your wallet was never a ballot

Support independent, creatorowned media without the advertiserfriendly filters. Watch Politits and back the channel directly on Nebula

Every June, the rainbow logos bloom. Every July, they vanish. This is the video about why, and why the wallet they told you to vote with was never actually a ballot.

I spent a week trying to buy my way to a clean conscience: cancel Spotify, boycott Starbucks, reach for the "100% ethically sourced" coffee. I failed, and the mechanical reason I failed is the whole video. We trace how a 40-year political project quietly downgraded you from a citizen (who holds power with other people) into a consumer (who holds it alone, one tap at a time), who actually broke corporate Pride in 2025 (spoiler: it wasn't "the culture," it was a handful of very rich, very weird men), and the single difference between a boycott that brings an empire to its knees and a guy smashing his own Keurig on his own driveway.

If you've ever felt that low, tired feeling in the cereal aisle, auditing your own receipts, never feeling clean, this one's for you. Happy Pride.

CHAPTERS:

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

- National Consumers League v. Starbucks - "100% ethical" false-advertising suit (D.C., filed Jan 2024; motion to dismiss denied)

- Gravity Research - corporate DEI-language retreat report (1,378 Fortune 100 documents, Jan 2023–May 2025)

- BarkBox internal Slack leak, June 2025

- Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney, April 2023; Anheuser-Busch exits St. Louis & San Francisco Pride, 2025

- Target DEI rollback, Jan 2025; Twin Cities Pride; AFT + Rev. Jamal Bryant's 40-day "Target fast"

- NYC Pride & SF Pride 2025 sponsorship shortfalls

- Leonard Leo, Barre Seid & the $1.6B Marble Freedom Trust gift (2021); Concord Fund → Consumers' Research / "Woke Alert" (Guardian reporting); DC AG investigation; CRC Advisors self-dealing

- Robby Starbuck campaigns - Tractor Supply, John Deere, Lowe's, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel's

- Trump executive orders (Jan 2025) revoking EO 11246 (LBJ, 1965) & targeting "illegal DEI"; Tesla-boycott "illegal" posts

- Mont Pèlerin Society (1947); Ludwig von Mises on the market as "a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote"

- Niklas Olsen, *The Sovereign Consumer*

- Lizabeth Cohen, *A Consumers' Republic*

- Wendy Brown, *Undoing the Demos* (homo economicus vs. homo politicus)

- Mark Fisher, *Capitalist Realism* (reflexive impotence)

- Slavoj Žižek on cultural capitalism — "you buy your redemption from being only a consumerist"

- Karl Marx on commodity fetishism

- Keurig / Hannity / Roy Moore boycott, 2017

- Economic Blackout (People's Union USA, Feb 28 2025) vs. the organized Target campaign

- Montgomery Bus Boycott — MIA, Jo Ann Robinson & the Women's Political Council, E.D. Nixon, Georgia Gilmore's "Club from Nowhere," Browder v. Gayle, Lloyd's of London

- UFW grape boycott; Greenpeace v. Nestlé KitKat (2010); the anti-apartheid campaign; BDS

- Gay Liberation Front manifesto (1971); Dean Spade & the Big Door Brigade (mutual aid)

If you liked this video and want to leave a one-time tip:

SUBSCRIBE and join us!

Step Back is made possible by the generous contributions of viewers like you, consider helping at

If you liked this video and want to leave a one-time tip: