The right to boycott

This week, we’re revisiting an episode ([link removed]) we first aired in March about boycotting – where the term came from, who gets to do it and what gets sacrificed along the way.

Julia Simon begins the hour with her reporting on a collection of laws in at least 15 states that forbid contractors who receive state money from boycotting Israel.

Texas’ version of these so-called “anti-BDS” (boycott, divestment and sanctions) laws surprised John Pluecker, a translator and poet from Houston. Pluecker, who uses the pronoun they, learned that boycotting an Israeli hummus brand effectively had prevented them from getting work as a Spanish-language translator for the University of Texas. Later, their desire to boycott interfered with a university teaching job.

“I've definitely lost money already,” Pluecker said. “I mean, I definitely am looking forward to the day that this law no longer exists and that I can go back to contracting not only with U of H but also with other universities and other institutions around the state.”

Pluecker eventually joined an ACLU lawsuit arguing that Texas’ anti-boycott law is unconstitutional. And in March, that case landed before a federal judge, who ruled that the law is unconstitutional. The state is appealing.

Next in the hour, Shaina Shealy profiles a Palestinian entrepreneur who, as his own form of protest, decided to start a mushroom farm entirely independent from Israeli goods. In 2013, Sameer Kraishi quit his job at a nongovernmental organization; purchased the appropriate hardware from Spain, China, France and Germany; and started growing mushrooms. It wasn’t long before the business took off. Kraishi and his partners sold 22 tons of mushrooms in the first year, then 25 tons in the second. They hired 12 local women to help with picking.

But in 2016, they hit a snag. Their compost, which they’d been buying from the Netherlands, was being held up in Israeli ports – first for a few weeks, then for months. Kraishi never got a straight answer about why, though he suspects the Israeli government saw his business as a threat to its own country’s mushroom farmers.

Eventually, he was forced to shut down his operation.

“It is one of the saddest images in my life,” he said of his empty mushroom hall. “Even much more than the bloodiest image. Like you're looking at an empty heart. Like you're looking at a skeleton.”

Finally, Reveal’s Stan Alcorn digs into the origins of the term “boycott.” The act, it turns out, was named after Capt. Charles Cunningham Boycott, an army veteran and rent collector who lived on Ireland’s west coast in the 19th century. When Irish farmers faced a poor potato harvest in 1879, they petitioned Boycott’s mansion to lower their rent by 25 percent. Boycott refused and had the local process server start delivering eviction notices with an armed entourage of 18 police officers.

That’s when the organized shunning effort began. Led by Father John O’Malley, a local priest, the entire community refused to acknowledge – or help – Boycott. The baker wouldn’t bake him bread; the blacksmith wouldn’t shoe his horses. Most importantly, no one was available to help him harvest his own farm’s potatoes.

Even though the British army eventually stepped in to assist, the plan worked. Boycott fled. But his name stuck.

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