On Black Friday (AKA Buy Nothing Day) 2024, protesters showed up outside the International Plaza shopping mall in Tampa near the airport.

The protest called out US bipartisan support for the genocide in Gaza, and pointed out that on that issue and several others, Trump will be continuing and intensifying Biden’s policies. That said, Trump’s larger agenda was then called out by speakers as “a declaration of war on the working class.”

One speaker emphasized the success of abolitionist Vigilance Committees after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, notably in Springfield, Ohio, the town later slandered by Trump. There, vigilance committee members successfully blocked all of the slaveowners by force of arms from recapturing their escaped workers once they got up and running.(This portion not on the video as it is long and it can take many hours to cover all faces on a long video segment).

Speakers also emphasized that neither party has any intention of doing anything about issues like rising prices or anything else harming the general public. Thus we have the cop cities being built across the US after the Uprising, the RICO charges against protesters there, and all the rest of the recent and very heavy repression.

In my judgement, the true message sent by the repression is to “go big or go home” while they ensure fewer and fewer have a home to go back to.

This protest got heckled a couple times, in both cases by presumed Christian nationalists, who are quite common in Florida. Wasn’t nearly as bad though as at the Nov 9 anti-Trump protest at Tampa City hall though.