Title: Boycotts, Town Halls, & Other Actions

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Many of you have been asking what can you do if you're outraged by what Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their people are doing and you think Democratic Party politicians are being too milquetoast? One thing that's happening today, as some of you know, is a protest framed by its organizers as a 24-hour economic blackout. A 24-hour economic blackout. It originated with a group officially formed just this month called the People's Union USA. Their website says today's action is not aimed at Trump and Musk specifically.

Rather, it says at "the system as a whole, both political parties, both past and current leaders and billionaires have manipulated the economy and profited off the working class." Many people have picked up on today's boycott specifically as an anti-Trump and Musk protest, also against major retailers that have dropped their DEI policies and more. Listeners, we're covering the economic blackout in this segment, inviting you to call in if you're participating and tell us what your reasons are, where you will or won't shop today, what good you think it can do, and what else you're doing that you'd like other listeners to know about. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text with us.

With us to help take your calls and add the context of what he sees as a larger protest movement that might be taking shape is John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and co-author with Senator Bernie Sanders of It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism, which came out last year and made The New York Times Bestseller list. John, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

John Nichols: It's always a pleasure to be with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to your take on the larger context, but can we start with today's economic blackout? Can you explain who got this going and how you understand the actual goals of today in particular?

John Nichols: Sure. The blackout, as you well explained in your intro, has been driven by a group called People's Union and has gained, I think, a significant number of supporters today. If you go on social media, you're going to see rock bands like Pearl Jam, and activists, actors, others, stepping up and saying, I'm not doing any business today or we're not selling things today, or whatever. I think it's gotten at least a baseline of support. It comes in the context, Brian, of a broader boycott movement. I know we'll talk about all sorts of other things in a moment, but it's very important to understand that we've had some boycott actions going now for the better part of a month.

Nina Turner, the activist, launched a boycott that said some gotten some note against Target when it dropped some of its DEI programs. Reverend Al Sharpton has also been looking at boycotts and actual other actions related to dropping DEI. There's roots there that go back a bit. Just to let you know, obviously, we're talking today about this boycott, but there's an Amazon boycott, a Nestle's boycott, a Walmart boycott, another economic blackout, and a General Mills boycott, scheduled for the next month and a half.

A lot of people are kind of returning to this notion of a boycott as a tool to pressure corporations with the notion that doing so might actually influence some of the broader actions of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party. A final thing I'll note is there's an action called Tesla Takedown, which has been organized by a number of folks, and it's actually been quite notable. These are weekend protests at Tesla dealers and in other spaces related to Elon Musk. If anything, that initiative seems to have gotten a particular amount of traction in many parts of the country.

Brian Lehrer: Can you explain how participants hope that boycotting private sector retailers of any kind might help fight what they see as Trump and Musk trashing the rule of law, being bullies on behalf of billionaires, establishing an authoritarian United States government, little things like that? How does that trickle up in theory or in practice?

John Nichols: Well, there is a sense that CEOs and billionaires and such talk to each other and that they take note of pressures that one might feel, and particularly if that one happens to be in the government, like Elon Musk. This is a way to speak to them in the language that they understand, which is money, that the accumulation of money or difficulty in accumulating money. I think, again, that's why a group like the Tesla Takedown folks have really focused on, literally, I think in their messaging saying, "Sell your Tesla, sell your Tesla, sell your stock, get away from this," as a way of sending a signal.

Now, when you talk in the broader economy, that's a complexity. It is not necessarily an easy way to speak to power unless it gets very large, and you get to a point where-- I'm not sure today will be that day, but if it's an ongoing effort and you Keep building energy, building strength, till you get to a day where there really is a very notable across-the-board impact on the economy. Look, I've covered politics for way too long, and I can tell you when the economy gets shaky, even in these recent days, when we've seen the stock market having a little bit of instability, that is when a lot of people in power, both in economics and in politics, take notice.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's O'Brien in East Orange. You're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. Hi.

O'Brien: Hi, Brian. My family, we have decided to no longer patronize Walmart and Kmart. We're thinking if we were to purchase an EV, we would not use a Tesla. I'm reminded of how the world economy turned against the apartheid system in South Africa and that system ended in part because of economic pressures that were placed on that political regime.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that, and including the historical context there. Casey in Ditmas Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Casey.

Casey: Hi, Brian. Happy to say longtime listener and multiple-time caller at this point. I wanted to talk to people in my generation, Millennials and Gen Z, who are probably disagreeing with what they're seeing but are maybe saying, "I don't want to participate in this boycott. What's it going to do?" I've listened to your show. Just this week there have been callers saying, "What can I do? What can I do?"

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's why we're doing this segment.

