Boycott America
Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Mnonja, 2010, Via SAAM
I wish I could name this piece How to Boycott the USA in 5 easy steps, but nothing about boycotting America is easy, nor are there only 5 steps. But please stay with me anyway.
To say that this current administration is the worst we've had says a lot, especially in their treatment of marginalized communities and people of the global majority. So let's say it with the weight it carries: this administration is the absolute worst. America has not been having a great—not even a good—time these past 247 years, and collectively, we are not ok. Americans, on the whole and across the board, are sick, sad, and scared. According to the 2025 World Happiness Report, “In the rankings of happiness haves and have-nots, the U.S. dropped to its lowest ever spot at No. 24, continuing its decline from a peak of the 11th place over a decade ago. The report described political polarization as a result of growing despair among Americans.”
Ok. Americans are pretty fucking miserable right now for a whole host of reasons. Noted. And we didn’t need a world report to tell us that we all see it, feel it, and know it.
So what are we gonna do about it?
Our Reality
Many say we want a revolution. And that is exactly what we now have at this junction in the fall of the empire, what I like to affectionately call the series finale of the United States of America. So here it is and here we are. Welcome to the revolution. And it’s brought to you by fascism and the failure of a supposed two-party system.
First, let us not expect any pathways to our liberation, to whatever lies on the other side of this, to be easy. Just a few months into Trump's second presidency, it’s already proving cruel and violent, as we’re seeing with ICE raids snatching people from their jobs, homes, and even children. Everyone will suffer—and our most marginalized will suffer the most. Whereas previously there was suffering on one side of the street while the other side watched, now, that the empire is crumbling at an accelerated rate, the other side’s day has come. This is no surprise because fascism has always promised to come for everyone eventually.
Our Choices
We are not powerless, and this fact is what we must accept and embrace. So, whether you cooperate with the empire’s useless attempts at survival, work to destroy it (which is revolt), or opt out through silence (which is complicity), you’re making a choice. Oh, and by the way, not choosing is also a choice; it simply means you forfeit, surrender, and/or allow someone else to choose for you. Where will you be when the empire falls? Pick your player.
With the consistent onslaught of devastating and dehumanizing legislation coming out of Trump’s White House, we are seeing widespread, large-scale boycotts taking place across the country and beyond. From giant corporations and retailers like Tesla, Starbucks, and Target, just to name a few, we the people are going after these giant profit over people corporations showing them they can not continue to fuck with us and expect that we will continue to spend our money with them. They can kiss our fed up asses. This is game time frfr. People are no longer playing around and are standing on business as it relates to being intentional about how they spend their dollars and making sure, or at least making a noble attempt, to support and patronize companies that are for equality, equity, and justice.
And we love to see it.
Because people power and collective solidarity are where we find the hope to carry on and fight the good revolutionary fight. Whatever is on the other side of this greedy, evil empire is whatever we choose to make of it.
An Opportunity: Boycott the USA
Just like we are seeing movement and progress with these numerous economic boycotts, it is in the same fashion that I propose that those of us who can boycott America do so. Cuz throw the whole country away.
What can boycotting America look like?
My boycotting of America looked like moving out of the States back in 2020 as part of the Black social and political movement called Blaxit—a term coined by academic, journalist, and human rights consultant Dr. Ulysses Burley III to describe the modern-day resurgence of Black Americans choosing to exit the United States either primarily or partly due to systemic, anti-Black racism. Personally, I decided I could no longer live in a country hellbent on killing me, so I left to find freedom, safety, peace, pleasure, joy, and rest. Making our Blaxit and moving out of the States for myself and thousands of Black Americans is our form of protest and how we have chosen to boycott America.
I recognize that not everyone can or wants to leave, and I’ll come back to that in a bit. But for now, since there is a significant rise in the number of Americans moving out of the United States, let’s stay here for a moment.
Our Challenge
There is a necessity to discuss the real impacts of being both hated and hunted in the States as Black Americans, and the complexity that is living in another country as a privileged Black American.
As a Black American with a passport that ties me to a country that doesn’t believe it owes my people reparations for the centuries of genocide against us, this has been and perhaps always will be a complicated status.
