On Sunday, Boston Globe senior assistant business editor Mark Pothier wrote about his feelings regarding a boycott of The Upper Crust, one of his favorite pizzerias in Boston, that has been targeted because of allegations that the company has not paid its employees for overtime.

After a few minutes of “soul-searching” about whether he should join the boycott, he says he decided to follow his taste buds. Pothier then gives a string of standard justifications for his actions:

Sure, it nags at my conscience a little to think I support a company that could be profiting at the expense of these good employees and dozens more like them. But I’m not naive, either – how would I know whether the competing family-owned pizza maker I decided to patronize instead treats its employees any better? Mom and Pop can be greedy capitalists, too.

Nowadays, it seems, the preferred tactic activists use to fight corporate misconduct, whether genuine or perceived, is the boycott. Thanks to social media, they can spread faster than a YouTube video of a cat playing the piano. But what is a boycott supposed to accomplish? Too often, such campaigns are knee-jerk reactions to a company’s blunders. They almost always inflict more harm on front-line workers than corporate culprits in tailored suits. Before the first British Petroleum tar balls fouled the Gulf Coast, for instance, drivers were urged to steer clear of BP gas stations (a “Boycott BP” Facebook page has been “liked” by nearly 850,000 people). Trouble is, most BP stations in the United States are independently owned. If you stop filling up on BP-brand unleaded, departing chief executive Tony Hayward won’t sleep any worse that he already does.

[...]

In the case of Upper Crust, if business at its 17 locations drops sharply because of an ill-advised boycott, you won’t need an economist to figure out the likely consequences: fewer hours for employees, then fewer employees, and, eventually, fewer restaurants. That means more people on unemployment, more dark spaces on Main Streets.

By making this final point, Pothier reveals his true ignorance of the history and power of boycotts. While hypothetically his scenario could play out, an effective boycott could also push Upper Crust to do the right thing and compensate its employees properly.

Over at Mondoweiss, which I’ve recently discovered has perhaps the most thorough coverage of nonviolent action challenging the occupation of Palestine, there is a post today announcing a big victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign:

The Norwegian government has divested its pension fund of two Leviev companies that build settlements in the occupied West Bank on the grounds that the international community regards territory east of the ’67 line as occupied.

Check out this great remake of Depeche Mode’s “People are People” by a flash mob in a Target store over the weekend. According to the video, over 250,000 people have pledged to boycott Target over their $150,000 donation to a group paying for ads for Tom Emmer, a conservative candidate for governor in Minnesota who opposes gay marriage.

If that many people follow through on their commitment to boycott, the store will easily lose far more than $150,000 in business for the donation, which will hopefully make other corporations think twice about the potential ramifications of spending money on political candidates.

Activists are not only upset about this particular donation, as their song suggests, but the fact that Target took advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision earlier this year -  which ruled that corporations can spend an unlimited amount of money on political advertisements -  to back Emmer.

This would suggest that Target is just the first target by citizens upset with the now unchecked ability corporations have to influence elections in the US, and that as other donations by other corporations become public, these protests will spread. As one of the protesters mentions at the end of the video, Best Buy is already in the crosshairs for donating $100,000 to the same group supporting Emmer in Minnesota.

If you want to join the growing boycott of Target, click here or here, and sign this petition asking the company to change its ways.

From day one of the BP oil spill back in April, locals in southeast Florida feared that a carefree day at the beach might soon be a distant memory, a devastating prospect for a region whose primary industries consist of tourism and retirement. In mid May, satellite images showed oil starting to enter the Gulf Loop, a current that pulls water through the Florida Keys, into the Gulf Stream and up to Palm Beach County. Haunted by the specter of the Gulf Stream bringing spilled oil to the shores of southeast Florida, several organizations here mounted nonviolent responses to the largest oil disaster in U.S. history. With the renegade pipeline in the Gulf apparently capped, this is a good time for a post-mortem wrap-up.

BP Boycott Kickoff – May 12

The Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition was the first responder, calling for a boycott kickoff at a local BP station on a Wednesday evening. The roughly 30 demonstrators on the scene drew mostly positive responses from rush-hour drivers, but the station had customers throughout the 90-minute demonstration. Media coverage of the event, however, was extensive and may have had a greater impact than was at first apparent. A month after the boycott kickoff, a story about local BP station owners being unfairly hurt by the boycott appeared on the front page of the Palm Beach Post, persuading a lot of folks to abandon the boycott.