Casey: I don't really understand the point. Exactly. I don't really understand the point of those people who say, "Well, this isn't good enough," who take this nihilist view of actions like this. It's true that one day of an economic boycott is not going to significantly impact the billionaire oligarchs running our country, but we at least establish a sense of community when we participate in things like this.

Another thing I want to point out is, I participated in the President's Day protest. Not everyone was off work that day, but something that was really notable to me about that protest that was different from the ones I participated in around Black Lives Matter, that was different than Occupy, was that our elders showed up. The people at that protest, the average age, Brian, was probably 60 years old. To all the nihilists on the left who are saying this isn't going to make a difference, I say, get out in the streets, show up.

Brian Lehrer: Casey, thank you for showing up here. John Nichols, what are you thinking as you listen to those first couple of callers?

John Nichols: Now, as always, you have the smartest callers in the business, so that's one thing. When the callers are adding all the useful historical context, the guests have to run to keep up. A couple of things that were said there that are really important and maybe put things into context as regards the second call, especially because it was so wise. Economic boycotts are often measured by media, and even sometimes by political elites, solely for some bottom line, what kind of number can you show me? How did this shake a market? How did this impact sales, stock prices, things like that?

The reality is that an economic boycott is a tool by which you mobilize, you organize, and it becomes part of a broader fabric. If you think back to the great boycotts of the late 1960s and onward by the Farm Workers Union, United Farm Workers were not a powerful union. They weren't well known nationally in any sense until they did the boycott. Even if the boycott was not universally successful, it made this union and this initiative, this work for farm workers, something people across the country knew about. Similarly, with the protests against apartheid in the 1980s, they amplified something broader.

It was one way of tapping in and saying, "Okay, here's something I can do today, but also here's something I could talk about with folks." I do think that this boycott today and boycotts going forward, these other actions, some of which have already been going on for a while, these are powerful because they fit into a context of saying, "Yes, you can say no. You can say no on an economic side, you can say no on a political side." The last thing I'll point out is that, especially with the second caller there, we're talking, she was using the term oligarchy.

If we understand, as Bernie Sanders and other people have suggested, that we really are in a moment of nascent oligarchy in the United States, i.e., we're seeing that actual reality of economic power merging with political power and in the form of, obviously, Elon Musk and others influencing political action very dramatically. In a moment like that, the idea of going at economic power and saying, "Yes, we're concerned not just about what the Republicans are doing. We're concerned about the influence of very wealthy people on the Democratic Party as well." That's a powerful statement that may resonate far more than a speech from the Congressional floor.

Brian Lehrer: Let's keep going on the phones. That last caller, Casey, was sounding encouraged that in the President's Day protest, a lot of older people were out there participating. I think John in Forest Hills has an opposite take on that from his experience. John, you're on WNYC. Hello.

John: Hi, Brian. Hello, guest. I'm glad you took a positive spin on it. I looked around and said, "Where's all the young people? A lot of Boomers." In fact, many of them were laid off federal workers. It was very inspiring, and it felt great to do it. I did look around and say, "Where are the elected?" It was like sheep without a shepherd. It was great. It was wonderful. My wife consoled me when I came home saying, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow." I'm hoping for that. The Christian season of Lent is coming up where we give up stuff as opposed to the crass materialism. Also, I was at Columbia during the period of divestment, and it was a huge issue.

Brian Lehrer: In South Africa.

John: Yes. The school divested. How ironic it is that this South African refugee comes to our shores. Man, I read every word Ann Applebaum says, he grabs our democracy and uses it to his own end.

Brian Lehrer: Obviously, you mean "refugee" in quotes when you're talking about Elon Musk, who came out of the privileged white South African community and now is here, and now Trump is offering refugee status, not to people from countries where they're really in danger and need refugee status, but to white South Africans as a group. For people who haven't heard that little factoid yet, we've talked about that on the show before.

On the generational track, John, you heard the two callers takes on the older population, the Boomers, who are out on President's Day. I gather you've been on a tour with Senator Sanders, and you're seeing and hearing a lot of things from young people. You want to talk about that?

John Nichols: Absolutely. I appreciate both the calls. I'm not in that camp that says that we should always look at demographics of a protest and say, "Well, this is a success because somebody showed up or somebody didn't." If you get a crowd in this attempt at democracy, our hope, our democracy, that's a good thing. Now, when I went out with Senator Sanders last weekend, Senator Sanders very hastily scheduled some events.

He's holding events in Congressional districts that have Republican representatives who won narrowly. The idea is to pressure those Republican representatives to take a stand on behalf of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, to push back against the threats and all that and maybe drive a wedge into that very narrowly majority Republican caucus in the House. Went to Omaha, Nebraska, and went to Iowa City. What blew me away when I got to the event in Iowa City, I got there a couple of hours before, and it was in a theater with 850 seats.

