Daily Engagement is a new, brief, daily feature on Flavorwire. It’s aimed at helping people feel somewhat less helpless and hopeless (or at least in control of their helplessness and hopelessness) in the midst of a political news cycle that’s been doling out daily affronts to human decency.
Every day, we’ll post one easy thing that people can do to continue to resist the current state of politics under the Trump administration, focusing on the creative ways (we are a culture website after all) that citizens are finding to resist.
Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest are glaring, and it comes as no surprise that his decisions thus far have been reported to be rife with egregious crony capitalism. Despite his announcement, via the much-publicized presentation of what were purportedly blank folders, that he was signing over his from his businesses to his Mini-Mes, it still seems evident that Trump — and affiliated Trumps — were anticipating reaping the financial benefits of the whole controlling-the-world thing. Impositions on that control — and detriments to their brands — seem to upset them.
If something results in those undersized Presidential thumbs punching out a tweet, that’s usually a sign that it’s made some kind of mark on the delicate psyche determining the future of the world. Take the branded presidential debacle of this week, for example, in which the U.S. President took to Twitter to complain like a raging Yelp-er about Nordstrom’s discontinuation of his daughter’s clothing line. Then, of course, there was KellyAnne Conway trying to encourage people to buy the President’s daughter’s clothing, getting “counseled” for doing so, and then suggesting that the counseling in question appears to have gone in one ear and out the other.
Anyway, the point is that undermining Trump on a corporate level — because that seems to be the level he truly cares about — feels valuable. This is where the website grabyourwallet.org, recently described by The Atlantic as a “social-media hashtag-turned-political-consumer-watchdog movement,”can help. The #GrabYourWallet boycotting phenomenon began before Trump even took office, on October 11, to encourage people to avoid purchases from businesses owned by — or selling products from — the Trump family.
Per their website, the#GrabYourWallet list is carefully monitored, keeping an “inventory of the [retailers] on the list, such as Amazon, Nordstrom, and Lord & Taylor” and deleting companies from their boycott list when and if those companies cease sales of Trump family products. (Nordstrom, for example, is no longer on the list.) The website lists companies from most-boycottable to least, which should help if you’re unwilling to boycott everything.
The #GrabYourWallet campaign has proven effective beyond Nordstrom. They’ve also called for the boycott of celebrities. One example is Tyra Banks, who was targeted due to her involvement in The Celebrity Apprentice; Banks later announced that she’d sever ties with the reality TV series, for which our President still has an executive producer title.