One idea: Like many, I get maybe 6 solicitations a day from Democratic political entities - members of Congress, candidates for office, PACs, NGOs...if all these just mentioned that "one of the responses of Democrats to ___ has been a grassroots boycott of ___", I suspect that might be enough to trigger such a boycott on a significant scale by people who have already given $$ and are sick of being hit up for money, but want to register support in other ways.
@Lauren Egan I met you and the others briefly at the ‘Nashville bulwark show. please take a look at this. Sumner county has made Oct 14 Charlie Kirk day!!!
I had high hopes for the Bulwark, but this article has made me cancel my subscription. Things are happening at the local level that you people have no idea about.
This excerpt from your linked article needs reading by everyone:
“ It’s reported that former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s post at X on Thursday in which he criticized the company’s decision and the role of Bob Iger in particular, while expressing strong support for Kimmel was “devastating” to Iger, given that Eisner had chosen Iger as his replacement in 2005 and supported his return to CEO in 2023.
Disney received no support from any quarter for the cancellation of Kimmel in the face of a threat by FCC Chair Brandon Carr that violated the law creating the FCC where the commission is specifically barred from taking enforcement action against content, which it is stated in the legislation is “free speech” protected by the First Amendment. The two conservative corporate owners of ABC TV stations also received massive negative responses from their viewers over the weekend for having led the way to the suspension when they refused to carry the show last Wednesday; there were thousands of cancellations of their stations on cable.
Reports over the weekend indicated Disney had taken a “big loss” with cancellations of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. The ESPN cancellations were particularly important due to the fact that the cash flow from cable carriage fees of ESPN as part of various sports packages constitute a greater income to the company than all their advertising.
This decision by Disney implicitly means the company is now willing to take on the Trump kakistocracy when they make further illegal, unconstutitional demands for programming changes to harm their political opponents and glorify Trump’s position as Dear Leader. This is a major blow to Trump and it’s very likely that NBC - having watched what happened of the past week - will refuse Trump’s demands to get rid of Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.”
Thank you for that link! I’ve read the articles in the NYT and the BBC and this one was the icing on the cake. Personally, I sent ABC an email through their user portal on Thursday and told them I was cancelling Disney Plus and Hulu, and that I wasn’t coming back until Kimmel did. All I got was response showing me different links to use for service and reception problems, but I’m sure my message got filed somewhere under “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, which was the scroll down topic for it. No doubt they got hundreds of thousands of those messages over the weekend, and only a fool would think they were all about “service problems”.
I’ve read that hundreds of stars of Disney shows, including the likes of Selena Gomez (OMITB) publicly complained, as did almost all of the major tv production worker unions. Without the actors, writers, show runners, electricians, videographers, set, costume, and makeup artists, Disney and ABC might keep their broadcast licenses, but they won’t have anything to broadcast. I was hoping over the weekend that this would happen, and am greatly pleased that it did.
You aren't in the spaces I am in, left-leaning independent media, and just general sharing online where there was a big boycott immediately that spread and is reported to have been immediate and big enough to produce these results. But more importantly, the same people I follow and read know, as I do, that we don't expect the Democratic leaders at the top to do anything meaningful in this or any similar situation. Most of "us" have refused to support those leaders, knowing they are throwbacks to the previous Democratic party Old Men leaders and are not helping our cause. The real Democratic Party is in the hands of specific elected representatives and senators who are out front doing the work the Party leaders don't understand or know how to do.
Lauren, you rock! As you reported, Media Matters and other progressive groups’ individual funds may not suffice right now to launch effective boycotts and survive consequent Trumpy retaliations. But if they united into a boycotting machine against well- selected corporations that directly or indirectly favor the Administration, the united groups would have more funding and protection, collectively — and more persuasive power, too, convincing us citizens to join in boyotts that would lower corporate bottom lines. Indeed, it was citizen threats and acts of boycotting Disney and ABC sponsors that helped return Kimmel’s show to the network !
No worries on the boycotts since support for the T. Rump criminal enterprise still runs above about 40% which means a solid MAGA base does not care about anything except whatever The Don wants and they are willing to stampede over a cliff. My guess is the T. Rump government shakedown will happen to be followed by a declaration of a "national security crisis" requiring "extraordinary measures" in response. Are we having fun yet?
You must not go on facebook. Disney stock price is falling - people are selling their stock. Not only are people cancelling Disney, they are cancelling Hulu and ESPN plus.
As for the true grassroots groups- we don't wait for leadership anymore. Put Indivisible on your list. I also saw emails about it from Sunrise and Move On. Do you subscribe to the Grassroots Connector? I think you don't know where the people are.