Now, Brian, I can tell you, I cover Congress a little bit, and I don't think there are many members of Congress who could leave Washington, come out to eastern Iowa, and fill an 850-seat theater. Sanders people, they went relatively big in this context, but the line outside the front was down one block down, down the next block, around the corner, around two more blocks, around there. Instead of getting 850, they got well over 2,000. In Omaha. Instead of about 800 or so, they got almost more than 3,000. The people who were there were overwhelmingly young.

This was a very striking thing. There were students, of course, but there was also a lot of young families, folks with their kids. There were young public employees, park rangers, and others who had been laid off, who were there with their whole family. What struck me was that I think this is what people, and I'm not-- obviously, I wrote a book with Sanders, so take it with a grain of salt, I don't think he's the only person who's doing anything valuable or anything like that, but I think he was wise to go out to America and say, "Let's test this. Let's see if there really are a lot of people who are ready to stand up and push back."

The evidence was that there were tremendous numbers of young people who were very ready to do so and very engaged, looking for signals on what to do, in this case, communicating to their members of Congress to vote no on some of the things that the Republicans are doing. I will give you one other twist on this too. We're hearing a lot about the Republican town hall meetings, where members of Congress are coming back and having town halls and experiencing a lot of protest, really striking amounts.

There's also something else. Democrats are holding town halls around the country. Jason Crow, who's a congressman from out in Colorado, Democratic congressman, was just talking today about he had a town hall where they thought they'd have usual crowd show up. They got 1,300 people. There is an energy out there. I don't know that it's as fully focused, I don't know that it has gelled in every way, but it is quite clear that tremendous numbers of people want to tap into something to send a signal about what's going on. Also, I would tell you from personal experience of seeing it, a lot of them are very young.

Brian Lehrer: On the town halls, we've been talking about them on the show. We played some tape from one of those, pushing back on a Republican member of Congress, but Republicans tend to say it's mostly Democrats from the district showing up to ask the challenging questions. Most of the congresspeople's Republican voters, the ones they need to remain with them to be reelected, are actually okay with what Trump and Musk are doing. Do you see evidence to the contrary?

John Nichols: I see evidence in the polls. There is movement in the polling. I'm not somebody who lives and dies by polls. I think they're often very shaky, but the evidence is that there is a great discomfort with the role that Elon Musk is playing and that that is not just among Democrats but also increasingly among Republicans. There has been some decline in President Trump's approval ratings if you look at a number of major polls. I think that it is naive of Republicans to simply say, "Look, the only people showing up to criticize me are Democrats."

I don't deny that many of the people showing up may well be Democrats, but the fact of the matter is, in a representative democracy, you're supposed to listen to the folks you represent and at least take in what they say. I will give credit to some Republican members of Congress, a couple. I live in Wisconsin, and there's a congressman named Glenn Grothman who had a really raucous meeting, a lot of criticism, a lot of pushback, and he stood his ground. He's very, very conservative Republican, but he also treated the crowd with, I think, a reasonable level of respect and took in what they were saying.

When members of Congress go back to Washington, and there's no bigger group of gossips than members of Congress, let me tell you, and when they get together and say, "Yes, I was back in my district. We had to turn people away from my town hall. There are crowds out in the street and everything like that," they take note of that. I think they take note of that at a deeper level than just the partisanship one way or the other.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts. "I'm taking part in the economic blackout today by buying absolutely nothing. I think it's important to demonstrate to these companies that they shouldn't take our dollars for granted as they ditch DEI and bow to the Trump regime." Another listener, slightly different, says, "I'm participating. I went out to pick up some groceries, but I went to a local store and used cash."

John Nichols: That's, by the way-- that's a big deal, Brian. That last part is.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

John Nichols: On many of these boycotts and many of the things that are going on right now, again, very nascent developing into "we'll see where it ends up," there has been a message of, yes, we don't want to harm the shopkeeper down the street. The concern here is with very big companies and very powerful people, billionaire class, if you will, who seem to want very much to get close to Trump, get very close to this administration.

We've seen a lot of evidence of wealthy individuals bending, people even once in the past might have been critical of Trump, to the new administration. Making that distinction between a billionaire class or between multinational corporations and the store down the street, I think is something that has been very much a part of this organizing, especially around the boycotts.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Francine in Ramsey, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hello, Francine.

Francine: Hi. It's great to be on the show. First-time caller. I am participating fully in the boycott today. I just have to say that I think we need more than one consecutive-- we need several consecutive days for it to really make a difference for the billionaire oligarch class because they could just see there's this little blip in purchasing and just attribute it to, well, happenstance, I guess. I hope to be doing my part. I posted earlier on my social media that urge friends to do this, but a lot of that social media is owned by the likes of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, whatever, so I'm taking a break from that today as well.

