Poor OnePlus just can’t take a break. Just as the company’s busy taking care of its Black Friday promotion, its store opening in Beijing and its India launch with Amazon next week, a close partner decided to drop a hurtful bomb. Cyanogen Inc., the ma…
The first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer features all kinds of things that make my diehard Star Wars soul quiver and dance, but the crossguard on the dark side lightsaber spotted in the teaser, while initially cool, increasingly isn’t one of them. It looks ultimately very impractical, and I couldn’t help but offer up some engineering tips for the weapon’s designer. Let… Read More
Rekia Boyd was only 22 when she was shot in the back of the head and killed by an off-duty Chicago police detective .
The detective, Dante Servin, had gotten into a verbal altercation with one person among a group of individuals Boyd was standing with in Douglas Park, located on the South Side. From his unmarked car, Servin turned the wrong way on a one-way street and fired five rounds over his left shoulder out the window.
One of the rounds struck the hand of a man in the group; another hit Boyd in the back of the head. She died less than 24 hours later.
Police initially claimed a man in the group approached Servin with a weapon, prompting Servin to fire, “fearing for his life.” The Independent Police Review Authority later stated they found no weapon at the scene and that the man was reportedly holding a cell phone — not a gun.
Servin was charged that November with involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct. He faces trial on Dec. 3.
In 2014, Boyd’s family was awarded a $4.5 million wrongful death settlement by the City of Chicago.
Rekia’s older brother, Martinez Sutton, 31, was the first family member to learn she had been shot. In the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Sutton
told The Huffington Post “they have to keep fighting.”
SUTTON: My sister’s birthday just passed on the 5th. She would have been 25. Thanksgiving is tomorrow; she stayed with me on holidays.
We miss her presence. Sometimes you can feel her in the room, but you miss the physical presence.
[The day Rekia was shot], I was looking at the news around 7 in the morning. I think I went for a bike ride. And when I get back I’m watching the TV and there’s a surgeon on the news — WGN or CLTV — and he comes on and talks about this lady who was shot in the back of the head and how no doctors would work on here because it’s so severe.
I thought, ‘Dang, that’s so sad.’ I sent my prayers out to the family.
But about three hours later, I hear a knock on the door. Two detectives knocked on the door and asked me if I was the brother of Rekia Boyd.
They said ‘Your sister’s been involved in a crime.’ I’m thinking ‘Where is she, where’s she at?’ I’m thinking she’s in jail.
The police said, ‘Well, she’s been shot in the back in the head. Here’s a number for the hospital she’s at. Sorry…’
And then they kinda just walked away.
When I got to the hospital, I saw her laying on the table. Her body was already going cold.
A woman asked me ‘Is that your sister?’ She told me, ‘A police officer shot her in the head.’ I asked, ‘A police officer?’
I had no idea. No one told me that and the news hadn’t picked it up yet.
After that, I stopped watching everything on TV because everything was so negative: Murders, violence, killing. Not only by police but in our community.
I wasn’t too interested in following the grand jury decision [in Ferguson] because I already knew what it was going to be. I just looked at Darren Wilson and I thought, ‘they’re just going to let him go.’ I already knew the end of the story.
As for what Sutton would tell Michael Brown’s family, he said:
No words. There are just no words that I can really say. I lost a son to heart surgery six months before my sister [died]. I had been hurt, but I never lost a child. But to have someone take a child off this earth? What can I say other than thoughts and prayers?
More On Ferguson From HuffPost:
Photographic Evidence Revealed | ‘First Year Law Student Could Have Done Better Job’ | Ferguson Smolders After Night Of Fires | Protest Locations | Americans Deeply Divided | What You Can Do | Darren Wilson Interview | Darren Wilson Could Still Face Consequences | Timeline | Students Protest | Shooting Witness Admitted Racism In Journal | Peaceful Responses Show The U.S. At Its Best | Reactions To Ferguson Decision | Prosecutor Gives Bizarre Press Conference | Jury Witness: ‘By The Time I Saw His Hands In The Air, He Got Shot’ | Thousands Protest Nationwide | Ferguson Unrest Takes Over Newspaper Front Pages Across The Country | Grand Jury ‘Should Be Indicted,’ Brown Lawyer Says | Grand Jury Documents Reveal Mistakes, Questionable Testimony | Parents Bring Young Kids To Bear Witness To Ferguson Protests | 12 Sobering Numbers That Define The Fight To Get Justice For Michael Brown | Saints Player’s Moving Reflection On Ferguson Goes Viral | Amid Ferguson Cleanup, Locals Look For Their Community To Rise Above The Damage | ‘They’re Murdering Our Kids And Getting Away With It’ |
(Reuters) – Mall crowds were relatively thin early on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.
