(A series in which I ramble some personal perspective on ICYDAK's "30 Proven Tactics to Resist Authoritarianism in Daily Life," because most of this stuff is just default daily life to me.)
ICYDAK: 30 Proven Tactics to Resist Authoritarianism in Everyday Life
#1: know your rights
#2: secure your communications
#3: diversify your news sources
#4: develop financial independence
#5: learn to spot propaganda & psychological warfare
#6: strengthen your mental and physical resilience
#7: cultivate a low-profile, high-impact presence
Economic power is political power. Keep money in your community and out of the hands of authoritarian-friendly corporations.
Depending on your age and relationship to U.S. politics, you may not remember the US Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United. The short, dirty, and simplistic version is "money is speech, so how corporations buy and sell politicians is now a protected First Amendment right." The Brennan Center has a better explainer:
Brennan Center: Citizens United Explained
Citizens United supercharged the relationship between economic and political power. Now, money really can buy you policies. Or not, if you have none.
The more money big corporations have, the more they can pay politicians to give them the policies they want - not the ones you need. Yes, they're doing this. Ever wonder why the last media privacy law we got was in the 1980s? Curious why Congress hasn't passed a single privacy law regarding your actions online? Social media sites (among others) have deep pockets and a vested interest in hoovering up your data with no rules to stop them. That's why.
The less money big corporations have, the less they can use to buy shitty policies. This goes for everything from privacy to the environment to wage and labor laws.
Supporting small local businesses, on the other hand, supports your community directly. Just one example: My cousin cuts my hair. When I pay her, I know that cash is going to feed her adorable kids, keep their house together, and restock her supplies so she can keep cutting hair. It's *not* going to a corporation that will buy a politician to deny me a right to access birth control or some equally creepy nonsense.
As may be deduced from the above paragraph, I am a fan of small local businesses. Here's what I know about supporting them.
The vast majority of people who hear I no longer have an Amazon account express envy. About half of them say something that really confuses me:
"I'd love to cancel Prime, but I need some things I can only find on Amazon."
Out of respect for privacy, I've never asked anyone what these things are. I'm curious enough I might start.
I am older than Amazon Dot Com. I remember a time when "I need things I can only find on Amazon" was not a thing anyone could or would have thought to say. Human *needs* are relatively simple, when boiled down. What exactly are these "needs" that people say they can *only* find on Amazon?
I especially want to ask this question of people who live near me - people whom I know share the same access to the same physical stores that I do and that also have Internet access to places that will ship to them like I do. I'm more likely to believe this claim in, say, an urban food desert or rural areas where one has to drive half an hour to find a vendor of any kind. I won't even question it when I know the speaker doesn't have a way to get to a store or get around inside one (due to lack of transportation, a disability, or both). But here? In the promised motorland of stroads and brands? My fellow car-owning, able-to-traverse-a-store working adults? Really?
Yes, this is a question about "do you need to buy the thing from Amazon?" It is also a more fundamental question: Do you need to buy the thing at all?
"Do I need to buy something at all?" is, I think, the single most under-asked question in the American lexicon. I encourage everyone to ask it more often. Daily, even. No judgment if the answer is yes. At least when you ask, you KNOW.
Supporting local businesses is great, but Not Buying Things is, often, even greater.
Once, years ago, my grandmother hosted me and several of my cousins at her lake house. One day, she wanted to walk downtown and go shopping. She asked one of my boy cousins if he wanted to go.
"Men don't shop," he said.
"Don't they?" my grandmother said, looking surprised.
"No," he replied. "If we need something, we just buy it."
As I followed my grandmother in and out of stores that afternoon, neither of us actually purchasing a single thing, I understood the wisdom of an eleven-year-old's take on "shopping."
Which is to say: GO SHOPPING. Go wander around your town. Walk into stores you haven't checked out before. Chat with the person behind the counter. Ask who owns the place and if they like their job. Many small business owners will be the person behind the counter, and they will TALK YOUR EAR OFF about their passion project.
Buying things is nice. But it doesn't need to be the purpose of this trip. You can even tell business owners you meet: "I'm trying to find the small local businesses around here so I can shop here instead of at big box stores." Small local business owners tend to know each other. Sometimes they even have contact lists. Get these lists. Share them.
Don't overlook local restaurants! Some still sell small local business ad space on their placemats. Ask for a spare placemat to take with you if you drop soup on yours.
See also: farmer's markets. Roadside stands. Pop-up shops. Art and other displays inside other businesses, like local coffee shops. Local festivals. These aren't even shopping per se, but you can learn a LOT about what's available in your area by wandering around them. Take flyers.
Oh, and: many local groceries and other small businesses have "card boards." These are bulletin boards, usually just inside the store's front door, full of business cards and flyers for local businesses. GOLD MINES.
A few I have used in the past, ranked from most to least useful:
I do not recommend getting *too* caught up in the local gossip. Pay attention to behavior, though. For example: There's a megachurch here that runs several small businesses downtown to raise funds. Being a church, it doesn't pay property taxes. This bothers me, not least because downtown's tax base is already suffering. So I don't go to those businesses. I don't encourage behavior I don't want to see.
I do, however, call my aunt and uncle when I need landscaping services. My uncle has some weird quasi-libertarian, feelings-based-but-he'll-deny-it-because-MAN political views. He once ran an underhanded campaign for the township board (and rightly lost). Nevertheless, their landscaping business is sustainable organic-focused, uses electric tools and vehicles, and they pay their staff a liveable wage. Encourage the behavior you want to see.
When you find a good local business you like, post to your local subreddit/Nextdoor/wherever online your local folks hang out. Ask for extra business cards or flyers. Tell all your friends. Arrange to meet people there for shopping or hangouts or a starting point for a long walk (whatever's appropriate to the business). Think of your local business community like a garden ecosystem: feed the plants you want and give them sunshine, so they'll stick around.
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