Hey folks,

The short version is this: Successful anti-authoritarian movements use their economic power to stop the slide into fascism. That’s why Indivisible is enthusiastically joining We Ain’t Buying It: a corporate pressure campaign targeting Home Depot, Target, and Amazon this Black Friday weekend.

The longer version is this: Show me what autocracy looks like!

What we’re experiencing in America now is strikingly similar to what other democracies that have collapsed into authoritarianism have experienced.

Yes, it’s a right-wing government passing right-wing laws that cut healthcare to give tax cuts to right-wing donors. But the fight is over more than just the national legislature or with the executive branch. In an authoritarian breakthrough moment, the regime attacks or co-opts other sources of power in a society as well -- media, law firms, universities, businesses, political critics, and even comedians.

We’ve seen this story play out again and again -- in Serbia under Milošević, Hungary under Orbán, Turkey under Erdoğan, Russia under Putin. The regime guts the judiciary, shutters newsrooms, attacks universities, brands NGOs as foreign agents, undermines the political opposition, bullies businesses into submission, and even drives satirical shows off the air.

And now we’re seeing it in America.

Businesses are caving to regime pressure or simply obeying in advance. Since Trump took office, we’ve seen corporations and billionaires rush to bend the knee. The list is so long it can feel like cowardice is just part of the culture now:

• Companies like Target preemptively ended their DEI and trans-inclusive policies.
• Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft forked over millions to Trump’s inauguration slush fund.
• Companies like Spotify are running ads to recruit for the regime’s secret police.
• Companies like Facebook/Meta, Comcast, and T-Mobile helped fund the destruction of the East Wing of the White House.
• Media companies like ABC and CBS have embarrassed themselves with a pro-Trump lurch away from real journalism.

I could go on, but you get the gist: A huge number of companies have decided that their interests are best advanced by throwing their lot in with the regime. For those collaborators and capitulators, it’s simply a business calculation. And that’s why it’s time for us to change the math.

This Black Friday weekend, we’re joining with a super-team of organizers -- the Target Three, Black Voters Matter Fund, Until Freedom, Working Families Party, 50501, and more -- to issue a shared collective call: We Ain’t Buying It.

We Ain’t Buying It is a movement action to flex our power by zeroing in on three targets -- companies who have, each in their own way, enabled Trump’s agenda:

	Home Depot has allowed its parking lots to become ground zero for ICE raids on immigrant day laborers, and its billionaire co-founder Bernie Marcus has funneled millions into Trump’s campaigns.
	Target, which once branded itself as the friendly, inclusive big-box store, has now scrapped its DEI goals and scaled back LGBTQ+ offerings to avoid angering the regime.
	Amazon didn’t just shower Trump’s inauguration with cash -- Jeff Bezos’ company pitched facial-recognition tools to ICE and powers the Palantir systems ICE uses to track and deport immigrants, making Amazon a core contractor for the regime’s deportation machine.

Our call to action here is simple: Pause your spending with these companies from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. Together, we’ll send them a simple message: ”Stop enabling Trump’s attacks on our values, our neighbors, and our democracy!”

Since launching this campaign last week, we’ve seen an overwhelmingly positive response and some fantastic organizing -- shout out to Indivisible SETX in Texas for already planning a cool “Community over Commercialism” event! But one question has come up a few times: What about all the other companies that are also enabling Trump’s agenda?

We want to concentrate our focus on three notable consumer-facing enablers because we’ve seen that organizing is far more effective when it is concentrated and easy to join in on.

That doesn’t mean our three targets are the only problem. But if we can get their attention and provide impetus for them to shape up, we’ll send every other consumer-facing company the message that even a quiet decision to enable this administration might trigger widespread consumer outrage.

And that message, if we land it, will be heard all across the corporate world. Then, rinse and repeat!

Successful movements innovate, experiment, learn, adapt, evolve, and grow. That’s what we’re doing here. But if this is going to work, it’s going to take all of us who have been building this No Kings era to participate.

So here’s my ask to you: Forward this email to a friend who protested for the first time at No Kings -- or who wanted to join No Kings but couldn’t. Then, read on to this week’s to-dos for even more ways to make We Ain’t Buying It a success.

In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

Your weekly to-dos

1. Pledge not to shop at Home Depot, Target, or Amazon from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday! This weekend, perhaps the busiest shopping period of the year, we’re asking you not to support three corporations complicit in Trump’s authoritarian power-grab. Let’s show cowardly corporate leaders that there’s more to lose from complicity than from noncompliance.
2. Spread the word about We Ain’t Buying It online with our handy social media toolkit. Use our pre-made graphics and customizable sample posts to quickly let your friends and followers know where not to shop this week. Let’s get the word out far and wide so we can maximize our impact.
3. If you have Democratic senator(s), urge them to call on Chuck Schumer to step down as minority leader. Even on the heels of a historically successful election and the largest protest in US history, Chuck Schumer’s caucus caved in the shutdown fight. Senate Dems need bold new leadership to fight the Trump regime, and that starts by making Schumer step aside.
4. Sign up to call voters and get out votes for Aftyn Behn -- a former Indivisible running to flip a red House seat! Our next chance to stomp the regime at the ballot box is in Tennessee, where Aftyn Behn can flip a deep-red Trump district in a special election. You can call voters from anywhere. All you need is a phone and computer, and we offer live training before the shift.

P.S. Withholding support from corporations enabling the Trump regime is a powerful way to fight authoritarianism. Supporting the organizations who DO fight back hard -- and who organize others to fight -- is just as important. If you can, we encourage you to support your local mutual aid networks, or chip in to power your friendly pro-democracy organizers at Indivisible.

Upcoming events for you

These nationwide events, calls, and training sessions are coming up soon. For even more Indivisible happenings, check our national calendar and get in touch with Indivisible groups near you!

Thanks for supporting Rep. LaMonica McIver

Earlier this month, we asked Indivisibles to chip in to support Representative LaMonica McIver’s legal defense against politically motivated charges from the Trump regime. McIver is being prosecuted for conducting oversight at an ICE facility (her job), and outrageously, a federal judge is allowing her case to go to trial.

We knew that you’d all step up, and you did. But we NEVER expected such a generous outpouring of support. Together, we raised more than $154,000 to support Rep. McIver’s legal defense!

If you were one of the hundreds who chipped in to support Representative McIver, THANK YOU! We made a challenging fight just a bit easier for her, and we sent a powerful reminder to Members of Congress and leaders everywhere else: If you choose to stand up and fight this regime, we won’t let you do it alone.

IndivisiWIN of the week

Earlier this month, local Indivisibles in California launched UC Unbowed -- a collective of students, alumni, faculty, and community members defending the University of California from Trump’s attacks on free speech and academic independence.

The campaign took off like a rocket! Their petition calling on UC leadership to resist the Trump regime received over 4,000 signatures in just the first week, and their protest outside a Board of Regents meeting in UCLA made waves across the campus and community. The UC Unbowed team is growing fast, and their fight against the Trump regime is just getting going.

Follow us on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads to keep up on the latest information, and text “INDIVISIBLE” to 59798 to opt-in to our text messaging program, where we send rapid response actions a few times a month.