Most major retailers now open their doors Thursday evening and offer extended holiday deals rather than limiting them to one day. The result is a quieter experience on what has traditionally been the busiest, and sometimes most chaotic, shopping day of the year.
“It just looks like any other weekend,” said Angela Olivera, a 32-year old housewife shopping for children’s clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. “The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot.”
The crowds normally reserved for Black Friday morning appeared Thursday night. Over 15,000 people lined up for the opening of the flagship store of Macy’s Inc (M.N) in New York on Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren told CNN. Police responded to a handful of incidents at Wal-Mart Stores (WMT.N) on Thursday, including to break up a fight over a Barbie doll in Los Angeles, CNN said.
Target Corp (TGT.N) CEO Brian Cornell told Reuters he was encouraged by early indicators for a holiday season that “has moved from an event on Black Friday morning to a multi-day event.”
“The consumer clearly enjoys shopping on Thanksgiving,” Cornell said, noting the retailer was selling 1,800 televisions per minute nationwide between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. last night.
Wal-Mart said Thursday was its second-highest online sales day ever after last year’s Cyber Monday, which is the Monday following Thanksgiving when online retailers promote bargains. Cornell said Target rang up a record day of online sales on Thursday.
Overall Thanksgiving Day online sales rose 14.3 percent from a year earlier, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that sales for November and December will rise 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, which would mark the most bountiful holiday season in three years. Holiday sales grew 3.1 percent in 2013.
It was unclear what impact a movement to boycott Black Friday in protest of a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in Missouri might have on the holiday season. The movement has gained some momentum on Twitter and Facebook.
OUR Walmart, a group of Wal-Mart employees pushing for higher wages and benefits, is also hoping to use Black Friday to spread its message with protests planned at 1,600 stores across the country.
(reporting by Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Paul Simao)
It’s no secret that big cats are in trouble.
Four of the five feline species that fall under that umbrella are endangered or near threatened: snow leopards, jaguars, leopards and tigers. Lions, whose populations once numbered close to 200,000, have lost most of their historical range to farms and could face extinction by 2050. They face a slew of threats, from habitat loss and poaching, to retribution killings and the illegal pet trade.
For Boone Smith, a fourth-generation big cat tracker who cut his teeth trapping mountain lions in Idaho and star of Nat Geo WILD’s upcoming show “Man v. Lion,” the fight to save these species is an “uphill battle” that we still have time to win. The Huffington Post spent time with Smith at a private game reserve in South Africa earlier this month to learn about the threats lions and other cats face as urban sprawl threatens to overtake all of the land once ruled by the king of the jungle.
This interview has been edited for clarity and content.
You grew up collaring mountain lions, why are they doing so well compared to other cats?
Cats in general have a lot of similarities, generalities that you can say “ok, all cats do this, do that.” The difference that I see is that the success for something like mountain lions versus African lions is maybe a little bit of the ability to adapt. African lions have lost a lot of habitat… and when you’re a big animal like that and you need a big space and you don’t have that, conflict with humans is a little different. Whereas mountain lions, we talk about mountain lions a little different as living in deserts, jungles, the rockies and now we talk about urban mountain lions and their ability to adapt and live in California.
Lions are a little bit too big to go under the radar… and there’s that confidence, almost an arrogance of “I’m this big and bad and I’m going to do what I want.” Mountain lions aren’t like that, they’re secretive and shy and they’re elusive, so some of it’s personality, and differences in management, and that’s what makes it all great is that it’s unique everywhere you go, and the animals are unique.
What kind of response do you have when you’re tracking? Fear? Respect?
People always say “are you afraid,” and I say I’m always a little afraid, but I do a good job of keeping my head about me and processing things, but you have to show these animals a lot of respect. You think what the lifecycle of a big cat is, if you don’t kill, you don’t eat, and you die. So we’re talking about the best of the best in mother nature, and this has been honed, evolutionarily over millions of years, they’re really good at what they do, and you need to have a healthy respect for that.
