About Us

Our Movement

Fasting Fridays is a nationwide economic protest where Everyday People refrain from all monetary transactions every Friday. By withdrawing our economic participation, we demonstrate our collective power and demand meaningful action against systemic white supremacy.

This movement marks the 10th anniversary of the Charleston 9 - nine Black people murdered at Mother Emanuel AME Church by a white supremacist in 2015. Since then, white supremacist violence has continued while governmental actions have increasingly aligned with the ideology that motivated that horrific event.

What will this fast accomplish? It will get us organized and build the necessary foundation for sustained action. It will put those in power on notice that they need our dollars and our labor. And it will deepen our knowledge and practice of interdependence as we recognize how all our seemingly unique struggles for justice are actually interconnected.

Our Demands

We call on the federal government to immediately:

Bring Back DEI

Until reparations are properly paid out to Black and Indigenous survivors and descendants of white supremacist state-funded and state-protected violence and the land is given back to its original human stewards, you will:

  • Stop the elimination and criminalization of DEI initiatives
  • Reinstitute all rescinded/cancelled funding and lost jobs
  • Reinstate all programs working toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government
End Attacks on Education & Learners

You will un-dismantle the Department of Education, including its funding and programming, reinstating all lost jobs and grants.

You will stop your attacks on institutions of higher education and libraries, reinstating all funding and ensuring their independence from government overreach.

You will cancel student loan debt.

Enact Economic Justice

Systemic racism and systemic poverty are intertwined.

We will not accept federal policy that favors the wealthy and big corporations and punishes working class people and the poor. We will not accept tax cuts for the ultra-rich that will punish middle and working class people and families with higher taxes and fewer critical services.

Therefore, you will:

  • Restore and expand funding to Medicaid, SNAP, Head Start, and federal housing programs (Section 8)
  • Raise the minimum wage to $15/hour
Get Your Hands off Immigrants

You will:

  • Halt all detainments, deportations, and VISA revocations
  • Find those you have disappeared and bring them home
  • Provide a path to citizenship for all who are here
  • End the Alien Registration Act as it is unjust and built on lies
  • Abolish ICE
Guarantee Trans Health & Safety

You will:

  • Rescind all laws and policies that compromise trans safety and identity
  • Remove government from healthcare decisions
  • Commit to a universal policy that healthcare is between a person and that person's healthcare provider for all people, regardless of gender
Guarantee Palestinian Safety

You will:

  • Stop aiding and abetting in any way any assault on Palestinian lives, culture, and land rights
  • Immediately allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and the West Bank
  • Include Palestinian voices in a peace process and a justice process so that those harmed can decide how they move forward in the land and with their neighbors
Get Your Hands off Disabled People

Disabled people deserve safe and uncomplicated access to public life, healthcare, work, and leisure.

You will:

  • Leave the Americans with Disabilities Act in place and reinstate all rescinded guidelines, plus funding and jobs to ensure compliance
  • Rescind the memo terminating federal remote work arrangements
  • Guarantee Medicare's coverage of Telehealth
  • Terminate any efforts to develop a registry of autistic people or disabled people
  • Reinstate and fund again all SSA services, including jobs and grants
  • Guarantee protections for SSDI and SSI, as well as increased funding to process applications
  • Increase payments to disabled people so that SSDI and SSI payments are in line with/reflect cost of living
  • Pass Medicare for All or another universal healthcare package
Guarantee Reproductive Rights

You will:

  • Decriminalize and provide federally guaranteed legal protection to anyone seeking abortion, contraception, and/or miscarriage care
  • Provide funding and access to free:
    • Prenatal services
    • Delivery care
    • Postnatal care
    • Miscarriage care
    • Contraception
    • Safe abortion
  • Fund, pass laws, and provide policy guidelines for employers around granting workers a guaranteed minimum of 6-months of parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child
  • Fund and provide guaranteed access to low-cost and high-quality childcare
Dramatically Reduce Policing and Incarceration

You will:

  • Rescind the April 28, 2025 Executive Order "STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA'S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS"
  • End all prison expansions and stop seeking any new prisons or incarceration/internment camps of any kind for any reason
  • End cash bail and let go free anyone who is legally innocent
  • End enslavement through incarceration and support civil recourse for wage recovery from all incarcerated people who have been forced to work for no or low pay
  • End the use of solitary confinement
  • Dramatically reduce funding for policing and incarceration
  • Dramatically increase funding for anti-poverty measures like:
    • UBI
    • Free and affordable housing
    • Job training
    • Education
    • Head Start
  • Put all BWC footage in the hands of the people
  • End Qualified Immunity
  • Get all the cops out of our schools and provide the resources and staff our youth need instead
  • Decarcerate anyone who is not an active threat, regardless of prison sentence length
Protect the Planet

You will commit to and provide a path and funding for:

  • Ending the burning of all fossil fuels in the U.S. by 2030
  • Diplomatic relations with a goal to end nuclear armament in all countries throughout the globe by 2035
  • Re-imagining our energy use in everything from:
    • Building design
    • Healthcare
    • Agriculture
    • Transportation

You will re-envision a process for policy setting/law creation that asks first:

"What will this do to us and the land and its other inhabitants in 10 years? In 25 years? In 100 years? In 1000 years?"

We will no longer be governed by the tyranny of the dollar, the stock market, and the billionaire.

Participate

How you can get involved

Every Friday, take no monetary actions. Don't bank. Don't buy gas. Don't buy groceries. Don't eat out or order takeout. Don't shop at all. Don't make purchases online.

Instead of relying on money to get us what we want and need, if we find ourselves in want and need on a Friday, we will ask for what we want and need from others. We will give to those who ask.

If your religious tradition is one that includes fasting from food or drink in order to spend more time in prayer, we invite you to join us in that way every Friday, too.

Join the Movement View Upcoming Events

Why Fasting?

What will this fast accomplish?

It will get us in shape

It will build muscle. It will get us organized. It is an essential building block in whatever escalation may be needed down the line to force those in power to meet our demands.

We take the Montgomery Bus Boycott as one of our models. That boycott lasted 13 months. It also took 13 months. Those freedom fighters were in shape for that long haul. They were practiced and united. We are not.

For us to last as long as this takes, we must:

  • Get strong
  • Get together
  • Become self-sacrificial

This fast is a cornerstone for what we are building.

It will put those in power on notice

They need Everyday People. They need our dollars. They need our labor. They need our go-along-with-it-all-ness.

Those in power only govern with the consent of the governed. Our fast is a protest, a withdrawal of our consent.

Many of us feel powerless right now. We are not powerless. We can control how and when and where we spend what money we still have.

It is true that a future we did not want is here, but it does not need to be the future anymore. It is time to show those who sought this future, who revel in it, whose lives of destruction and lies are built on it, that this future's days are numbered, because we have the numbers.

It will deepen our knowledge and practice of interdependence

For us Everyday People, our struggles overlap. Our independence/dependence overlaps, too.

As we refrain from monetary transactions on Fridays, we will notice:

  • Money's grip on us
  • Its grip on those with/in power

As we fast on Fridays and either do without or ask for what we need and want from others, we will notice whether or not the relationships we are in are transactional or loving.

As we fast on Fridays, we will notice who joins us in fasting and why.

After all:

  • What does disability justice have to do with education?
  • What does trans safety and liberation have to do with Black safety and liberation?
  • What does the protection of the planet have to do with immigrants?
  • What does Palestine have to do with Charleston?

Everything.

Join the Movement

Together, we can build the necessary foundation for sustained action against white supremacist violence.