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A Black Friday of Resistance as Americans Push Back

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Closeup portrait of two smiling black pretty girls carrying bags, chatting and walking in shopping mall

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Black Friday arrives this year in a country wrestling with the weight of policies that have stripped stability from millions of Americans and placed Black communities at the edge of economic ruin. Storefront lights shine as if the nation were whole, yet in living rooms across the country, families count the losses of a political agenda that has torn apart the federal workforce and shattered the financial security of those who once depended on it. Hundreds of thousands of Black federal workers have been removed from their positions since Trump returned to office, and the effect on neighborhoods, schools, and generational wealth has been immediate.

The crisis facing Black women is even deeper. The National Partnership for Women and Familiesreports that 265,000 Black women have been pushed out of the labor market since January, and the unemployment rate for Black women has climbed to 7.5 percent, which is the highest in years.  “These numbers are damning and confirm what we’ve long known to be true,” said Democratic Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.  “Under Donald J. Trump, Black women continue to face a crisis of disproportionately high unemployment. Their systematic pushout not only has dangerous consequences for Black women, Black families, and Black futures. It is also a glaring red flag for the entire U.S. economy.”

This is the country entering Black Friday. It is why the Mass Blackout movement and the We Ain’t Buying It coalition have stepped forward to reclaim the weekend that once symbolized celebration. Their message calls for shoppers to keep their money, their labor, and their attention away from the companies they believe profit from silence while Black households are battered by economic loss. “No spending. No work. No surrender,” the Mass Blackout coalition announced in its call to action, which accuses the nation’s corporate power structure of thriving while ordinary people struggle to survive.

The second coalition focuses its attention on retailers like Amazon and Home Depot. Activists accuse these companies of cooperating with or benefiting from Trump’s political agenda. LaTosha Brown, cofounder of Black Voters Matter and a member of the We Ain’t Buying It coalition, delivered her remarks in the coalition’s public statement. “We ain’t buying this foolishness. We’re not buying this racism. We’re not buying the abandonment of DEI. We’re not buying that the wealthiest country in the world cannot take care of its own citizens,” she stated. “If they want to call it Black Friday, let’s show them what a Black Friday really looks like.”

Home Depot issued its response after activists accused the retailer of working with immigration authorities during enforcement actions. The company stated that it is not notified before such actions occur and that it is not involved in them. Organizers remain unconvinced and continue to include the retailer in holiday boycott plans.

Amazon has faced scrutiny for working conditions and for the $1 million it contributed to Trump’s inauguration, which boycott leaders cite as evidence of political alignment. The coalition argues that Amazon has benefited from federal policy while workers across the country face tightening hours and declining wages, and its owner, Jeff Bezos, has fully capitulated to Trump.

Behind all these confrontations sits a larger truth. Black Americans are living through an economic emergency that has been shaped by federal policy decisions targeting the jobs, protections, and historical pathways that built the Black middle class. Analysts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report that Trump’s agenda has attacked food assistance, health care, and family income supports at the very moment when unemployment among Black women is rising, and Black communities are losing stable federal careers that once offered a route out of poverty.

Organizers say this Black Friday is not about discounts. It is a line drawn by people who are tired of being told to spend in a country that is stripping away their ability to live. It is a refusal to pretend that holiday lights can hide the harm done to families who have been pushed to the margins of the economy.

The final word from organizers cut through the noise of the season. “We’re not buying from companies that won’t stand with us,” LaTosha Brown stated. “Our dollars will go elsewhere.”

Halfway to Chains: What’s Already Been Enforced Under Project 2025

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Republican Project 2025 (Photo by Douglas Rissing)

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

They said it would never happen here. Yet here we are. Forty-eight percent of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s fascist playbook for dismantling American democracy, has already been put into motion. Nearly half of this regime’s roadmap to erase civil rights, gut public programs, and reimpose racial hierarchy has been realized, with Black America once again standing at the edge of the abyss.

