Black Friday boycott by African Americans in support of Ferguson

While the protest across the U.S. has been subsiding by St. Louis county grand jury‘s decision not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, the African-American community seems to make a collective movement in wake of the contentious shooting death of Michael Brown.

Some African-American organizations are planning to stage a Black Friday Protest, which boycotts shopping on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year that falls on the next day of Thanksgiving Day. African-American civil right group "Blackout for Human Rights" is encouraging African Americans to participate by spreading messages “Let’s boycott shopping. Let’s invite your friends to the boycott,” on the Internet webpage and twitter. CNN reported on Wednesday that such a collective movement aims to put pressure on the white community leveraging the purchase power of the African-Americans, which accounts for 12 percent of the total population in the U.S. As African-Americans tend to purchase high-priced products including TVs on the Black Friday, if they join the Black Friday boycott movement, sales of the related businesses will inevitably drop. CNN estimated the purchase power of African-Americans at multi-billion dollars.

Some analyze that this incident would bring African-American voters together to make great influence over the 2016 presidential election.

According to a recent analysis by the U.S.-based think-tank Pew Research Center, the turnout of African-American voters has been increasing. The black voters’ turnout rate recorded the highest 66.2 percent in the 2012 presidential election where incumbent President Barack Obama won re-election, surpassing the white voters’ rate of 64.1 percent. Before this, the white voters’ turnout rate had been the highest. Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research for the Pew Research Center, forecasted that while the African American voters’ turnout rate has been going up continuously since the 1996 presidential election, the Ferguson incident is highly likely to call on political enlightenment of the black community.

This atmosphere is reflected by the fact that not only Democratic Party that the black voters support but also the Republican Party are carefully sending messages in support of the African-American community. Senator Rand Paul, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, wrote an opinion in the news magazine Time and claimed, “Politicians must be held responsible for the Ferguson incident.”

Meanwhile, voices are raised around the world against St. Louis county grand jury’s decision. In London, 5,000 people had a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy with slogans such as “Black Lives Matter” “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” reported by AFP.