Little Protests

This past year has been a doozy to put it mildly. The beginning of Trump's second term has been chaotic and cruel and has put me all too often in a bad place worried about the state of the world and the future.

The inspiration for this blog post came from Bari Weiss pulling a 60 Minutes segment on CECOT and the Trump Administration sending detainees there to be tortured. This was almost certainly done for political gain and to shield the Trump White House from bad press. I don't watch much TV news, but I don't think you have to be to recognize that this is just awful journalism and puts the little integrity CBS has left into question.

CBS also operates Paramount+, which is now the (mostly) exclusive home to my favorite TV series. I'm a Star Trek fan. I love the series, the messages they tend to share about fairness, equality, and a better future. They have a new series coming out early next year, and I was planning on re-subscribing to Paramount+ in order to watch it. Now, I'm just not going to. While the Ellison's and Bari Weiss in charge, I don't want to fill their pockets.

So now I have yet another company I refuse to do business with. My list isn't extreme, but I do my best to put my money where my mouth is as much as I can. I unsubscribed to the NYT because of their coverage of trans rights issues, I don't go to Chick-Fil-A because the owner donates money to anti-LGBT groups and laws, as well as others.

I'm not perfect in this by any means, I'm sure I've slipped up from time to time, but I generally want to avoid putting more money in pockets of companies and individuals that are actively working against the values I believe in.

I'm not going to pretend like my little boycotts and protests are going to scare the CEOs into actually doing anything or that my protests even make a difference. What I can say is, they help me feel like I have a little control over what is going on. That, and I can sleep a little better at night knowing that I'm doing something.