From Charleston to the Midwest, shoppers are slamming their wallets shut and putting corporate America on notice. Next stop: turning boycott energy into Giving Tuesday power on December 2, 2025
Ben Cable (Published initially on Substack Dec 01, 2025)
By Citizen Ben
You can hear it in the malls: the weird quiet in aisles that used to sound like a casino floor. Shoppers are still out there, sure but this year a growing army of Americans is walking past the big-box beacons of corporate power with their hands in their pockets and their values on display.
Las Vegas Indivisible Protest Nov. 29,2025 (Video Available on CitizenBen.Substack)
They’ve slapped a name on this rebellion: “We Ain’t Buying It.”
Born as an economic pressure campaign “designed to defend democracy and reclaim community power,” the We Ain’t Buying It coalition has been organizing boycotts to hit corporations they say are “colluding with the Trump administration” and enabling authoritarian overreach.
And this weekend, the campaign went national.
“We don’t just vote every four years. We vote every time we spend a dollar.”
The Boycott Heard ’Round the Mall
In city after city, protesters are telling people what their holiday receipts really fund.
In the Midwest, organizers with the No Kings Alliance joined forces with We Ain’t Buying It, calling for shoppers to boycott Amazon, Home Depot, and Target as an “economic protest” against corporations they say are enabling Trump’s abuses of power. In Las Vegas, two dozen protesters under the Indivisible banner made a showing in Target’s driveway.
The joint boycott urges Americans to withhold their purchasing power across Thanksgiving weekend from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, turning the country’s busiest shopping days into an economic blackout.
Down in South Carolina, local coverage showed protesters outside big-box stores, urging shoppers to skip major retailers and rethink where their dollars go, under the same “We Ain’t Buying It” banner.
Online, the campaign has spread into a full-blown consumer revolt: Reddit threads are filled with people trading tips on ditching Target and Home Depot, and trying to break their dependency on the Amazon Prime drip.
The message is simple and brutally effective:
If corporations prop up authoritarian politics, they don’t get your holiday money.
“Every receipt is a political document.”
What “We Ain’t Buying It” Really Means
At its core, the We Ain’t Buying It campaign is not just a shopping boycott; it’s a democracy defense plan disguised as a holiday budget.
According to its own materials, the campaign aims to use economic pressure to defend democracy and reclaim community power, channeling anger over the Trump administration’s abuses into targeted, sustained boycotts of companies seen as complicit.
That means:
- Calling out companies whose leadership or business practices are tied to the Trump orbit.
- Focusing on retail giants whose market dominance gives them outsized political influence.
- Pairing boycotts with protests, teach-ins, and local actions to remind people that economic justice, racial justice, and democracy are all part of the same fight.
This isn’t your grandparents’ quiet, guilt-ridden boycott. This is loud, colorful, and unapologetically public. Signs, chants, social media toolkits, the whole tabloid circus—except the villains are real, and they have corporate logos.
From “No Kings” to No Receipts
Groups like the No Kings Alliance and Indivisible have framed this as a battle against economic royalty, corporate monarchs who enjoy record profits while backing a president flirting with authoritarianism.
In interviews, organizers describe a simple equation:
If you bankroll politicians who attack democracy,
we cut off your cash flow.
They’re not just asking people to “shop ethically.” They’re asking people to stop feeding the machine—to accept that there is no neutral transaction with a company that spends its power protecting its profits and its favorite politicians, not its workers and communities.
And here’s the kicker: it’s working. Even if sales dip only a few percentage points, companies hate headlines with the word “boycott” next to their brand name in a holiday shopping story.
After the Boycott: What Do We Build Instead?
Here’s where the plot twists in a hopeful direction.
All weekend, organizers have been urging people not just to say no to corporate giants but to say yes to something better: local bookstores instead of megastores, mutual aid funds instead of mega-warehouses, worker-owned co-ops instead of shareholder-only empires.
That’s where Giving Tuesday crashes into this story like a much-needed plot twist.
Giving Tuesday: Turning Boycott Energy Into Community Power
The Tuesday after Thanksgiving has quietly become one of the world’s biggest days for charitable giving. Giving Tuesday (often stylized as #GivingTuesday) was launched in 2012 as a simple idea: after we binge on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we turn around and invest in our communities.
In 2025, the annual celebration of Giving Tuesday falls on Tuesday, December 2, 2025.
Last year, Giving Tuesday campaigns helped raise billions of dollars worldwide for nonprofits, from local shelters to global relief organizations. Communities use it to fund everything from housing support to medical bills, as seen in local campaigns such as charity drives in Texas and community-focused efforts in Midland County, Michigan.
In other words: We close our wallets to corporate power, and we open them to community power.
“One day of boycott is a protest. One day of giving is a blueprint.”
ACTION ITEM: GIVING TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2025
Here’s your Citizen Ben challenge for Giving Tuesday, Tuesday December 2, 2025:
1. Pick Your Target — and Your Ally
You’ve spent the weekend not spending at companies tied to Trumpworld and authoritarian politics.
Now:
- Choose one local organization fighting for democracy, civil rights, workers, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, or voting access.
- Choose one national group aligned with the values behind We Ain’t Buying It—economic justice, anti-authoritarianism, and corporate accountability.
Commit a specific dollar amount or a recurring monthly gift. Even $5 a month adds up faster than any impulse buy.
2. Turn Your Boycott Into a Receipts Revolution
On December 2nd:
- Post a screenshot of your Giving Tuesday donation receipt with the hashtags #WeAintBuyingIt and #GivingTuesday.
- Add a caption: “Not a Black Friday receipt. A democracy receipt.”
Tag the org you’re supporting and encourage three friends to match your gift.
3. Support the People, Not the Palaces
Some of the same weeks that boycotts are hitting retailers, nonprofits are scrambling to meet surging demand for housing, food, medical help, and legal aid.
Your Giving Tuesday dollars can help:
- Keep a family housed instead of padding a CEO’s bonus.
- Fund a legal clinic instead of a lobbyist.
- Feed your neighbors, not the corporate political machine.
4. Make It a Habit, Not a Holiday
Giving Tuesday is one day, but the need doesn’t stop at midnight.
Set up:
- A recurring donation to your chosen organizations.
- A monthly “We Ain’t Buying It” check-in, where you review where your money goes and cut ties with any business underwriting hate, corruption, or authoritarian overreach.
This year, the most radical thing you can do with your holiday budget is simple:
- Starve the corporations that bankroll authoritarianism.
- Feed the movements and communities that keep democracy alive.
We ain’t buying it.
On Giving Tuesday, December 2, 2025, we’re funding something better.
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