a developer in e-commerce in later parts, single day drops mean nothing. They're often a statical anomalies, even when there is a "reason" for it. If the business is short on monthly or quarterly goals they can always make up a single day loss with a strategic sale or product marketing & placement.

If we really want to hurt these companies, we need to orgaize larger than a single day of "fuck you". A single day might be good for awareness, but TBH, it's comes across more as virtue signaling and enabling social media bragging "I'm doing my part for TODAY".

All that said, I am doing my part for today, and have been doing my part for quite some time now, and will continue doing my part for the coming months and years.