I believe that Black Americans, in particular, are global orphans. Who exactly claims us? America doesn’t want us unless we are being enslaved. And though we may long for a Motherland that we can call home, the reality is that most of us have never even touched her precious, violated land. Africa doesn’t know us, and we don’t know her, even though many of us feel her calling us home.
But what we do know is that thousands upon thousands of us have decided to pack our bags and leave the plantation that is the United States of America in hopes of finding another country that will welcome us, that will take us in.
“A pilgrim is a seeking person, with faith and necessity as their compass.” -
Neema Githere Siphone from her Substack piece, ‘Notes On Divesting From America’
One of the best things we can do is be intentional about the ways we arrive in countries other than the guilty one of our birth. We must arrive with a level of consciousness and deep gratitude.
With the privilege of leaving comes a responsibility and a choice…will we show up in new places with colonizer energy and vibes, or as humbled guests?
The Art of Being A Guest
Many of us who have fled the United States did so seeking not just a new life, but a new way to live—one that avoids over-consuming and entitlement. To travel or relocate ethically requires a willingness to learn, unlearn, and challenge one’s ways of showing up in the world. I deeply desire to be in community, in relationships, and be a good guest.
A good guest respects the local customs and ways. A good guest does not seek to center themselves or take up all the space.
We learn the language, and when we don’t have or know the words, we remain silent.
We tread lightly, and we do our best not to make a mess, disrupt, or act like everything revolves around our American selves.
Good guests, global orphans, and pilgrims support local people and their small, locally owned businesses. We interact and engage with the community as good neighbors.
In my experience over the past 5 years living in Jamaica and Costa Rica, I’ve been met with kindness and generosity, which I return graciously.
There are many impacts of Americans living abroad. And no one here is promoting gentrification or colonization. Quite the opposite. To avoid becoming colonizers and gentrifying the places we move to, we must actively, as much as possible, reject the very systems that granted us privilege and that shaped our colonial mindset, a mindset that is just a byproduct of living in the belly of the beast, the heart of the empire. This means acknowledging our origins, critically examining them, and then entering a new space with full awareness of our cultural conditioning, while consciously resisting the structures that raised us.
Because of the nature of the relationship that America has with the rest of the world, particularly Black and Brown countries across Africa, Central and South America, we Americans are inherently harmful due to our blue passports and the power of the USD. It's a reality, an ongoing process I’m still grappling with, as are many of us who fled the States. People living in America don’t seem to think they have to face this reckoning.
The truth is, I’m not talking to everybody when I say get out. But I am very specifically talking to somebody who does have the means, the resources, and the desire.
For everyone else, I am asking you to divest from the American empire in every way you can.
No, for real. Boycott America
Guess what must be done if we want to starve and kill an entity, a living, breathing, growing organism, an empire? And a bloody, violent empire at that? We must starve it.
Some people tell us Americans to stop going to Central and South America to screw up those economies with our USD. I say stop going to the United States and feeding the monster, pumping more money into their greedy, failing, capitalist, genocidal empire.
So let’s consider boycotting America as a valid and serious option.
Stop moving to America.
Stop vacationing in America.
Stop pouring your money into the American empire that exploits people, countries and governments all over the world and arms Israel to the teeth so it can continue to slaughter and bomb the fuck out of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Stop funding the American economy while it continues to take away rights and protections for the most vulnerable among us, such as immigrants and trans folks, and others in the margins.
If Americans stop strengthening the American economy, it will be weaker and can not continue to exploit and terrorize its own citizens or people in countries around the globe. Want to empower central and southern American and Caribbean countries? Visit them. Move there. Rent homes from them. Stop trying to always buy up all the land and own shit. Borrow. Share. Help one another. Spending $100 in a local business somewhere else fights against the American empire more than spending $100 at Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
Rideshare and private drivers over Uber.
Spend the big vacation dollars in countries that have some fucking manners and aren’t trying to kill everyone.
Stop paying taxes. It’s a thing, and it’s called War Tax Resistance.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Simply your life. Stop buying so much shit.
Divest. Disobey. Disrupt.
Become ungovernable.
In the new world that I believe in, I am not American, and you are not American. We are so much more.
You have to ask yourself what kind of world you want, and what kind of world you believe in. And as part of the revolution, what does your boycotting of oppressive systems and countries look like?