Keep it Oakland: e-commerce meets social justice

Abstract

This article examines the labor involved with the upkeep of social media accounts for Oakland-based brick-and-mortar boutiques and their digital storefronts, particularly as businesses move their wares online during shelter-in-place amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Focusing on independent shops in Oakland, California, particularly those which are part of Oakland’s Indie Alliance – a coalition of independent small business owners – this article explores the role of shop workers in producing the authentic aesthetics of themselves and store accounts as a replacement for brick-and-mortar shops. How do small-scale shop owners and clerks make platforms, which were not designed with their needs in mind, work for them? How does sellers’ performance of the local interface with a global digital marketplace and platform infrastructures? In what ways do existing racial hierarchies and structural inequalities affect shop personnel’s experiences of platforms and apps meant to facilitate business transactions? I focus on the Oakland Indie Alliance’s Covid Recovery and Repair funds, which employ social media and crowdfunding platforms or payment apps to provide assistance to local businesses, particularly those which are BIPOC and/or immigrant owned, connecting commercial and social justice oriented goals.