Do you think most people have that sense of respect?
I guess it’s like anything, it’s what you’re used to, it’s time and experience and feeling comfortable.
So many times I hear people say “if we just leave them alone, we came into their world.” And I agree with that wholeheartedly, we did, we’ve encroached. The idea that we just leave it alone and it’ll fix itself, we have to take into account our effect, our footprint’s everywhere, we have such an impact whether we want to or not. And we don’t acknowledge that we are not collecting the best information. Acknowledging our screw ups, but our successes, we can do a lot for a lot of species, and I think we have a responsibility. Whether they were here first or not, we have a responsibility to make sure that there’s wild places, that there’s wild things there and that they can function in a natural environment. We’re kind of guardians in that way a little bit and if we don’t take that responsibility serious we’ve got great examples of how that’s caused big problems and impacts on ecosystems, and when you lose it, you don’t get it back.
What needs to be done to stop the downward trend?
Everybody wants a magic bullet, a fix-it-all, one thing that if we do this it will solve the problem, and it doesn’t exist. I think we really need to look at big picture things, education is so important, and that doesn’t fix problems, but when people are educated about it they are more likely to make compromises.
Why should we all work towards saving big cats?
Big cats are important because with them comes big wild places. Being able to go into the wild and be somewhere where you are not the top of the food chain, I think it really, it makes you alive. When I go to the wild places it’s a spiritual thing, it renews you it fires you up. I’m not saying we go there and get scared and be afraid that everything’s going to eat us and we’re going to die, but certainly I think it does something for us spiritually.
I think that’s good for us, because we lose touch of that. I love not being at the top of the food chain. It keeps you alive. You have to focus differently, you’re not glued to that phone, you’re looking up, you’re smelling these different things. I think it lets us reconnect with nature.
Nat Geo WILD‘s fifth-annual Big Cat Week starts Friday, Nov. 28 and runs through Dec. 3. Tune in Friday to watch Boone Smith in “Man v. Lion” at 9 p.m. EST and again on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 10 p.m.
As with the first industrial revolution, the merger of Clicks and Bricks forces us to ask: Which laws need to be updated, which are just irrelevant, and which are barriers to entry created by special interests? Best placed to help our internet billionaires contribute to this important project are — politicians, civil servants, lobbyists and other political hangers-on, looking for lucrative work.
America’s statutes, policies and regulations (Laws) are designed for a non-digital world — a world where a taxi was something you hailed on the street, not by clicking a smartphone app. The world of Bricks (i.e., the older traditional economy) and Clicks (i.e, the newer tech-fueled economy) are merging. With this merger, we are forced to examine our existing Laws (a point also made by Fareed Zakaria). As companies scramble to lobby the government for the most favorable results, political types and high powered lobbyists will be in great demand (e.g., David Plouffe — a key strategist behind President Obama’s two presidential wins — recently joined Uber).
Originally, computers (e.g., the IBM 700/7000 series circa 1952 ) had little direct interaction with the world of Bricks. They were used for: artillery trajectory tables, payroll and accounting, and similar behind-the-scenes work. The machines took up entire rooms, and operated in batch mode(1).
Moore’s law (computer processing power doubles every 18-36 months) has proved unrelenting. As processing costs decline exponentially and other technologies advance, the worlds of Bricks and Clicks are merging.
Cabs have existed for centuries — London has had taxi service since 1654. And renting out a spare room has been happening for centuries. What has changed — and the impact is dramatic — is the decline in transaction costs and the resulting increase in market efficiency brought about by adding the world of Clicks to the world of Bricks. This has triggered the rise of the sharing economy, among many other manifestations.
Innovations — such as, Uber’s uniting dynamic pricing, smartphones, GPS, stored billing information, a two way rating system (you rate the driver and the driver rates you) and much else — make the new economy a very efficient system for transacting business, thereby resulting in more business activity.
But merging Clicks with Bricks creates friction with old Laws from the pre-Click world, which can be categorized as:
As Adam Smith said:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
One way for businesses to conspire against the public is to have government create artificial barriers to entry, and thereby generate unearned profits for politically connected businesses.