In other news, we forced the Target CEO to take a paycut and recently resign due to the boycott for capitulating on DEI. Elon Musk is still losing money from the Tesla protests. He has now started another company to get money.
I get really tired of corporate media ignoring the grassroots. Do better Bulwark.
Wealth inequality has reached such extremes that boycotts can no longer be effective, unfortunately.
There was a story in February about how it's only spending from people among the top 10% households in terms of wealth that's keeping the US economy puttering along.
When a few dozen people can easily spend more cash on propping up some company than 300 million broke "consumers," the mean and unwashed masses have to adopt a much more DIRECT tactic than trying to influence corporate policy through withholding their meager pittance.
Boycotts are now purely symbolic. Worth doing, because they can help demonstrate how unpopular the regime is. But they no longer command adequate *power* to compel change.
Everything positive that happens is good, but the real *issue* is not whether JK gets to keep his show.
The issue is whether the government can be *prevented* from attempting to rule over our right to self-expression through promulgating fear with the help of our most massive corporations.
Let's get Carr removed from his office, and Patel, and all the partisan leadership which has enabled these anti-American wretches to drag our government into rhetorical knife-fighting in the gutters.
We've seen all this before. Let's keep the big frame in perspective.
What the DNC needs is a group of under 30 media savvy people to run a text, as in flood the zone, shop for immediate responses. Getting rid of David Hogg for trying to make changes, not even trying to compromise with him was wrong. The money isn't coming in because the message is not getting out!
Is the whole dynamic of accountability changing? I see a lot of activity on the ground level, yet its common people doing good work and trying. This is a great article that has me in a contemplative state.
In a response that is somewhat related to the idea of disappearing watch dogs I think one of Trump's recent declarations could open up the possibility for future watchdog work. In the past couple of days Trump said he would discontinue the publication of the annual Hunger in the US report, claiming that it had been politicized.
In an ongoing attempt to prove that he has no concept of whether or not hunger in America might actually be a political issue and why that could be important, he has opened up, what I think, is a good topic for Democrats to use as a cudgel against him. One of the first reasons that comes to mind about why he actually wants to stop issuing the report is because it would reflect badly on him if the report shows that hunger is not declining in America under his second administration. This would probably be especially true now that his Big Beautiful Bill has passed with new restrictions on funds available through SNAP. If food insecurity increases in 2025 a logical conclusion would be that fewer food stamps leads to less food and more food insecurity.
I think a good approach to taking advantage of this gift from 47 would be to take a couple of pages from UK political traditions. The first is the idea of shadow cabinets, which are meant to propound policies that would benefit the public more than the policies proposed by the sitting government. In this case a shadow USDA would issue updated US Hunger Reports highlighting any harm generated by reductions in SNAP availability. Secondarily, the impact of reduced medicaid funds on malnourishment could be included as a further implication of Trump's policies.
The second tradition that would be a beneficial addition to US political traditions is the idea of Prime Minister's Question Time. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Prime Minister's Question Time is a weekly routine where the Prime Minister appears before the House of Commons to answer questions from members. Think of the possibilities if Trump were forced to answer questions in the House or the Senate and would be called out for his lies and dissembling. The possibility of increasing food insecurity would a good topic in such a session. As would the topic of burying unfavorable news in general. The animating rational behind hiding the Epstein files is probably identical to the one for hiding what is in the Hunger in America report.
I think Democrats could get the most mileage out of Trump's ending the publication of the report if they published the report monthly instead of annually with monthly press conferences led by whomever was designated as the shadow secretary of the Department of Agriculture. It would keep up scrutiny on a top economic and humanitarian issue between now and the mid-terms. And I am sure there are many Trump supporters in rural American who be negatively affected by reductions in SNAP benefits. I am also sure that there will be plenty of Department of Agriculture data scientists and data collectors who will be more than happy to supply the data needed for the the hunger report analysis if Trump were to try to embargo that data. Of course if Trump tried to embargo that data it would reinforce the idea that he is trying hide bad news.
We cancelled everything. I think a TON of people cancelled Disney+ and told them exactly why. From what I've heard (tho cannot confirm) is that they took the open text box away from the "Other" option as a reason for cancelling. I've heard it's because they got tired of hearing why people are so pissed. So while not coordinated really, I think a ton of people cancelled and it's hurting their bottom line.
One idea: Like many, I get maybe 6 solicitations a day from Democratic political entities - members of Congress, candidates for office, PACs, NGOs...if all these just mentioned that "one of the responses of Democrats to ___ has been a grassroots boycott of ___", I suspect that might be enough to trigger such a boycott on a significant scale by people who have already given $$ and are sick of being hit up for money, but want to register support in other ways.
