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Friend,
I wanted to share this update I wrote for Boycott Central, a group of folks joining strategic, impactful boycott campaigns standing up to MAGA-aligned corporations and defend democracy.
Last week saw three successful corporate campaigns against ICE. The news was largely overshadowed by the horrific killing of Renee Good. (Daniel Hunter published this piece at Waging Nonviolence on movement responses to her murder.)
A recent article in The Nation, “Want to Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators” — helpfully lays out some of the biggest ICE enablers. In it they describe the goal, “Anti-authoritarian scholars and organizers stress that the most important thing for pro-democracy movements to do is to peel away a regime’s ‘pillars of support.’ Even the most despotic of regimes can’t rule without the backing or consent of powerful external institutions. Businesses are society’s most important non-state institutions, and most of the biggest ones in America are collaborating with Trump, making themselves a very steady pillar of support for his rule.”
So we wanted to lift back up the victories with preliminary notes on those campaigns.
Hilton
The first campaign of last week was Hilton. This was a decidedly mixed bag with national pushback.
The victory was this: local organizers in Minneapolis had determined that we needed to find some offensive campaigns to get immigration agents out of their community. Their first target: a local Hilton Hotel, which was housing much of the surging immigration officials.
They used noisemakers at night. They called and pleaded with the hotel to break ties. And, amazingly, they did! Responding to DHS email addresses, they explained they do not accommodate ICE/DHS.
What’s next was major pushback. DHS posted on its official government X account screenshares of the rejection emails from the hotel — which stated they were refusing service to DHS. Mischaracterizing the point of the Christmas story, they blasted the local Hilton’s decision, “No room at the inn!”
Pressured by the Trump regime, national corporate stepped in and eventually severed ties with the local Hilton. It’s now on with #BoycottHilton trending, with growing calls to reinstate ties to the local Hilton and to refuse service to ICE and CPB agents. Even employees are warning people of ICE agents (like this brave 20-year-old who was fired for doing so).
People are ramping up pressure on Hilton by
contacting their corporate offices (
here’s a letter sent by Idaho 50501 for inspiration) and
cancelling their Hilton accounts.
Avelo
The next win of the week was a longer campaign: Avelo. Avelo has been the primary commercial airline for immigration agencies moving detainees around the country. Avelo had signed a $150 million contract, often aiding in the illegal removal of individuals without their right to a fair hearing or due process.
The Coalition to Stop Avelo listed its different tactical strategies:
Organize Anti-Avelo Protests in Avelo Cities Around the Country
Organize a National Boycott of Avelo - drive their ticket sales to zero
Pressure City/State Officials to Review, Suspend, and Terminate Avelo Contracts and Subsidies
File lawsuits against cities and states that continue to fund Avelo in violation of their own laws and values.
Launched late in the summer, by the fall their initial pressure campaign had resulted in shutting down Avelo’s entire West Coast operations (which were relatively small). Avelo insisted the boycott campaign had nothing to do with its decision, but campaigners disagreed: citing the combination of local government pressure and the growing boycott.
The boycott campaign continued and grew — ultimately resulting in Avelo’s announcement.
Avelo’s explanation for its decision to end ICE deportations: “The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”
Indivisible, which had joined the Coalition a few months earlier, released a statement: "For months, communities across the country spoke out, organized, protested and demanded that Avelo Airlines end its deportation flights. After months of plummeting sales and canceled commercial flights, Avelo was forced to walk away from contracts that harmed immigrant families and destabilized workers — and its sales.”
Spotify
In October, news sources had noted Spotify was showing ICE recruitment ads. Questioned about this decision, Spotify insisted it didn’t violate their standards and told listeners to use the thumbs down rating system to stop those ads from appearing in their feeds.
Rolling Stone reported this has been part of a broad advertising push — the government bought over $2.8 million in ads from Meta alone. $74,000 went to Spotify.
Spotify was targeted for a number of reasons. Many people had been unhappy with Spotify for quite some time — with periodic boycotts for their platforming Joe Rogan or musicians pulling their catalogs due to low payment for artists. Adding to that heat, Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, had invested $693.6 million in an upstart military firm.
So the ICE ads provided renewed fodder for the behemoth, which had previously rebuffed all pressure campaigns against it.
“Don’t stream fascism” became the rallying cry as Indivisible, 50501 Movement, and Working Families Party launched their “Spotify Unwrapped” boycott.
Just a few months later, Variety confirmed with Spotify that the ICE ads are no longer playing. As Indivisible notes, “The company’s statement was a little vague on the particulars, so we’re urging its new leaders to clarify if it will refuse to run ICE propaganda for good. For now, the main demand of our campaign has been met.”
They ads could have been renewed — but weren’t. But Spotify has not made any move to suggest they have a changed policy or attitude towards accepting ICE ads. How important the boycott was in that calculation we may not know, but certainly a contribution.
In a video explaining this, organizer Nelini Stamp explains, “This is a really good sign.…On January 1st, two new CEOs took over Spotify… it means it’s a new day.” We hope that’s indeed the case.
These are immediate reflections. It can take time to track notes and assess what causes the shifts. Here’s a solid case study by Jeff Ordower and Daniel Hunter on How #TeslaTakedown Combined Centralization and Decentralization to Fight Authoritarianism.
These wins are not clean or linear. They come amid loss, backlash, and efforts by the state to reassert power through violence, contracts, and corporate pressure. Still, they matter.
They show that corporate campaigns can disrupt business models, shift calculations, and create costs for collaboration with ICE — even when victories are partial or provisional. In a moment when violence is meant to paralyze us, these campaigns remind us that collective action can still move institutions, expose fault lines, and give our grief somewhere to go. The lesson of the week isn’t that we’ve figured it all out. It’s that organized people, applying sustained pressure, can force choices from powerful wealthy entities — and that’s a muscle worth continuing to build.
These victories don’t erase last week’s violence — but they show one way movements refuse to let violence be the final word.
In solidarity,
Boycott Central
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