That isn't going to work.
First, the what.
Then, the why not.
{Soledad O'Brien, CEO of Starfish Media Group, produced the CNN documentary "Black and Blue," Rose Arce is Starfish Media Group's executive producer. }
(CNN) -- Once again, the streets are electric with anger after a white police officer evades charges for fatally shooting a black man. Sirens screech and wood batons push back marchers protesting from Missouri to New York to Los Angeles. This time the cadence of "No Justice, No Peace" has been replaced with "Hand's Up. Don't Shoot."
But there was another sign raised above the crowd in a recent protest in New York: "Doing Nothing with Saying Nothing. Changes Nothing." The mathematics of this one are clear. Something's gotta give.
A loose network led by African Americans in the film and arts world has emerged from the fog of tear gas to call for a quiet riot in response: a boycott of Black Friday shopping.
Ryan Coogler, who directed the 2013 film about police brutality called "Fruitvale Station," told us he was confounded by the eruptions of "human rights violations committed by public servants."
"There are three ways you can express yourself," Coogler said. "You can vote. You can protest. You can choose how you spend your money that goes to America's corporations that hold a lot of power."
"We've got to fight the powers that be!" proclaimed Public Enemy's Chuck D in 1989. With the embers of Ferguson still smoldering, it is clear that the struggle continues. But by taking their purchasing power away on retailers' favorite day of the year, the voice of blacks in America, and their allies, may echo more loudly in its absence from shopping malls and big box stores.
Earning less than whites and unemployed at more than double the national average, African Americans still have $1 trillion in buying power, according to Nielsen. They spend more on media, watch more television, shop more frequently off and online and spend more on beauty products than any other ethnic group in the country. That is serious sway.
People who make movies also have sway -- people such as Ava DuVernay, director of the upcoming film "Selma" and actors Michael B. Jordan ("The Wire") and Nate Parker ("The Secret Life of Bees"). #BlackOutBlackFriday has even produced its own minifilms to fuel this modern version of the bus boycotts.
One of them features an interview with the daughter of Eric Garner, who describes losing her father to police violence. Garner was choked to death by police who suspected he might be selling "loosies" or loose cigarettes. In his grand jury testimony, Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson said the man he shot to death, Michael Brown, might have been suspected of stealing "cigarillos" at a convenience store.
The #BlackOutBlackFriday videos alone make the case for change.
"Social media and the technology, with respect to camera phones, empowers every single person who has access to a device," Parker told us. These are the kind of media people could be watching ahead of Black Friday, rather than falling prey to commercial plugs to shop.
The outcry over police brutality can't end with the Thanksgiving news cycle. President Barack Obama can't just promise to take a look -- yet another look -- at how the police interact with the public. Public frustration over policing didn't boil over only because of Michael Brown's death. It did because of the daily indignities that have become common for black people. These boycott organizers feel that helplessness as they watch the police violence spinning out of control and don't know how to stop it. It's not like you can dial 911.
To Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown "the whole thing started over 'will you just walk on the sidewalk.' " Then suddenly the man he called a "demon" was dead, he washed his hands of blood and stowed his gun. He faced no judicial accountability after 25 days of grand jury investigation.
A 2013 Pew Research Center survey showed that 7 of 10 blacks felt they were being treated less fairly than whites by police. A Gallup poll that same year found that nearly 25% of all black males from ages 18 to 34 reported being treated unfairly by police in the past 30 days.
"This is not a one-day thing," DuVernay told us. "What #blackoutblackfriday is trying to do is to create ongoing pressure to change the conversation among conscious people of all colors."
They might achieve more by opting out of the system than by opposing it. Your presence is sometimes felt by your absence.
In the effort to find some solution, any solution, that doesn't involve physical harm, property damage and/or further violence, the idea of an economic boycott is certainly, on its face, worthy of consideration.
The concept itself has, of course, been successful in the past for a number of causes, not the least of which was the public bus boycotts in Alabama in the 1960's that impacted the profitability of the segregated bus lines in such a dramatic matter that it, literally, resulted in the first domino being tipped ending in integration of not only the bus lines but many, and eventually, all things racially segregated in this country.