Project 2025 was never just a “policy plan.” It was a declaration of war on pluralism itself. A promise by Donald Trump, Russell Vought, and Stephen Miller to chain the machinery of government to white nationalism, Christian dominance, and patriarchal control. The American Civil Liberties Union warned that it would replace the rule of law with right-wing ideals, reviving 19th-century bans on abortion, dismantling civil rights enforcement, and weaponizing federal agencies against immigrants and protestors. Now, the chains are tightening. The Center for Progressive Reform reports that 251 of the 532 Project 2025 actions have been executed. Entire agencies that were once meant to serve and protect have been hollowed out, their missions inverted. Within the Department of Justice, Trump’s appointees have revived the death penalty, reinstated the racist China Initiative, and authorized aggressive prosecutions of local officials who refuse to enforce his version of “law and order.” Civil rights enforcement has been stripped bare; instead of protecting citizens from discrimination, the DOJ now protects power from dissent.

At the Department of Education, Title IX protections for women and LGBTQ students have been rolled back, and the Office for Civil Rights dismantled. Public education is being replaced with privatized indoctrination, pushing “parental rights” that serve as a Trojan horse for white Christian control. Even special education programs have been gutted, leaving millions of disabled children abandoned in the name of “efficiency.” The Department of Health and Human Services, which was once a guardian of public welfare, has been turned into a moral police force. Abortion access is being criminalized, Planned Parenthood defunded, and data on gender identity erased from health surveys. The new public health priorities are “fertility awareness” and “family discipline,” language straight from the Heritage Foundation’s patriarchal gospel. In housing, Trump’s HUD has repealed fair housing protections and reintroduced policies that penalize single mothers while rewarding “marriage stability.” The echoes of Jim Crow are unmistakable. Homes and neighborhoods once opened through decades of civil rights struggle are being closed again under the pretext of “local control.”

Project 2025’s architects have already unleashed the machinery of cruelty on immigrants and communities of color. Thousands have been rounded up under ICE raids that blur the line between citizen and foreigner. It’s a calculated terror tactic meant to normalize the surveillance and detention of Black and brown bodies. Families have been separated again. Birthright citizenship is under attack. ICE, that iron emblem of modern slavery, now casts a shadow over the same soil where slave patrols once hunted the enslaved. This is not accidental. It is the vision of Russell Vought, who co-authored the 900-page “Mandate for Leadership,” the Project 2025 manifesto. As Trump’s budget director and now his ideological enforcer, Vought believes in purging the federal government of “unfaithful” employees, which means anyone who resists his religious and racial orthodoxy. Stephen Miller, the same architect of family separation and Muslim bans, is back to oversee deportations, surveillance, and the silencing of dissent. Their fingerprints are everywhere, from the federal hiring purges to the empowerment of police forces granted immunity from prosecution. Nearly half of the Project 2025 vision has already been achieved, and it is remaking America into a parody of its democratic promise. The Environmental Protection Agency has reversed greenhouse gas regulations, the Department of Agriculture has reinstated draconian work requirements for food aid, and the White House itself now dictates loyalty tests for every federal employee. This is not governance, it is occupation.

The Center for Progressive Reform notes that Trump’s government shutdown in October 2025 was not a failure of management but a strategy. A deliberate effort to dismantle public programs while blaming “big government” for their collapse. He used the shutdown, as the report states, “as an excuse to advance his goals of slashing programs that benefit millions of Americans.” In this America, cruelty has become the operating principle. The poor are starved to feed the rich, the immigrant is caged to comfort the fearful, and truth itself is outlawed. He once warned that if we do not confront the truth of who we are, we will be consumed by it. Project 2025 is the truth of America unmasked. A nation willing to trade freedom for dominance, justice for vengeance, and compassion for control. Nearly half of the chains have already been forged. They rattle in our schools, our hospitals, our courts, our homes. And while they may not yet bind every wrist, they are ready. The architects of Project 2025 have made their intention plain. To enslave the will of a free people through law, bureaucracy, and fear.

We are halfway to chains.

The Hunger Line: America’s Most Vulnerable Face a Crisis of Cruelty

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Close up American flag

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

There are moments when a nation shows its soul. This is one of them.

