The right to non-violent protest is right there in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law (abridging the freedom of)…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
And while Americans can exercise this right as they see fit, sometimes, how people choose to do so leaves you scratching your head until a sizable patch of hair goes missing.
For me, such was the case with this weekend’s “general strike” by supporters of the ICE Out movement. Essentially, the strike came with orders for participants to commit to the mantra: “No work. No school. No shopping.”
In other words, take a principled stand through intentional inertia: What a lovely concept to build a protest on.
But my issue isn’t that protestors decided exercise their right to protest through inaction. My issue is that the thoughtlessness of this inaction is actively hurting local economies.
This week, I heard of businesses that made public apologies for choosing to remain open. They apologized for supporting their families, and for paying their employees, and for engaging in commerce like they do every other day of the year. The whole thing struck me as very odd.
Sure, everyone has the right to withhold their hard-earned dollars as they see fit. But the same amendment affords me the right to point out how this specific strategy is utterly foolish and misses the mark entirely.
To start, sales taxes are not collected by the federal government; they go to state and local governments. Therefore, by withholding your shopping dollars, you’re not undermining ICE or USBP in any way. Instead, all you accomplish is landing a blow to businesses and potentially reducing the budgets of state and local law enforcement, who do not enforce immigration laws.
Again, people have every legal right to do this. However, I wonder if any of these people thought: Does the ideological benefit of this action outweigh the economic and social mpact on my state or city? I would imagine the answer is no.
None of us is a stranger to the dire financial situation New Orleans is in right now. And if you’re tuned in even slightly to what’s going on here, you know that every day and every dollar counts. You know local businesses are constantly teetering on the edge of financial stress, and you know this city's workforce is disproportionately comprised of service industry folks who rely on the community and tourists going out, spending, and tipping well. And now these businesses and employees are being pressured to close their doors, stay home, or circumnavigate the law?
I’ve heard that some businesses have chosen to operate on a cash-only basis during the general strike to avoid collecting sales tax, which—again—isn’t used to fund DHS.
And they’re being pressured to do all of this for a movement that, at its heart, carries on with incredibly ill-defined goals.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, on Panola Street, we have the sinkhole the size of an automobile. We have a 48-inch water main that’s busted. We can't make ends meet. And while all of this is happening, we have a movement asking business owners to shirk their fiduciary obligation to collect sales tax in order to protest federal agencies that do not receive funding from our sales tax dollars.
This makes perfect sense: Let’s punish ourselves, cut off our nose to spite our face, and deplete our local and state governments, which have nothing to do with funding ICE.
At some point, one has to realize that this nation's protest culture has become a political jambalaya, a mishmash of various feelings, rantings, and ravings that span across ideological boundaries. As the laundry list of grievances grows, they fail to connect any dots and lose sight of anything that you can wrap your head around. They tie in anti-capitalist, anti-law-enforcement, and anti-societal sentiments, and what it results in is one big cauldron of self-loathing and anti-Americanism.
Not that I agree with the movement, but if “ICE Out” is the goal, then I feel like these folks could at least put their heads together to concoct a strategy directed towards that organization they’re lashing out at, rather than simply make life harder for mom and pop stores, waitresses, and financially troubled cities like New Orleans.