@Lauren Egan I met you and the others briefly at the ‘Nashville bulwark show. please take a look at this. Sumner county has made Oct 14 Charlie Kirk day!!!
It appears your reporting is inside a bubble and/or a beltway.
I had high hopes for the Bulwark, but this article has made me cancel my subscription. Things are happening at the local level that you people have no idea about.
Here is what really happened: https://open.substack.com/pub/tcinla757/p/jimmy-kimmel-returns-tomorrow-night
Lauren pay attention to the grassroots!!!!!
This excerpt from your linked article needs reading by everyone:
“ It’s reported that former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s post at X on Thursday in which he criticized the company’s decision and the role of Bob Iger in particular, while expressing strong support for Kimmel was “devastating” to Iger, given that Eisner had chosen Iger as his replacement in 2005 and supported his return to CEO in 2023.
Disney received no support from any quarter for the cancellation of Kimmel in the face of a threat by FCC Chair Brandon Carr that violated the law creating the FCC where the commission is specifically barred from taking enforcement action against content, which it is stated in the legislation is “free speech” protected by the First Amendment. The two conservative corporate owners of ABC TV stations also received massive negative responses from their viewers over the weekend for having led the way to the suspension when they refused to carry the show last Wednesday; there were thousands of cancellations of their stations on cable.
Reports over the weekend indicated Disney had taken a “big loss” with cancellations of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. The ESPN cancellations were particularly important due to the fact that the cash flow from cable carriage fees of ESPN as part of various sports packages constitute a greater income to the company than all their advertising.
This decision by Disney implicitly means the company is now willing to take on the Trump kakistocracy when they make further illegal, unconstutitional demands for programming changes to harm their political opponents and glorify Trump’s position as Dear Leader. This is a major blow to Trump and it’s very likely that NBC - having watched what happened of the past week - will refuse Trump’s demands to get rid of Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.”
https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/jimmy-kimmel-returns-tomorrow-night
Thank you for that link! I’ve read the articles in the NYT and the BBC and this one was the icing on the cake. Personally, I sent ABC an email through their user portal on Thursday and told them I was cancelling Disney Plus and Hulu, and that I wasn’t coming back until Kimmel did. All I got was response showing me different links to use for service and reception problems, but I’m sure my message got filed somewhere under “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, which was the scroll down topic for it. No doubt they got hundreds of thousands of those messages over the weekend, and only a fool would think they were all about “service problems”.
I’ve read that hundreds of stars of Disney shows, including the likes of Selena Gomez (OMITB) publicly complained, as did almost all of the major tv production worker unions. Without the actors, writers, show runners, electricians, videographers, set, costume, and makeup artists, Disney and ABC might keep their broadcast licenses, but they won’t have anything to broadcast. I was hoping over the weekend that this would happen, and am greatly pleased that it did.
Informal it was, but it seems to have worked…
You aren't in the spaces I am in, left-leaning independent media, and just general sharing online where there was a big boycott immediately that spread and is reported to have been immediate and big enough to produce these results. But more importantly, the same people I follow and read know, as I do, that we don't expect the Democratic leaders at the top to do anything meaningful in this or any similar situation. Most of "us" have refused to support those leaders, knowing they are throwbacks to the previous Democratic party Old Men leaders and are not helping our cause. The real Democratic Party is in the hands of specific elected representatives and senators who are out front doing the work the Party leaders don't understand or know how to do.
Lauren, you rock! As you reported, Media Matters and other progressive groups’ individual funds may not suffice right now to launch effective boycotts and survive consequent Trumpy retaliations. But if they united into a boycotting machine against well- selected corporations that directly or indirectly favor the Administration, the united groups would have more funding and protection, collectively — and more persuasive power, too, convincing us citizens to join in boyotts that would lower corporate bottom lines. Indeed, it was citizen threats and acts of boycotting Disney and ABC sponsors that helped return Kimmel’s show to the network !
No worries on the boycotts since support for the T. Rump criminal enterprise still runs above about 40% which means a solid MAGA base does not care about anything except whatever The Don wants and they are willing to stampede over a cliff. My guess is the T. Rump government shakedown will happen to be followed by a declaration of a "national security crisis" requiring "extraordinary measures" in response. Are we having fun yet?
Ms. Egan -- Perhaps add The NY Times to an Indivisible subscription?
Jimmy Kimmel’s Show to Return to ABC on Tuesday Night
The network removal of Mr. Kimmel’s show last week almost immediately morphed into a flashpoint for free speech in America.
You must not go on facebook. Disney stock price is falling - people are selling their stock. Not only are people cancelling Disney, they are cancelling Hulu and ESPN plus.
