Divestment Day of Action

Are you resisting?
Posting to Facebook?
Participating in an economic boycott?
Buying anti-Trump merch?These small acts of resistance send a message and it feels good to do something.But here’s the harsh reality:YOU ARE NOT HELPING.There are only two languages fascists understand: violence and money.We are not going to win a war of fists and bullets. But we can win a war of dollars.Right now, the combined wealth of our collective 401(k)s, IRAs, and brokerage accounts is $44.1 trillion.That money is invested in mutual funds—
which are invested in the very corporations we’re supposedly boycotting.Big banks. Big oil. Weapons manufacturers.
The war machine.It’s time to weaponize our wealth.No protests.
No arrests.
No taxable event.Just a mass, legal, peaceful act of financial self-defense.We pull our money out—together.
We hold it in cash until Trump is out of power.Personally, my retirement account is held in an IRA at Fidelity. It’s valued around $120k and is held in a low cost mutual fund. I sold all of my positions on 1/20/25 and it is now in cash within my IRA. Because of this financial self defensive action, I’ve saved about $5k that I would have lost because of trumps economy.FAQ.I rely on my retirement funds to live. This seems risky and scary.You’re not alone. Most people associate financial moves with risk. And for good reason: no one can predict where the stock market is headed. For many, the safest bet is to buy low-cost index funds and avoid active trading.But here’s a question to consider:
Do you believe the American economy will be better or worse over the next four years?By participating and holding your retirement account in cash, you risk missing out on gains.By staying fully invested, you risk going down with Trump’s ship.Isn’t this just timing the market?
Sort of. But it’s less about trying to guess the perfect time to get in or out and more about protecting yourself during a moment of extreme political and financial uncertainty.Isn’t cash a bad long term investment?
Holding cash is a temporary pause, not a forever decision. It’s a form of financial self-defense. This is about holding steady while things are unstable. You can always reinvest when it feels safe again. Think of it like pulling over during a storm instead of driving through it blind.What about taxes?
Selling your positions and holding in cash within your 401k or IRA is not a taxable event unless you withdraw the money. Retirement accounts are tax deferred. You can buy and sell investments within the account without triggering a tax event. Moving from stocks to cash inside the account is considered a reallocation, not a withdrawal.What if I’m wrong and the market goes up?
Then you missed out on some gains. But you stayed in control of your money and made a decision based on your values and what felt right. That’s not failure that’s financial self-defense. No one bats 1.000. The important thing is that you acted.What is the goal of this?
The goal is not chaos. The goal is control. We want to show that ordinary people still have leverage. By pulling our money, legally and peacefully, we send a message that cannot be ignored. We’re demanding accountability from a system that’s stopped serving us. We want to create pressure, shift power, and open the door for something better. This is about financial self defense. It’s about showing up with our dollars when our voices aren’t being heard.Does this only work if a lot of people do it?
Yes. For this to work, it has to happen at scale. One person selling stocks or moving their money to cash doesn’t move markets. But thousands or millions doing it at the same time? That sends a shockwave. That gets noticed.Think about how fragile the system really is. A single tweet can move the stock market. A bank can collapse in 48 hours from a wave of withdrawals. Wall Street bets on confidence. If we pull back that confidence, even temporarily, it disrupts the cycle of business-as-usual.In political activism, the 3.5% rule, coined by Erica Chenoweth, states that if 3.5% of the population actively participates in a nonviolent movement, it's almost always successful in achieving its goals. This is based on hundreds of resistance movements from 1900 to 2006.