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Boycotts work. Mostly. One of the first things our children learn about regarding our founding is the Boston Tea Party — basically, a boycott. In retaliation against British-imposed taxes, colonists boycotted British tea — and famously dumped tea shipments into Boston Harbor. This direct action galvanized the American Revolution and became one of our history’s most famous economic protests.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest, and led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others, forced the Supreme Court to declare bus segregation laws unconstitutional, marking a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Of course, that one took nearly a year of struggle to bear fruit.
And that kind of collective struggle is a problem for modern Americans. We’ve all done one thing or another — stopped shopping at Home Depot / Target / Hobby Lobby; ended our subscription to Amazon / Disney / etc. But we haven’t yet been able to muster a collective, focused, organized boycott that would force our overlords to the bargaining table.
Yes. We got Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. That was a win, for sure, and it wasn’t just about letting a comedian tell jokes. It was about pushing back on a government that sought to coerce a corporation into compliance, and hammering that corporation when it bent the knee. And it worked, and it’s a start.
Now imagine that all seven or eight million of us who marched last weekend organized and committed to a disciplined and persistent campaign of boycott. We could accomplish just about anything.
But we can’t just individually decide to stop shopping at, say, Walgreens (or H&M or Ulta or etc etc). Seven million individual actions will get us nowhere.
For a boycott to work, we need to agree on a target and have clear, tangible, realistic goals. We have to build our coalition and make sure that everyone’s on board and prepared for the hardship that we all will face. The campaign needs publicity — heat. Whoever or whatever we’re boycotting needs to know exactly what the hell we’re doing. We have to mobilize other consumers, maintain momentum and never shut up about what we’re doing.
And we have to have the wisdom to know when we’ve won, and a plan for what comes next.
It’s not easy. But a boycott is one of the most effective tools we have. We just have to agree to do it.
Sam Osterhout and Andra Watkins go through the finer points in this discussion. If you want more information and to learn how you can join up, visit General Strike. [ [link removed] ]

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