World Oceans Day – June 8

Three weeks after the boycott kickoff, A World Oceans Day meeting called by a local Greenpeace member attracted a diverse crowd of about 40. Housewives, teenagers, teachers, business owners, and retirees all seemed eager—desperate even—to act, but no unified action was suggested and none materialized. Instead, people were given a list of things they could do on their own, e.g., volunteer for the clean-up effort, sign a petition, make a donation, join a mailing list, etc. People left that meeting as isolated in their efforts as they had been before. In retrospect, World Oceans Day may have failed because it didn’t propose a mass action that directly challenged one or more of the groups responsible for the spill, namely BP, the federal government, and consumers themselves. Read the rest of this article »

Last week, the Progressive Media Project published an op-ed – which ran in the Sacramento Bee, Philadelphia Inquirer and Charlotte Observer, among other papers – commemorating the 40th anniversary of the successful 2 1/2 year-long grape boycott by the United Farm Workers of America.

On July 29, 1970, the UFW signed its first contract with California grape growers to end their successful national and international boycott. As Alvaro Huerta recaps the struggle:

It seemed like an improbable outcome, as the battle pitted a mostly Mexican as well as Filipino immigrant work force against powerful agricultural growers in California.

Led by the late Cesar Chavez and tireless Dolores Huerta, the UFW was founded in the early 1960s in response to the inhumane working conditions for farmworkers in California and other states, such as Arizona, Texas, Florida and Washington state.

While many American workers during this period enjoyed the right to organize, 40-hour weeks, minimum wage and relatively safe working conditions, farmworkers lacked these basic rights and protections.

In an effort to seek justice, dignity and respect in the rural fields of America, UFW leaders, its members and sympathizers organized and joined picket lines and marches, signed petitions, supported labor laws, lobbied elected officials, distributed educational flyers, produced documentaries, penned songs, performed plays, held teach-ins and generally supported the nationwide boycott.

The charismatic Chavez — who graced the cover of Time magazine on July 4, 1969 — engaged in numerous and lengthy hunger strikes to draw attention to the cause.

As was the case with the civil rights movement, many UFW activists were beaten up and a few were killed for the simple act of supporting the right of farmworkers to organize a union and negotiate for fair labor contracts.

But the rightness of their cause prevailed.

While this campaign should no doubt be seen as a nonviolent success story, the farmworkers struggle for justice did not unfortunately end there. In fact, the grape boycott had to be resumed in 1973 after the major vineyards broke their contract with the UFW. As David Cortright writes in Gandhi and Beyond:

The boycotts continued for years, but the halcyon enthusiasm of the initial grape and lettuce boycotts gradually faded. Boycott activity around the country became increasingly desultory, and the tactic lost much of its effectiveness.

My takeaway message from this story is that since boycotts are extremely difficult to get off the ground and maintain, organizers must make sure, to the best of their ability, that the any agreement signed will stick before they agree to call of a boycott. Otherwise, the businesses or corporations targeted by a movement may strike a deal, without ever intending to implement it, just to take the wind of out the sails of the boycott.

• Several Greenpeace activists were arrested after rappelling off the Calgary Tower yesterday morning to hang a banner attacking the relationship between the oilsands industry and government.

• Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in the southwestern Helmand province to voice their anger at the killing of a 65-year-old man by US troops. Another demonstration was held in the southern Oruzgan province over the alleged desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, by US forces.

• Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona’s immigration law ran onto the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday night at Citi Field. Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted “Oppose racism!” and “Boycott Arizona!”

• Several hundred Red Shirt protesters defied a state of emergency in the Thai capital on Monday to stage a symbolic protest, with hundreds of people sprawling on the ground and chanting, “People died here!”

• An estimated 30,000 people, consisting of tourists and residents, linked hands on the Thai island of Koh Samui on Saturday afternoon to protest oil exploration due to start in the Gulf of Thailand.

• Advocates for New York City’s community gardens delivered fresh produce to the steps of city hall Monday to protest the expiration of the Garden Settlement of 2002, which protected community gardens from real estate developers.

• About half the detainees at the 216-bed Campsfield House immigration centre in Oxfordshire Britain are refusing meals to protest their prolonged detention and treatment, which has caused many to suffer from mental health problems.

• About 600 employees of a Volvo bus plant in India have been on strike for a week to demand better pay and the return to work of four colleagues suspended following a dispute at the plant.

In this video, Paul Jay from The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an economist at the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem and the author of the forthcoming book Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation, about how the growing worldwide boycott of Israel is effecting that country’s economy.

HEVER: The effect is hidden by the Israeli various bureaus of statistics and the Manufacturers Association, for example. There was one survey that showed 21 percent of Israeli exporters reported on average 10 percent loss of income because of the boycott, which was related specifically to the attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. But this report was censored. This report was removed from—was never published, it was only leaked to the media once, and it’s impossible to get it, because the Manufacturers Association know that if that information reaches people who support the boycott movement, that will empower them and give them more confidence to continue their efforts.