Across America, millions are waiting for food assistance that will not come. The Trump administration’s refusal to release federal contingency funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known as SNAP — has triggered what many are calling a man-made famine. For the first time in history, the federal government has deliberately stopped food aid during a shutdown. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul stood before cameras, surrounded by advocates and families, and called the situation what it is: cruel. Nearly three million New Yorkers stand to lose benefits. She announced $30 million in state funds to cover 16 million meals, calling it a desperate measure to soften the blow of what she described as “the destruction Republicans in Washington are inflicting on our state.” “I am doing everything in my power to ensure New Yorkers do not go hungry this holiday season,” Hochul said. “No state can backfill these devastating cuts, but I am taking action to support families suffering the consequences of Republicans’ cruelty.”

The federal government’s refusal to act, she added, “is not a matter of policy, it’s a matter of humanity.” Her words echo across the country. From Boston to Baton Rouge, from Cleveland to Compton, governors and mayors are preparing for hunger on a scale unseen in decades. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey called it historic for all the wrong reasons. “President Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to cut off SNAP benefits to people in America,” she said. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city cannot cover the $30 million shortfall to continue food benefits. “We need the federal government to do its part,” she said. Councilmember Christina Henderson described residents facing “death by a thousand cuts” as federal layoffs and social service reductions take hold. Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin took a different path. He declared a state of emergency, blamed Democrats, and thanked Trump for his “continued support,” promising to use state funds to keep benefits flowing. Critics called it political theater. His order provided no clear plan for how the funds would reach the 850,000 Virginians who rely on SNAP each month.

In Maryland, officials have money in the treasury but refuse to spend it without a guarantee that Trump’s Department of Agriculture will reimburse them. “We are not going to gamble billions of taxpayer dollars while this administration turns its back on working families,” one official said. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein accused the administration of “a cruel abdication of responsibility.” His state has 1.4 million residents who depend on SNAP, including 580,000 children. “As temperatures cool and the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, refusing to use available funds is unconscionable,” he said. The numbers tell the rest of the story. Forty-two million Americans rely on SNAP every month. At least 25 states have already notified recipients that their benefits will stop on November 1. The list includes California, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Jersey. Food banks are preparing for a surge they cannot handle. The New York Times reported that demand has already exceeded supply, with donations down and costs up. “When that social safety net breaks above us, we will be there to do as much as we can,” said Andrea Williams of the Oregon Food Bank. “And it will not be enough.”

ProPublica revealed that the Trump administration earlier canceled nearly 94 million pounds of food aid, including meat, eggs, and dairy, that were supposed to reach food banks nationwide. For those on the front lines, it was an invisible theft — food promised but never delivered. At the same time, the USDA has confirmed that it will not release $6 billion in federal contingency funds, claiming the money can only be used for “unforeseen events” such as natural disasters. The shutdown, apparently, does not qualify. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said, “Republicans in Congress have needlessly shut down the government, and now they’re refusing to work with Democrats to maintain the benefits that put food on the table for millions of Americans.” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont was blunt. “This is all Trump,” he said. “He’s not engaged. He could care less.” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia agreed, calling it “outrageous” that the president is overseas while millions at home face starvation. “Stay in America. Put America first. Sit down with us and work this out,” Warner said.

Private companies have started doing what the government will not. DoorDash announced it would waive fees for food banks and deliver free groceries to families in need. “No one should go hungry in America,” said Max Rettig, the company’s vice president for public policy. “We know this is a stopgap, not a solution. But doing nothing isn’t an option.” In the Bronx, Representative Ritchie Torres said the effects are not theoretical. “SNAP is the difference between hunger and stability for over 150,000 families,” he said. “When Republicans in Washington threaten to cut food assistance, they are threatening to take meals off the tables of children, seniors, and working parents.”

The country is watching as food banks brace for impact, as parents skip meals to feed their kids, as a government chosen by the people turns away from them. The shutdown has now lasted more than four weeks. The lights in the Capitol still burn through the night, but the refrigerators in millions of homes do not. And as one food bank worker in New York put it, staring at a half-empty warehouse before the holidays, “They aren’t numbers on a page. They’re people. And they’re about to be hungry.”