For example, the number of yellow taxis allowed on the streets of NYC at any one time is restricted to 13,437. No matter how great the demand, the capacity of the streets, the time of year, or the strength or weakness of the NYC economy — only 13,437 yellow cabs are allowed. The number 13,437 doesn’t reflect a perfect balance of the laws of supply and demand — demand for the privilege of driving a yellow cab far outstrips the supply. The current price for a medallion (i.e., the right to have a yellow taxi on the streets of NYC) — about $1 million — reflects this high demand.
NYC medallion owners are a concentrated special interest group, with a financial interest in limiting the issuance of new medallions. The general public also has an interest in the taxi industry — more and better service — but for most people, this isn’t their highest priority. For medallion owners, however, the taxi medallion is of utmost importance since it represents their very livelihood. Medallion owners, therefore, can have an outsized influence on this one narrow issue. But the rise of Uber and similar services means we suddenly have new and powerful interests at the table, challenging old rules.
This isn’t just about the taxi industry. This challenge will occur across the entire economy. One benefit of this merging of Bricks and Clicks is a “housecleaning” of our Laws. As significant new participants emerge, they’ll seek to remove government barriers that hinder their business models. However, these new competitors will behave as Adam Smith predicted, and attempt to create new barriers to trade benefitting their own interests. Arguably this process has already begun – newcomer Uber was recently accused of encouraging taxi regulations that would favor its business model, and make it more difficult for new entrants. Capitalism is innovative and efficient, but not always admirable.
My one prediction: For both well-funded new competitors (trying to revise or create Laws that benefit their interests), and old form competitors (with tremendous incentives to protect their turf), civil servants, politicians, lobbyists and others of their ilk will be in high demand!
(1) In this period computer programs were typed on punch cards and left to run overnight at a data center; by the way, punch cards were still in use as late as the mid-1980s).
An earlier version of this blog appeared as:
Strauss, Steven. “Regulation for Bricks, Clicks, and the Sharing Economy.” Aspen Journal of Ideas. Aspen Institute, Nov. 2014. Web.
Steven Strauss is the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
According to the FCC:
“On November 12, 2013, AT&T Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer Randall L. Stephenson stated that the Company would limit its fiber deployment to the “2 million additional homes” that are “commitments to the DirecTV announcement” and that any other fiber deployment would depend on the outcome of the Commission’s Open Internet Proceeding.”
And the FCC actually called AT&T’s bluff and asked to see the deployment plans.
AT&T responded: The public doesn’t really need to know the details. We’ll just redact everything and supply blank pieces of paper for the public.
At the bottom of this page we find a footnote to the missing information.
It states that the numbers presented do not represent ‘homes’ but “locations”, which includes businesses. But it also says that, well, technologies continue to change so the deployments may not be fiber-to-the home, (FTTP), but fiber-to-the-node, (FTTN). I.e., AT&T is including U-Verse, which is a copper-to-the-home network using the existing legacy copper wires and the fiber optics wire are somewhere within ½ mile from the actual location.
Amusingly, according to Re/code and others, last week AT&T stated that it was only kidding about not doing the fiber deployment. Re/code’s headline says it all “AT&T Says It Still Plans to Expand High-Speed Internet in DirecTV Acquisition.”
And should we trust AT&T? Of course we should. They are the phone company!
If I was cynical I would say that AT&T didn’t want the FCC to actually audit their commitments in detail as they were just kidding all along and made up the deployment announcement and plans, just like they have done in the past. And while in some articles AT&T claims to have completed Austin Texas, upgrading it with fiber optic ‘Gigapower’, Stop the Cap and others detail that customers in Austin have had problems getting the reported speeds or that they can’t get the service.
Should we believe AT&T’s ‘commitment’ to rewire cities with fiber optics? In a previous article “AT&T’s Top 13 Broken Promises. DIRECTV Merger? ‘Giga’-Me-a-Break!” we highlight 13 ‘broken promises’ (and we are calling for investigations of AT&T’s previous commitments). For example, in the DirecTV-AT&T merger it was revealed that 25% of customers in AT&T’s 22 states can not get broadband and yet, in the AT&T-BellSouth merger, AT&T claims that it fulfilled the obligation to have 100% of their territory capable of broadband (albeit slow at 200kbps in 1 direction). Where’s the investigation by the FCC of this discrepancy?
