Devin Jacobs
Today is Black Friday, November 28th, 2025—traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. But if you’ve noticed fewer people at the mall or seen posts about staying home, there’s a reason. Right now, you’re living through day four of the “Mass Blackout,” an eight-day economic protest that started November 25th and runs through December 2nd.
This isn’t about electricity, though; it’s a coordinated effort by thousands of Americans to withdraw from the economy during its most critical week completely.
Strategy And Timing
The movement is organized by a coalition of grassroots groups, including Blackout the System, The People’s Sick Day, American Opposition, the Money Out of Politics Movement, and The Progressive Network. Their ask is simple but bold: stop shopping, stop working if you can, cancel subscriptions, skip restaurants, and essentially disappear from the consumer machine.
The timing is no accident—this week includes Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, when retailers typically generate billions in revenue. By choosing these exact dates, organizers believe they can demonstrate where real economic power actually lies.
Why They’re Doing This And What They Want
The coalition behind Mass Blackout isn’t shy about its goals. They’re protesting what they call corporate rule, political corruption, and the Trump administration’s policies. Isaiah Rucker Jr., founder of Blackout the System, frames it plainly: the political system has been captured by special interests where billionaires write the rules while Congress serves donors instead of citizens. The movement’s website declares that the system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed, but only for the wealthy.
Here’s what makes this protest different from past boycotts: it’s asking people to do more than just skip Target or Amazon. Participants are being urged to avoid all online and in-store shopping, stop streaming services, make no digital purchases, skip nonessential travel, and stay away from restaurants. Some are even calling out of work entirely.
Those who can’t take time off are encouraged to do “working strikes”—slowing down productivity, working to rule, or simply refusing to buy anything discretionary. The organizers estimate that if five million Americans stopped working for just 48 hours, billions would be lost in economic output, supply chains would face delays, and shipments would be disrupted.
What Happens Next
The blackout runs through December 2nd, though there’s one notable exception: Small Business Saturday on November 29th is specifically exempted. Organizers want people to use that day to support community-based alternatives to major corporations, reinforcing that their target is big business, not local shops or family-owned stores.
But here’s the honest truth about whether these movements work: the track record is mixed. During a previous one-day economic blackout earlier in 2025 by The People’s Union USA, Amazon sales actually increased by three percent compared to an average Friday. Experts like Brayden King, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, have noted that shoppers often simply buy before or after blackout periods, meaning the economic impact gets shifted rather than eliminated.
Still, this movement represents something larger than just lost sales numbers. It’s tapping into genuine frustration about wealth inequality, corporate influence in politics, and a sense that ordinary people have lost control over the systems that govern their lives. Whether or not it crashes the economy this week, Mass Blackout has succeeded in one thing: getting people to talk about economic power and who really holds it. And in a consumer-driven culture where participation is assumed, sometimes the most radical act is simply saying no.