Brian Lehrer: Francine, thank you very much. As we start to come to the end of the segment, John, a number of the callers and texters have been talking about, yes, this is good, but we need more. You've said the same thing too. Who's this on? One of the things that I hear is people's frustration and even surprise that there isn't a series of mass protests taking place, like the Women's March at the beginning of the first Trump administration or other things, considering the enormity of the changes that Musk and Trump are trying to bring and how people opposed to them are perceiving them as existential threats to democracy.

John Nichols: Sure. I think people look for different entry points. There was a sense that the Women's March was, actually, very successful in 2017, but after the 2024 election, a blowback, repeat of the past. People said, "Well, are there different strategies? Are there different ways?" I think also, frankly, right after the election, a lot of folks were in shock. I think we've had a bizarre response from Democrats in Congress, which has been far too tepid, far too disengaged. That has also had some initial impact.

Now I think you're starting to see something more organic. At the end of the day, that's actually quite healthy, to have all these people showing up at town meetings, all these people showing up for Bernie Sanders, all these people showing up and calling in on this show about the boycott, all these things happening. I have enough faith in the American political process and the democratic process that eventually those things gel into something. It may take time, but the touchstone point, or at least the reference point I go to on this, is actually something in Republican Party historical lore, and that's the Tea party of 2009, 2010.

What was fascinating about the Tea Party move, which by the way, did ultimately get a lot of support from very wealthy donors, and so it wasn't entirely organic or something like that, but yet it did get a lot of popular support. It took an energy that was out there and began to focus it. That ultimately had a huge influence on the Republican Party, which became far more oppositional toward Barack Obama's early presidency. In that 2010 election, I think had a huge role in focusing a Republican message and, frankly, helping them to have a very nearly historic advance politically.

I would say where we're at right now is a point which obviously we don't know where everything's going to go, but you are seeing an organic outcry begin to develop into something that influences political leaders. If it influences the Democratic Party in a fundamental way, I think it could be as profound ultimately as the Tea Party movement was more than a decade ago.

Brian Lehrer: Let me do a one-question addendum tangent with you, or tangential addendum because I see you wrote in The Nation about the new Jeff Bezos dictate at The Washington Post. We did our lead segment on this yesterday. No more opinion columns in The Washington Post that oppose free markets or personal liberties, as he put it, and you frame it as, Democracy Dies, Oligarchy Lives, at The Washington Post.

In our segment, it wasn't clear to our guest yesterday what free markets and personal liberties actually means in this context. Maybe it's pro-abortion rights, personal liberties, maybe it's anti-tariffs, free markets. Bezos didn't say pro-autocracy or destroy USAID or the Centers for Disease Control. Is this necessarily a pro-Trump and Musk move as you see it?

John Nichols: Mr. Bezos did seem to find a place on that platform at the inauguration. There's an awfully lot of evidence that he seems to be trying to build a warmer relationship with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. When you have, at this point in a new administration, the owner of a very influential media platform saying, "Hey, we're going to shift our whole program in a way so radical that your editorial page editor or your opinion editor steps down," and you're saying that these views that I favor are not being well represented in the overall discourse, I just stop and think, "Everything you just described, Brian, is well represented in the discourse already."

There's not a market demand for another newspaper that supports free trade or a bunch of the things you described. What it sounds like--

Brian Lehrer: Because I could rename it The K Street Journal.

John Nichols: What it sounds to me like is that Jeff Bezos would like to have a newspaper that really is much more supportive of his view of the world. He's not the first publisher to do that, but at this point, that should be understood as a radical change in the direction of The Washington Post. We don't know exactly what it will be. Maybe I'm wrong, and I've been wrong before, but if indeed it is a move toward developing some defense for the billionaire class and for more oligarchical approaches to economics, which I fear it might be, which I fear it could well be, that's a terrible direction to go for a newspaper that, in my opinion, I think newspapers have souls. We could do a whole show on that.

I think the soul of The Washington Post was forged in the Watergate era and the aftermath of that. This is a newspaper that, when I was a little kid, I went to movies about it because it was such an inspiring story. To have it now have a incredibly wealthy guy saying, "Yes, we're going to be defending an economic view that's very popular with 1% of the population but not necessarily with the other 99%," it just doesn't seem very attractive.

Brian Lehrer: Callers, thank you for your participation, callers and texters in this segment. We thank John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and co-author with Bernie Sanders of It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism, which came out last year and made The New York Times bestseller list. John, thank you very much.

John Nichols: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you and your great callers.

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