Tag Archives: Boycott

For real change break the power of the rich!

Posted in Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Current Events, Environmental, Opinion, People Power, Politics by

As many of us are, I’m following current politics anxiously and often. Having been a “leftist” for 50 years, I’m really happy to see a new generation finally getting how much we need big changes. I’m also glad to at last see some understanding of the role of the rich in creating most of our woes. But I’m also uneasy because I don’t see much understanding that a simple change of administration is not an ultimate answer. Too much power has always been held outside of government by the rich and major corporations. Without breaking their power, we’re doomed to be always caught in their greedy machinations.

I’m not sure why it’s so hard to get that to sink in. In part, I think most activists want quick changes and, as they quickly subsided after some victories on Viet Nam, the environment and various rights in the 70’s, the current crop seem impatient for a quick shift that then absolves them from the need to participate. I started trying to get my hippie activist friends in the 70’s to understand the import of research I was doing on the Council on Foreign Relations (think east coast power elite) and their vast inroads into government positions and policy. They didn’t want to hear it.

In the 90’s I tried to talk to my politically-inclined friends about how we vote with our $$ and the importance of bringing down the power of bad-acting corporations (pretty much all…) and again was met with shrugs of impatience. In more recent years I’ve been pushing progressives to organize around the need to bring down the oligarchs. A few people are getting it but I’m not seeing enough.

There are 3 basic parts I see where we can start breaking up the power of the oligarchs and global corporate bullies. First, boycott, boycott, boycott, And the first thing to understand about boycotting is it doesn’t take a large percentage to influence the behavior of corporations. Studies have shown a boycott by 5% can influence a policy change. The complicated part is getting together lists of all the companies owned by the worst oligarchs and all the companies with the worst policies on labor, environment, etc. And then organizing for as many people as possible to boycott all the ones they can.

For instance, someone who lives in a small town with only Walmart as a choice can’t reasonably be asked to boycott Walmart but they can put the Buycott App on their phone and boycott as many products from bad actor companies as possible when shopping there. And sometimes you’ll find dilemmas like Whole Foods being own by Amazon but donating Democratic and, for instance, making one of the highest environmentally ranked toilet papers on the market. It takes people plugging in as much as they can where they can. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/advocacy/direct-action/organize-boycott/main

Another big issue with boycotts is the lack of alternative products and businesses. I’ve written before of the world-wide and growing local co-op movement , which I think holds a lot of promise. We need more co-ops, more small manufacturing, etc. to provide people with alternatives to buying from the greedy pigs.

Another arena where I see possibilities of fomenting change re big corporations follows the brilliant plan carried out by environmentalists with Chevron and Exxon. A concerted campaign of buying shares, recruiting shareholder activists and using voting rights garnered them a seat on each board (since defeated at Exxon). Maybe activists could coordinate the various angles required to elect more Board members to lots more companies. A long shot, but it sure would be helpful if we could create some change from within those companies.

All of this requires some really long-term planning and finding ways to encourage people to boycott, etc. for longer periods than they’re usually willing to do. Which requires enough liberals, progressives, etc to really understand how crucial it is to break the power of the rich that we can stay organized and carrying on the work.

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I’ve written more extensively about all of this in the past and there’s a whole list of posts, most of which contain a lot of links to more info, at the bottom of this post: Boomers, Revolution, Politics

SCOTUS: stop being surprised, accept who they are

Posted in Change the World, Current Events, Opinion, Uncategorized by

As SCOTUS in particular and Repug leaders in general continue to promulgate hateful, backsliding, white supremacist policies and programs, Democrats and the media continually express their amazement at how out of step with the opinions of most Americans the right-wingers are. I’m so tired of this b.s. disingenuousness.

They’ve been showing us who they are at least since Reagan’s time. And like smug, patriarchal, rich white supremacists throughout U.S. history, they don’t give a flying f**k what the majority of Americans think or want. They don’t give a sh*t if their policies kill millions of people. As long as it’s not them or their loved ones, the lives of us peons are completely expendable to them.

Their arrogant assumption is that their fake version of Christianity and their ridiculous “trickledown” economics theory provide the right rules and regulations for the rest of us and that they, the smart and favored-by-god wealthy class are the ones who should dictate what the rest of us can and can’t do.

They don’t care that every study ever done on trickledown economics proved it doesn’t work. As long as the money is flowing upward and they’ve forced everyone to live by their rules they could care less about the impact on the rest of the populace.

Many of the policies they’ve implemented and are planning to implement will cause large swaths of the population to die. Their assumption is the ones most affected will be POC/Democrats and killing people to stop them from voting is A-OK with them. Don’t kid yourself about the level of malevolence these people have toward the majority of people.

It’s way beyond time to stop with the pretense of surprise and shock that there are people who would do such things and start doing the level of plotting and planning they have done for years. Their plots have brought us to the brink of the end of democracy and “go vote” is NOT A PLAN FOR STOPPING THEM.

I’ve been saying for several years that we need to figure out both an effective campaign of counterpropaganda and, most important, how to deliver it with maximum impact. The military does it in war zones and brainwashed people in other places have been re-educated; it needs to happen here.

I’ve also been saying for decades that our real votes are with our dollars. The real power in our country is wielded by corporations and their owners. Too many politicians on both sides are owned by various corporate interests to assume that major change can ever be implemented just by changing some elected officials.

They get their power by using money to buy politicians and judges and they get that money because we buy their stuff. It’s beyond time to organize major boycotts of all the global corporations. And before you start screaming that it’s not possible for everyone to boycott everything: it only takes 5% participation to start influencing a corporation to change some policies.

Clearly it would take more than that to really break their power but not anywhere close to all. But we need to organize so as many people as possible are boycotting every company they can; that also means all of us will be buying some stuff from bad actor companies because we currently have no other choices.

Which leads to another of my suggestions. A co-op movement has been quietly growing around the world. (see post for many links to info on co-ops) They’ve been active long enough for studies to have been done and they’ve been shown to be profitable, to pay employees better, offer better benefits, etc. But we need a lot more of them to provide alternative goods. In the meantime, if you can afford to buy local, in every instance where you can, purchase from small local businesses.

Activists in the environmental arena have figured out how to create an activist hedgefund and use shareholder votes to put activists on the boards of major corporations. See Exxon and Chevron. So far it hasn’t been enough to move the needle on climate change-related policies but infiltrating boards is a strong idea for trying to create change.

Many are also finally noting it’s beyond time to organize the same way the right has to get people elected at all the local levels, from school and water boards to city councils to state legislature reps. Running for a local seat or helping with local election campaign are ways to help. If, like me, you can’t get out readily, find organizations like the Poor People’s Campaign who offer phone banking and text banking opportunities. PPC’s text banking to get out the vote is SO well organized and easy to do.

Seriously, stop with the “can you believe it” commentary and figure out how to do something. These people are soulless, hateful despots and there are no depths to which they will not go to get what they want, which is an authoritarian theocracy. And it’s up to us to stop them.