Black Lives Matter (BLM) is calling for supporters to do their holiday shopping at black-owned businesses in a boycott effort to “end white-supremacist-capitalism.”
The boycott is called #BlackXmas. “We’re dreaming of a #BlackXmas. That means no spending with white companies from 11/26/2021 – 01/01/2022,” states the boycott movement’s website, blackxmas.org.
In a November 26 Instagram post promoting the boycott, BLM’s Global Network foundation wrote, “Skip the Black Friday sales and buy exclusively from Black-owned businesses.” The post goes on to read, “White-supremacist-capitalism uses policing to protect profits and steal Black life.”
“As BLMLA organizer, Jan Williams, reminds us, ‘Capitalism doesn’t love Black people. [Emphasis added]'” reads the “Black Xmas” page on BLM’s website. “In fact, white-supremacist-capitalism invented policing, initially as chattel-slavery-era ‘paddy rollers,’ in order to protect its interests and put targets on the backs of Black people.”
“#BlackXmas challenges us to shake off the chains of consumerism and step fully into our own collective power, to build new traditions, and run an offense as well as a defense,” the website goes on to state. “Let’s harness our economic power to disrupt white-supremacist-capitalism and build Black community. [Emphasis added]“
The boycott challenges supporters to build black, buy black, and bank black.
In terms of building black, the BlackXmas website encourages followers to “support Black-led, Black-serving organizations” as opposed to spending money “on meaningless items.”
“Buying Black is the engine of #Blackxmas’s cooperative economics,” the website states under the buy black page. “It is intended to help replenish the Black dollar within local communities, and keep the dollar circulating for much longer than when making purchases at non-Black business.”
BlackXmas encourages supporters to bank black. The page reads in part:
The monetary system which creates and maintains the value of the almighty dollar was designed to reproduce imperialism, institutional racism and inequality. In a just world, the American dollar wouldn’t be a destructive economic cudgel used to compel submission to the capitalist order. Perhaps in this world money wouldn’t exist at all and humans would produce goods and services for common welfare with no regard for personal gain or capitalist acquisition.
Alas, black people must survive in the reality of our monetized market economy, thus we interact with banks and finance. From the the moment Afrikans stepped foot in the so-called Americas, we’ve been excluded from full access to safe deposits, savings, fair loans, and equity. Pecuniary knowledge or advancement has been denied to and taken from us despite the best efforts of our ancestors.
…
Nevertheless, black-owned and operated banks persist in providing our community with the services we need to live and thrive in this money-obsessed society. Despite the ongoing challenges, they continue to support their skinfolk with access to FDIC-insured accounts. Black communities are disproportionately underbanked, which makes them vulnerable to predatory lenders and check cashing costs. Invest in black people by divesting from your Wall Street bank. #BankBlack today! [Emphasis added]
The website provides maps of where to buy black in Los Angeles, California, Long Beach, California, and South Bend, Indiana. Additionally, videos of multiple Christmas protests are posted to the page, including one on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The group can be heard saying, “No justice, No Peace! Take it to the streets and fuck the police!”
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