As a means of putting out the fire this time, though, not so much.
In the 1960's, the civil rights movement was all encompassing with every black person in the country invested in the outcome. Moreover, though, every black person in the country, at that time, was aware that they were invested in the outcome and the degree of endorsement and participation, critical to the success of any group effort, had reached critical mass.
But, as abhorrent as these incidents of racial conflict that result in whites shooting and blacks dying are, the blacks in this country have not yet reached that critical mass.
At least not en masse'.
And the complexion of the American culture, both literally and metaphorically, in the year 2014 is markedly different than it was in 1960's.
Though prejudice and racism have not been extinguished so as to be non-existent, blacks are no longer treated, in a wholesale fashion, as an oppressed people, an enslaved people, even a minority people.
The culture has accepted, if not invited, black contribution and participation on an unprecedented scale.
Black artists sell equal amounts of music, win equal amounts of awards, even fill stadiums with equal amounts of fans as their white counterparts.
Black culture in movies, television and the other arts are prolific and plentiful, their presence such an accepted part of the mainstream that mention is no longer made of their sharing as if it were some kind of anomaly.
The percentages might still rightly be labeled as works in progress, but blacks are routinely elected to, and hold , office at city, state and national levels, head corporations, own and or manage major league sports teams.
And, then, there's that black man who has been elected President of the United States.
Twice.
Yet, with all of that evolution, hatred between the races continues to raise its ugly head in the forms of whites shooting and blacks dying and towns burning in the aftermath.
Best intentions not withstanding, convincing hundreds, let alone thousands or even millions, of blacks to refuse to shop at Wal Mart on Black Friday isn't going to stop the shooting.
Or the dying.
Or the burning.
This assuming, of course, that you could get hundreds, let alone thousands or even millions, of blacks to refuse to shop at Wal Mart on Black Friday in the first place.
Cold, even callous, as it may seem, those blacks whose children were not shot by a white police officer in the past year and are hoping for a 50" flat screen from Santa, are not going to disappoint their kids in favor of some attempt at the dollars and cents equivalent of "we shall overcome".
What happened in Ferguson was horrific.
And needs to be understood, confronted and prevented in future.
But Ferguson ain't Birmingham.
And this ain't 1961.
Here's a thought.
Maybe it's not about hatred at all.
Maybe it's about fear.
Maybe it's about black people in fear of their lives because of the incidents in the past few years that have given them every reason to fear, if not suspect, that white police officers have decided that the easiest way to deal with blacks who break the law is to simply shoot them.
Maybe it's about white police officers in fear of their lives because of a black culture that seems, even if it's only an incorrect perception, to have so little regard for simple, basic human values, regardless of color. A culture which not only permits but, from appearances, encourages its more militant role models to shove their way into the spot light, those whose anger is palpable, their contempt more than visible, their hostility, evidently and inevitably, bubbling just beneath the surface at all times. The Kanye Wests. The Al Sharptons. The Ray Rices. Pushing out of the spotlight the blacks whose sense of purpose and ambition seems to be about seeking solution as opposed to retribution. Redesign as opposed to revenge. The Julian Bonds. The Tyra Banks. The Condoleeza Rices.
Maybe it's about an atmosphere so poisoned with bad feeling and mistrust and resentment and misunderstanding and miscommunication that our white police officers are beginning to become jaded enough to assume the worst, see the glass as half empty and, because they are human and don't really want to die just to protect and serve, are growing more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
An atmosphere so full of the smoke of venom and vitriol and hated and stored up passion that our black citizens simply assume that every white police officer is an assassin and that any encounter with a cop that results in them walking away alive should count as having beaten the odds.
Using bio degradable trash bags, however well intended, isn't going to make much of a dent in global warming.
Random, un-organized, essentially minor boycotting of the neighborhood Costco isn't going to do much to clear the air.
And the air is what needs to be cleared.
Not only the atmosphere.
But the atmosfear.
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