The article supplies the statements and filings so that you, the reader, can corroborate what we found.
For a full discussion see the new book: “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net”.
To Summarize:
1) AT&T-Bellsouth Merger was to have 100% of 22 States Capable of at Least Minimal Broadband Speeds by 2007. It would appear that 25% didn’t get upgraded.
2) SBC Was to Compete for Wireline Service Out-of-Region in 30 Cities by 2002 — Never happened.
The Mergers Killed the Fiber Optic Deployments in America.
Then we have the closing of fiber optic broadband deployments that were underway in almost every state SBC (now-AT&T) took over.
3) Pacific Telesis — was to spend $16 billion on 5.5. million homes in California by 2000. After the merger in 1997, SBC shut down everything being built and never spent about $15 billion.
4) SNET, Connecticut — was to spend $4.5 billion and have 100% of the state completed by 2007; SNET started rolling out cable services over fiber in 1996 and after the merger everything was abandoned, starting around 1998.
5,6,7,8, 9) Ameritech — claimed it would have 6 million households wired by 2000. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin all had commitments to build out fiber optic networks, and some states included schools and libraries. Cable services were rolled out and after the merger with SBC, all of the fiber optic networks were sold off to WOW.
10) In Texas, one of SBC’s (Southwestern Bell) original states, committed to spending $1.1 billion on educational institutions, etc., as part of projects funded by the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund — with speeds 45 Mbps, starting in 1995, and had made commitments to supply fiber optics to some communities — never happened.
11) Closing the Networks to Competition — Promise Them 100 Mbps Fiber Optics in 2002. In order to close the networks to direct competition, which were opened under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed Internet, broadband and even cable competitors to offer service using the in-place (or what were to be upgraded wires), then-SBC told the FCC that it would roll out 100 Mbps fiber-to-the-home services if only the FCC got rid of those pesky competitors.
12) Re-verse: The “Copper-to-the-Home” Service — As soon as the ink was dry on the closing of the networks, AT&T announced they were doing ‘fiber-based services’, which was a euphemism for– a ‘copper-to-the-home’ service, with fiber optics in a box within ½ mile of the location.
13) AT&T’s Press Release: “AT&T Eyes 100 U.S. Cities and Municipalities for its Ultra-Fast Fiber Network.” — In this latest round of using broadband as a ‘carrot’ to push through the AT&T DirecTV merger and get more deregulation, AT&T’s new plan includes “GigaPower”, fiber optic-based cities.
However, when we checked the press release of the cities that were being discussed to be upgraded, we found only 1, Austin Texas, was serving customers as of April 21 2014.
And about Texas; SBC (now-AT&T) claimed in a July 1996 press release that they would have 47,000 homes in Richardson Texas with fiber optic services in 1996.
“SBC is building a traditional cable network in Richardson, Texas that will be in service in the fourth quarter of this year (1996). It also is constructing a broadband network that will allow the company to offer cable and interactive services to up to 47,000 Dallas area households in 1996.”
Conclusion: AT&T must be investigated for its previous failures to fulfill basic commitments in prior mergers, especially the AT&T-BellSouth merger and the FCC should audit the new proposed fiber optic plans, not just take AT&T’s word for it. And the states should go back and examine whether customers have been paying extra for decades for these upgrades based on commitments never fulfilled.
Let the investigations begin. I leave you with the last redacted page of AT&T’s FCC filing.
Illinois’ December 2013 pension reform law was deemed unconstitutional Nov. 21 by a Sangamon County Circuit Court judge.
The issue is likely headed to the state Supreme Court by way of appeal by Attorney General Lisa Madigan. The Illinois Policy Institute’s Scott Reeder said he thinks the coming decision about the law is going to have far-reaching consequences throughout Illinois.
From Reeder:
Faced with more than $111 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, Illinois is in the worst fiscal condition of any state.
And Belz’s ruling sets the stage for the crisis to deepen.
While government worker unions were touting the ruling as a victory, it’s actually sowing despair for many current employees and sets the stage for generational warfare.If the high court upholds this ruling, tax dollars that would be go to support schools, prisons and other state services will be diverted to fund pensions.
Look for teachers, prison guards and other state workers to receive pink slips to free up money for increased pension payments.
Check out the rest of his thoughts on the pension ruling at Reboot Illinois.
