The Final Call | Editorials

Redistribute the Pain

By Final Call News | Last updated: Nov 17, 2015 - 1:28:42 PM

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The most valuable dollars you will never spend

‘Tis almost the season to be jolly, especially corporations and merchants, but the laughter you are hearing doesn’t note tidings of comfort and joy but product peddling profit seekers, who want to capitalize on your emotions and your insecurities.

This Christmas don’t let dollar hungry businesses lure you into a trap of unwise spending and debt. Join the Justice Or Else! movement to Redistribute the Pain through economic withdrawal and a boycott of Black Friday and holiday spending.

Economic withdrawal is a major effort coming out of the extremely successful organizing and turnout for the “Justice Or Else!” gathering in Washington, D.C., marking the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March. But that gathering was not planned as a moment but as a movement to press for justice and using some of our estimated $1.1 trillion to $1.3 trillion in annual spending power is a tool we cannot continue to ignore.

Without a doubt, America loves the dollar and holiday spending is perhaps the peak of the love affair—companies look to close the year in the black, forecast spending in the coming year and unload products.

By curbing spending, we can participate in a revolutionary act by showing a little discipline, a little awareness and connecting to a campaign that will help build incredible unity.

America loves to punish and threaten others and needs to be taught a harsh lesson: Black lives matter, Black dollars matter and how you treat Black people matters.

“We have to find a way to redistribute the pain,” said Minister Farrakhan, as he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his Justice Or Else! address.

“You’re either going to treat us right, or we’re going to withdraw from you our economic support. … We intend to boycott Christmas but not Jesus,” Minister Farrakhan said. “We choose not to spend dollars on Black Friday, Black Saturday, Black Sunday, Black Monday. We are not going to spend our money for the rest of that year with those companies that we have traditionally spent our money on.”

As the Minister toured city after city in the run-up to 10-10-15 in Washington, D.C., he shared the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the brave leader’s call to “redistribute the pain” to those who were denying and oppressing Black people. The call to participate isn’t limited to any faith, any political ideology, nor any of the other things that are typically used to divide Black people.

“We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails,” said Dr. King in the last speech before he was assassinated in 1968.

“We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, ‘God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. … Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”

The Nielsen Company, which tracks consumer spending and behavior, is already predicting that Asian, Latino and Black families are planning to wait to do holiday spending.

Maybe we are starting to consider the toll emotional and financial blackmail pushed by Corporate America is taking on us. Nielsen doesn’t think so: “Similar to last year, more multicultural households are planning to spend more on holiday gifts this year than the total population,” said the research firm.

Surveys that looked at Xmas spending from 1999 to 2014 discovered that in 2013 U.S. consumers were expected to spend about $704 on Christmas gifts.

“Economics has long been known as the dismal science. But is any economist so dreary as to criticise Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made,” the Economist magazine noted in a 2001 article.

It pointed to a study that said money was being lost as people received gifts they didn’t want or appreciate, the gift receivers valued the gifts at less than what was paid for them. “The most conservative estimate put the average receiver’s valuation at 90% of the buying price. The missing 10% is what economists call a deadweight loss: a waste of resources that could be averted without making anyone worse off. In other words, if the giver gave the cash value of the purchase instead of the gift itself, the recipient could then buy what she really wants, and be better off for no extra cost,” the article noted.

According to research by CardHub, Americans are losing billions of dollars in spending as gift cards go unused. CardHub estimates some $44 billion in unredeemed gift cards has been growing since 2008.

CardHub also wasn’t optimistic about the outlook for credit card spending in 2015. “CardHub now projects that we will end 2015 with a net increase of more than $60 billion in credit card debt – putting us perilously close to a tipping point at which balances become unsustainable and delinquency rates skyrocket,” said its “2015 Credit Card Debt Study: Trends & Insights” report issued in early September.

“We expect outstanding credit card debt to cross $900 billion by the end of the year, bringing the average indebted household’s balance to $7,813—the highest amount since the Great Recession,” said CardHub.

Last year Black Friday sales dropped 11 percent to $50.9 billion from an estimated $57.4 billion in 2013. Boycotts by protestors who were angry and outraged over Black deaths helped shutdown holiday spending.

According to the www.blackfridaydeathcount.com, there have been seven deaths and 98 injuries on the shopping day after Thanksgiving between 2006 and 2014, such as a worker who died after being trampled in a shoppers’ stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart.

Stop the madness, visit www.justiceorelse.com for simple and helpful ways you can save money, build unity and support a movement without spending a dime.