When Black Friday Comes...

Got this e-mail this week:

This is of utmost important to our communities.

Friday after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year, It is the day that most retailers make enough money put them in the Black for the whole year. We as Black People are consistently getting the bad end of the stick. Our children are being terrorized each and everyday by the police across the country. Nooses are being hung around everywhere. We are being disrespected in all places. Our men and children are being killed by police, stopped and searched, new prisons are being built for our children, there is big business in investing in private prisons and they must keep them filled up. We are terrorized on our jobs with constant threats of being written up and fired, losing our livelihood, our homes and just feeding and taking care of our children. We are treated in a dehumanizing manor on these jobs. So many of our people who have worked for the city for decades are being pushed out with trumped up charges, criminalized, degraded, insulted and threaten and some are even losing their pensions.

Brothers and Sisters we must act! It will visits your door, it is coming! We must stand together to say NO JUSTICE! NO PROFIT! This has got to be the new battle cry of our people. Our elders stood together during the Montgomery bus boycott in order to get some form of justice for our people. We must do it again!

If we stand together and sacrifice one day Friday November 23, 2007 and DO NOT SHOP! DON"T BUY ANYTHING ON THAT DAY! We will send out a message. Things will have to change. Let this country feel what it feels like to not have our dollars. If you buy something, buy from your own people. Please pass this message to everyone on you e-mail list. No Justice! No Profit! If you do not know what I am talking about remember:
Noose Epidemic
Racist Mob Attacks
14 yr old stripped and left in swamp by police
5 yr old hand cuffed
Va. woman kidnapped, stabbed, raped, made to eat vomit, blood, feces
35 students arrested for attending funeral of classmate, who had parents permission
6 month pregnant Principal stopped by police and made to lie face down on ground in front of her small children
Jena 6
Police Terrorism
Michael & Evelyn Warren attorneys assaulted by terrorist cops
Sonny Carson Avenue
Viola Plummer
Sean Bell
Katrina
Health Care Crisis
Land Grab of the Black Community
The list goes on and on and on

TAKE THE BLACK OUT OF BLACK FRIDAY
NO SHOPPING THE FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING - NOV 23
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS ARE THE ANSWER TO RACISM!

My reaction: Eh. I don't know how this particular boycott - and I'm in favor of strategic boycotts - has any effect on the issues mentioned.

Last year, I got e-mails that led me to Buy Nothing Day, A 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending - participate by not participating.

Here's the real deal: I'm not buying anything today, not because of some political agenda - I happen to think, if anything, that people should be out supporting SMALL businesses today, and every day. I'm not shopping today because I HATE shopping today.

One year this century, I got talked into doing the 5 a.m. thing. At the end of the three hours, I was exhausted, not from getting up early, but from that crush of humanity. In fact, the only time I ever enjoyed shopping on Black Friday, it was at a department store in a little town called Delhi, NY, probably the size of two Wal-Mart departments; it was warm and friendly and not crowded at all.

Oh, I heard on NPR this morning two things. One was that the shopping season will be "soft:", so that time for other bargains will likely pop up. The second is that one should avoid SUI, shopping under the influence; otherwise, you might bring home that dancing Santa you REALLY don't need.
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The lyrics to some Steely Dan song.

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