That’s not the only problem Illinois is facing, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. A study by the center found that Illinois taxes its low-income families at a higher rate than most other states in the country. For a family of two adults and two children living at the national poverty level, Illinois levies a state income tax burden of more than $200, which is lower only than Alabama, Hawaii and Montana. Check out how the numbers break down at Reboot Illinois.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House Christmas tree has arrived.
A horse-drawn wagon hauled it up the driveway to the North Portico on Friday morning. First lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha and family dogs Bo and Sunny inspected the tree. They circled the wagon, smelled it and conferred with each other before the first lady said “We’re taking the tree.”
The 20-foot white fir comes from a Pennsylvania tree farm.
The tree will be trimmed in the Blue Room, where it will stand as the main attraction throughout the White House holiday season.
Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have spread nationwide in the past few days, and activists are continuing to speak out against injustice as they plan another peaceful protest — only this time, it’s targeted at Black Friday.
The mission, which is identified and spread online through #BlackoutBlackFriday and #NotOneDime, aims to boycott large retailers on the country’s biggest shopping day of the year. In doing so, protesters aim to take a stand in the fight for economic freedom and equal human rights.
Blackout For Human Rights, the organization at the helm of the nationwide effort, is composed of a network of artists, activists, filmmakers and lawyers who fight to address inequalities and injustice in America.
“In the wake of #Ferguson, it’s become painfully clear that people of color, and Black people in particular, are still unjustly targeted by law enforcement and the criminal justice system,” reads a statement on BlackoutBlackFriday.org. The group was created in October by Ryan Coogler, the director of the 2013 award-winning film “Fruitvale Station.” The film told the story of Oscar Grant, an Oakland, Calif., teenager who was shot on New Year’s Day 2009 by police officers at a train station in Los Angeles and whose death sparked immediate outrage from the community.
“The lack of indictment in the deaths of Michael Brown of Ferguson, MO, John Crawford III of Ohio, and many, many more victims of police deaths are unacceptable in this modern society. To that end, we will cease spending money on American retail corporations until a change is made,” the website continues.
The hashtag #BlackoutBlackFriday has populated online as the movement is quickly gaining steam. Among some of the more notable names who have actively spread awareness of the campaign online are business mogul Russell Simmons, actor Jesse Williams and TV personality Niecy Nash.
Many users have also changed their profile pictures on various social media accounts to all-black images as they stand in solidarity with the movement’s mission.
Together we can stand up + spark change. Join @UnitedBlackout for #BlackoutBlackFriday: http://t.co/iPvbdU9rSJ RT! pic.twitter.com/zLJigp9vH0
— Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) November 25, 2014
11/28 is an exercise in economic discipline & leverage. Sit down & be counted. #BlackoutBlackFriday @UnitedBlackout http://t.co/j4LRA0ZwnN
— jesseWilliams. (@iJesseWilliams) November 11, 2014
#BlackoutBlackFriday pic.twitter.com/S26GOgOvmj
— Niecy Nash (@NiecyNash) November 28, 2014
“We ask those who stand with Ferguson, victims of police brutality and us to refrain from shopping on Black Friday and participate in a nationwide day of action and activism,” it says on the Blackout For Human Rights website. “Our lives are joined by the money we spend as consumers.”
#NotOneDime is another hashtag that was founded under a similar mission. It is an online campaign created by Rahiel Tesfamariam, a social activist and the founder of online lifestyle publication Urban Cusp.
Tesfamariam created a meme including #NotOneDime and sent her message to her magazine’s large following, gaining traction almost immediately, reports The Daily Dot.
“African-Americans are a mass consumer force,” Tesfamariam said. “In a lot of ways we drive the economy and we drive pop culture, but we don’t own it or manage it.”
This is one way, Tesfamariam says, that black consumers are able to show the influence of their dollar.
According to a 2013 Nielsen study, African-American consumers have a buying power of more than $1 trillion.
In having such a large influence and being a driving force in the U.S. economy, both Tesfamariam and Blackout For Human Rights echo the underlying message of their mission: If America values their dollar, it should value their lives.
“The US economy depends on our shopping, especially during the holiday season. But the lives of our brothers and sisters are worth more than the dollars we can save on holiday gifts,” the activist organization says. “Together, we can make a historic stand against police brutality and spark change.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.