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