A Pre-Black Friday #Blackout - "It's the hap-happiest season of all!”: Will Violent Protests Against Property and Boycotts of White Businesses Mess Up White America's "Black Friday?"

Stop Supporting White Supremacy! From New York to Los Angeles and dozens and dozens of cities in between, protesters flooded the streets to denounce a white Missouri grand jury's decision not to indict a white Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black 18-year-old, last August. From [HERE] On Tuesday night in Ferguson Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after a police car was set on fire near city hall tonight, officials said. The parked patrol car was set ablaze after a crowd of several hundred people had gathered outside the Ferguson police station.

Police moved quickly to disperse the crowd when the car was set on fire, attempting to defuse the situation before it could escalate into a repeat of what happened Monday night. A day later protests raged and sprouted up in more than 170 U.S. cities. Some demonstrations blocked bridges, tunnels and major highways.  [MORE]

In Ferguson windows were smashed at dozens of businesses in the Ferguson area as protestors ran amok, targeting outposts of corporate businesses like FedEx (FDX)and McDonald's (MCD), Little Cesars, Walgreens and also a U.S. Post Office. About 25 buildings were set on fire Monday night, and many of them were still burning Tuesday. [MORE]

#Blackout. No Justice No Profit! From [HERE] and [HERE] and [HERE] Black consumers plan to protest with their wallets over what they say is a failure of justice in Ferguson, Missouri. On Monday, a grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson on any charges in the August 9 shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. 

The Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition is calling for a national boycott of Black Friday, a major US shopping holiday that follows Thanksgiving, and throughout the weekend. Organiser Dacia Polk told St. Louis radio, "Until this nation begins to place value on black lives, there will be no value placed on this business because black lives matter.”

Boycott advocates hope they can harness African Americans' collective purchasing power, an estimated one trillion dollars. Organisers also plan to walk through malls in silent protest. Boycott supporters tweeted using #BoycottBlackFriday, #BrownFriday, and #HandsUpDontSpend.

In Ferguson, Best Buy has been planning to open its St. Louis-area stores at 8 a.m. on Black Friday, promising early-bird discounts on flat-screen televisions, iPads and laptop computers. It is not clear whether the Mega store will have all of its stores open now.

Dozens of businesses in the St. Louis area have suffered since Aug. 9, when demonstrators poured into the streets of Ferguson to protest the death of Michael Brown, the African-American teenager shot by Officer Wilson, a white member of the Ferguson police force.

Several stores along South Florissant Road in Ferguson, where protests have continued on a near-nightly basis, say that their business is down nearly 80 percent since August. Many retailers, including restaurants, nail salons and grocery stores, have been forced to close early in the last few months. Some said they had cut their employees’ hours because there was so little for them to do. [MORE]

Craig Johnson, the president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting firm, compared the crisis in Ferguson to major snowstorms like the one that hit Buffalo this week, or to natural disasters like the Northridge earthquake in California in 1994, in terms of its potential to affect retail sales.

The demonstrations in Hong Kong that began in September “did have a significant effect in tamping down retail activity,” Mr. Johnson said. In St. Louis, he predicted that if demonstrations are raging during the Black Friday weekend, people will avoid “trouble areas” until tensions have eased, or “move the shopping forward, backward or online.” [MORE]

And What is White Collective Power? When a white police officer kills an unarmed, surrendering Black teen and their fellow officers, the police chief, internal affairs, the union, jurors, prosecutors, the Governor, the State Attorney General and the white media support, defend, and finance the officers “right” to kill him. [MORE] and [MORE] Above racist suspect George Stephanopoulos supports Darren Wilson with exclusive interview. Ask yourself could a Black cop kill an unarmed white teenager and get away with it? Would he receive this kind of collective support?

In fact, according to Anon "there has never been a single instance of a black police officer shooting or killing an unarmed white person in the history of modern law enforcement. This is not surprising but it is absolute proof that the black individual operating within a system of white supremacy cannot mistreat whites even if he or she is wearing a uniform, a badge, and carrying a gun." [MORE] So long as the case is heard by white jurors Wilson is not worried about a civil suit. In fact he just got married.   

Amos Wilson offers the following about "the Power of Refusal" in his book "Black Power." 

"Social Power is more effect than cause. It is generated by social relationships — the habitual ways in which human beings relate to and align themselves with one another. Power is based on the manner in which persons and groups interact with one another.

The powerful rule with the consent of the subordinate, consent created by ideological sleight-of-hand. Ultimately, the legitimacy and exercise of power by the powerful require the cooperation and active support of the subordinate, both behavioral orientations also skillfully manipulated by the powerful to begin with. If certain types of social relationships among the subordinate themselves and between the subordinate and the powerful are required to generate the power exercised by the powerful, then the self-determined changes of relationships among the subordinate and between the subordinate and powerful will lead to commensurate changes in the quantity and quality of power exercised by the powerful. If the cooperation and consent of the subordinate with and to the demands of the powerful are required to generate the power expropriated and exercised by the powerful, then a refusal of cooperation and consent on the part of the subordinate will lead to the disempowerment of the powerful. Successful non-cooperation, open disobedience, militant opposition, passive resistance, the withdrawal or refusal of consent and cooperation on the part of the subordinate not only lead to a reduction, neutralization or destruction of the power exercised by the powerful but more importantly, generate increased power which can be exercised by the subordinate themselves to achieve their own self-defined goals.

For, example, an economic boycott organized by the subordinate, that is, where members of the subordinate participate in refusing to have certain commercial dealings with the powerful, substantially demonstrates how the subordinate may empower themselves and simultaneously disempower the powerful and change the relations and structure of social power." [MORE]