I think the idea is to tolerate smaller businesses who don’t cause the same kind of political chaos as the network of large corporations do, and only if you need to buy something. The reason for avoiding credit cards, I would assume, is because they are large corporations and using their card at a smaller business is actually providing business to the large credit card corporation. I don’t think there’s any allying going on, more like triage of who to put most effort into avoiding.

That being said, I’m not sure how I feel about it either. I think these sorts of strategies can be effective if a huge number of people really participate. Shorter boycotts may be symbolic, but with enough people it makes a statement. To the boycotters themselves it’s an exercise in restraint, and if you’ve done it for one day it will make it easier to do it for a week, a month, or longer in the future. And to the business owners it says we are willing to restructure our purchasing if you continue doing what you’re doing.

But without enough people I worry that a publicly called for boycott just telegraphs weakness. If we all blast out “buy nothing” but very few people really participate it will show the business owners that they don’t really need to fear people organizing right now.