On Boycotts
One of the most important things to remember in a boycott is that, before anything else, boycotts change the individual engaged in communal struggle.
Most people, myself included unless I am consciously and relentlessly intentional, don’t think about where we purchase, and what we are supporting.
We just want the best price on a leaf blower, or we like the mustard sauce.
But. When I consider the ripple effects of my dollars, and when I consider them in the context of the person I say I want to be, how much congruence is there (or not), how much daylight there is between my stated praxis and how it plays out on the ground, all of a sudden my choices matter.
Look. We live in a world where we are harmful at least 15 ways before we wake up in the morning.
As I consider what toothpaste to buy, where I buy my coffee, as I scroll my feed with my cell phone, I have made considered choices, *every one of which is harmful*. I need to really acknowledge that and internalize it.
I need to choose to mitigate that harm. If Amazon workers tell me that they are willing to sacrifice, so should I be. Saving 20 bucks on an Amazon Stick, which I was considering purchasing, should absolutely be secondary to the demands of the people I say I stand with.
Yes. There are workers who feed the Amazon machine who disagree. There are workers in Chick Fil A who are treated fairly, whether by corporate or by franchisers.
But here, as in many things, aggregate trumps anecdote.
I think boycotts have their limits.
Boycotts are an act of integrity. But, or rather and, we need to be willing to go all the way with an integral act. That is one needs to have six elements in play, none omitted: see what needs to be done, choose to do it with knowledge and agency, say you will do it, do the action, say you did the action, and then, crucially, take whatever heat comes from it.
These elements can be used for a hardware store, or a chicken shack, or a behemoth online retailer.
Note that I didn’t say which road to take–to boycott or not.
What is most important is that whatever choice is mindful, intentional, and *owned*.
If you truly consider the whole of the Home Depot boycott, read the call to action of the org or person calling for a boycott, and come to a different conclusion, then I can respect your decision, however grudgingly.
*Similarly* if you do an action, but do so without said mindfulness, that’s performative, and not at all reliable or durable.
What is important to me is that one goes into a deep dive into the internal. It is a big deal that LGBT persons are harmed, it is a big deal that women’s bodies are policed; it is a big deal that basic worker protections are being given an end run by using third party contractors.
If you do that dive, and still choose whatever you choose, welp. But know that you may well be making a chink into your praxis. Know that your actions may cost you respect from those whom you respect.
That’s why values should come first. We should each have a set of values that serve as a benchmark.
They should be owned. And priorities set.
Chick fil A pays above the minimum most places; most employees say it’s a great place to work. Home Depot has its supporters, some of them employees–but again here, aggregate reigns. Home Depot has been hostile to organizing, and their wages for hourly aren’t stellar. Amazon workers sometimes wear Attends because their bathroom breaks are monitored.
But if you consider all of that, and still choose to purchase, own it. And then ask yourself, what’s your offset; like carbon offsets.
And if you don’t have values regarding these issues, that’s where to start.
We who choose, or, more accurately, *we who have the privilege of choice*, have power that corporations hope we don’t use.
We don’t write letters asking Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s why they don’t locate in non white areas. We don’t speak to the manager at Walmart, asking about their slight of hand when they called themselves raising wages, while at the same time cutting hours. We don’t publicly say, either way, if we choose the chicken tenders from Chick Fil A or somewhere else. We don’t consider our vote when we get a coupon for home depot. We should.
We need to become aware that our praxis is embedded in everything, and that no action we take is neutral.
If Wal Mart killed off the small businesses in your area, and there is no where else to buy a sewing machine, really think about what that means, and then allow your mind to go to issues of zoning, of the decimation of inner ring suburbs, to the fact that there is no longer anyplace to repair your old machine.
If we are thinking of the workers at Home Depot, have we told the management that we are willing to pay a small premium so their workers can have a living wage? Are we willing to donate the price of a chicken sandwich to Lambda Fund to offset our jonesing for mustard sauce?
With Amazon, it’s easy.
The workers are asking us for a two day sacrifice. So I need to decide if my savings on a fire stick is greater than my stated value of worker solidarity.
I can buy the stick at full price on Friday.
I can go to a local shop for a chicken sandwich. I can pay an extra 5 dollars for the leaf blower.
I am still making harmful choices–because we haven’t even touched on the supply chain; we haven’t thought about the worker in china who made the leaf blower; the worker in the fields who picked the lettuce for the sandwich; the miner in Africa risking his life for metals which make my fire stick work.
But we are thinking about it, and it informs us and spurs us to think bigger and act with whole heart and full intention.
The world depends on all of our learned helplessness, lack of agency, and our inability or unwillingness to see the full cost and ramifications of our actions. Maybe we need to look at that.
By the way, all of the above can be extrapolated to race as well.