As for the true grassroots groups- we don't wait for leadership anymore. Put Indivisible on your list. I also saw emails about it from Sunrise and Move On. Do you subscribe to the Grassroots Connector? I think you don't know where the people are.
In other news, we forced the Target CEO to take a paycut and recently resign due to the boycott for capitulating on DEI. Elon Musk is still losing money from the Tesla protests. He has now started another company to get money.
I get really tired of corporate media ignoring the grassroots. Do better Bulwark.
Wealth inequality has reached such extremes that boycotts can no longer be effective, unfortunately.
There was a story in February about how it's only spending from people among the top 10% households in terms of wealth that's keeping the US economy puttering along.
When a few dozen people can easily spend more cash on propping up some company than 300 million broke "consumers," the mean and unwashed masses have to adopt a much more DIRECT tactic than trying to influence corporate policy through withholding their meager pittance.
Boycotts are now purely symbolic. Worth doing, because they can help demonstrate how unpopular the regime is. But they no longer command adequate *power* to compel change.
Forgot the link: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/09/17/top-10-of-earners-make-up-half-of-us-retail-spending
C’mon, it was citizen threats and acts of boycotting Disney and ABC sponsors that helped return Kimmel’s show to the network!
Everything positive that happens is good, but the real *issue* is not whether JK gets to keep his show.
The issue is whether the government can be *prevented* from attempting to rule over our right to self-expression through promulgating fear with the help of our most massive corporations.
Let's get Carr removed from his office, and Patel, and all the partisan leadership which has enabled these anti-American wretches to drag our government into rhetorical knife-fighting in the gutters.
We've seen all this before. Let's keep the big frame in perspective.
What the DNC needs is a group of under 30 media savvy people to run a text, as in flood the zone, shop for immediate responses. Getting rid of David Hogg for trying to make changes, not even trying to compromise with him was wrong. The money isn't coming in because the message is not getting out!
Good idea. All I get from the DNC is requests for money.
Is the whole dynamic of accountability changing? I see a lot of activity on the ground level, yet its common people doing good work and trying. This is a great article that has me in a contemplative state.
In a response that is somewhat related to the idea of disappearing watch dogs I think one of Trump's recent declarations could open up the possibility for future watchdog work. In the past couple of days Trump said he would discontinue the publication of the annual Hunger in the US report, claiming that it had been politicized.
In an ongoing attempt to prove that he has no concept of whether or not hunger in America might actually be a political issue and why that could be important, he has opened up, what I think, is a good topic for Democrats to use as a cudgel against him. One of the first reasons that comes to mind about why he actually wants to stop issuing the report is because it would reflect badly on him if the report shows that hunger is not declining in America under his second administration. This would probably be especially true now that his Big Beautiful Bill has passed with new restrictions on funds available through SNAP. If food insecurity increases in 2025 a logical conclusion would be that fewer food stamps leads to less food and more food insecurity.
I think a good approach to taking advantage of this gift from 47 would be to take a couple of pages from UK political traditions. The first is the idea of shadow cabinets, which are meant to propound policies that would benefit the public more than the policies proposed by the sitting government. In this case a shadow USDA would issue updated US Hunger Reports highlighting any harm generated by reductions in SNAP availability. Secondarily, the impact of reduced medicaid funds on malnourishment could be included as a further implication of Trump's policies.
The second tradition that would be a beneficial addition to US political traditions is the idea of Prime Minister's Question Time. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Prime Minister's Question Time is a weekly routine where the Prime Minister appears before the House of Commons to answer questions from members. Think of the possibilities if Trump were forced to answer questions in the House or the Senate and would be called out for his lies and dissembling. The possibility of increasing food insecurity would a good topic in such a session. As would the topic of burying unfavorable news in general. The animating rational behind hiding the Epstein files is probably identical to the one for hiding what is in the Hunger in America report.
I think Democrats could get the most mileage out of Trump's ending the publication of the report if they published the report monthly instead of annually with monthly press conferences led by whomever was designated as the shadow secretary of the Department of Agriculture. It would keep up scrutiny on a top economic and humanitarian issue between now and the mid-terms. And I am sure there are many Trump supporters in rural American who be negatively affected by reductions in SNAP benefits. I am also sure that there will be plenty of Department of Agriculture data scientists and data collectors who will be more than happy to supply the data needed for the the hunger report analysis if Trump were to try to embargo that data. Of course if Trump tried to embargo that data it would reinforce the idea that he is trying hide bad news.
We cancelled everything. I think a TON of people cancelled Disney+ and told them exactly why. From what I've heard (tho cannot confirm) is that they took the open text box away from the "Other" option as a reason for cancelling. I've heard it's because they got tired of hearing why people are so pissed. So while not coordinated really, I think a ton of people cancelled and it's hurting their bottom line.