This was an email that my mother sent me from a cousin. And I’m putting it out there that THIS DOES NOT WORK as far as I’m concerned.
Let’s analyze this from an economic perspective.
If I make no major purchases for three days, November 1st-3rd as the email advises me to do, then that means that I will either A) make my purchases on October 31st or wait until November 4th. I hardly see how, despite how large black consumer wealth is, that three days will ultimately make a difference in the larger scheme of things. Secondly, what is this supposed to prove? What am I not buying for? what am I protesting – WHO am I protesting?
Now I understand the well meaning cries of Warren Ballentine et. al. (as I try to refrain from rolling my eyes), but lets be realistic. Three days is not enough to affect any broad sweeping change. Let’s remember that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a year-long struggle. Asking me not to buy the suit that I still need at Macy’s or refraining from buying my mocha frappaccino at Starbucks simply means that since I know I have to wear it next Sunday, I’ll just buy on October 31st. Similarly, I’ll just say “Oh well” as far as the frappaccino goes and start back buying it on the 4th.
I’d rather see a broad sweeping effort to change the mindset of these people. Even if black people didn’t buy on that day, it would amount to no more than a pimple on the ass of time, because no change happens within such a short time frame. We won’t see the “powers that be” suddenly come crawling to black communities asking for our patronage again. If, we’re going to affect change, ets do it with some real strategy and with a real purpose – just doing it because isn’t good enough.
Keep it uppity, JLL
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 
The problem lies more with the calculated poverty mindset framework with which our people have been forced to function in. Even those modern negroes who live in some state of opulence and granduer, are still for the most part secrect pack rats, hording up stashes of supplies and rations…they just got bigger pantry’s . And really if we were going to some economic protesting…can we please figure out what and why and how long should this embargo last. We always seem to get these fractioned ideas in certain areas and think that they will majically spread accross the nation. YEAH RIGHT!
An editorial letter in the November 8, 2007 Chicago Defender by J.M. Williams confirms the inherent challenge of boycotts, rallies, marches, and protests when there is no long-term plan to address the self defeating actions within the community by community members. J.M. Williams points out as does Judge Matthews (who writes occasional guest editorials in the Defender) that we must rely on self-help programs created in our best interests by ourselves within our own families, churches, schools, etc. before and/or in conjuction with demands made for intervention by others.
Protests do seem appropriate after we abandon the idea that self-help no longer works. That kind of giving-up mindset produces rampant contagious ignorance. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “There is nothing in the world more dangeous than sincere ignorance and conscientious studpidty. You have a moral responsibility to be intelligent.”
When we truly remember that our help begins with individuals, we can collectively care enough about our own communities. It is challenging to remain steadfast in attempting to correct negative attitudes and behaviors within our own families. It seems foolish to demand from others what we have proven in that past that we can do for ourselves. Somewhere along the ‘way that with tears have been watered,’ we forgot who we were becaused be strayed from the paths that anchored us to our collective soul. Because God is, all is not lost.