Hever also has an interesting response to Jay’s question about his position on the controversial cultural and academic boycott of Israel:

HEVER: We at the Alternative Information Center published a report about Israeli academic institutions, and our argument is basically that the big universities in Israel—actually, all of universities in Israel, with the exclusion of the Open University, have been actively participating in acts of repression against Palestinians, discriminating against Palestinian students or not accepting Palestinian students, and not allowing freedom of protest, not allowing professors to research certain topics that are considered inappropriate or not loyal enough, providing benefits to the Israeli army or to officers, and developing weapons. So we have a list in this publication, which you can download from our website, of every Israeli academic institutions and what kind of crimes they’re involved in, and you can make your own decision whether you want to boycott these institutions or not. And the same goes for a lot of other kinds of businesses in Israel—not necessarily businesses that have their factories in the occupied Palestinian territory (of course, those are clear examples of colonialism), but also factories that don’t offer equal employment opportunities for Palestinian citizens, factories that embrace the army and gives discounts to soldiers, factories that contribute to the army. And so you see that the vast majority of the Israeli economy is very strongly intertwined with the project of Judaification and Zionism. So there is a very strong argument for boycotting every Israeli product, or at the very least for boycotting every Israeli product until Israel is able to differentiate and to give accurate and fair information about its exports—which exports come from the occupied Palestinian territories, which aren’t; which companies offer equal opportunities, which aren’t. And it’s not just about economic boycott, it’s also cultural boycott, because we don’t want to give the impression that Israel is a normal country, that you can just have it as part of a tour of performances of various famous artists. So we’re asking famous artists not to come and perform in Israel. That would be legitimizing the Israeli apartheid.

To see the report on the involvement of Israeli academic institutions with the occupation of Palestine, click here.

Last week, Corporate Ethics International launched a multi-year ad campaign – including an online video (above), ads on Google and tourism websites, and billboards in Seattle, Portland, Denver and Minneapolis – calling on tourists to boycott Alberta over the province’s oil sands. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Tourism is important for Alberta, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year to its wilderness parks and resorts in Banff and Jasper, and to the annual Stampede rodeo and outdoor show in Calgary.

Alberta officials and members of the oil sands industry were angry at the ad campaign. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach said in a press conference Wednesday that the campaign “does, of course, anger me to a large degree because it’s an attack on about a hundred thousand Albertans whose lives depend upon the tourism industry.”

In an interview with CTV News Channel,  executive director of Corporate Ethics International Michael Marx explained the motivation for the “Rethink Alberta” campaign and why the characterization of the the effort as an “attack” isn’t accurate:

“We think the Alberta government has been pretty arrogant in ignoring the concerns of environmental groups in the U.S., in Europe and in Canada, as well as First Nations, and that it’s been deceptive in its public relations in claiming that they’re greening the tarsands,” Marx said.

“We felt like we needed to be more aggressive in calling the government out.”

He added that his group doesn’t wish to harm tourism businesses but hopes they will get involved in oilsands issues.

“Ultimately we think that the tarsands industry, by contributing to global warming, actually endangers the tourist industry,” he said.

Whether that message will resonate with Albertans is yet to be seen. Next week the group is rolling out a similar ad campaign in the UK.

In other tar sands news:

Another campaign has been growing in the U.S. that hopes to block TransCanada from building the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry crude from Alberta to refineries in Texas. Henry Waxman, a prominent congressman, and 50 other legislators stated their opposition to the project.

The boycott of Arizona by a growing number of musicians has been one of the most high-profile acts of resistance to the state’s new anti-immigrant law. But like most boycotts it has been the subject of great scrutiny in terms of its potentially damaging effect on perceived innocents. For instance, Arizona concert promoter and activist Charlie Levy recently explained that: “By not performing in Arizona, artists are harming the very people and places that foster free speech and the open exchange of ideas that serve to counter the closed-mindedness recently displayed by the new law.”

A reaction such as this, however, is only understandable to those who don’t understand how boycotts work. Their intent is not to harm people or places, but to catalyze segments of a society that have the ability to influence the repeal of an unjust law or policy. Much like the sterilization of a wound, any harm to people or places along the way should be looked upon as part of the healing process. The harm that is caused during a boycott is only temporary and, unlike the injustice it opposes, never terminal. A boycott that’s based on a just cause, such as the repeal of a racist law, is a tactic that resurrects humanity and ultimately improves the quality of life for everyone.

One of the musicians who seems to get this point is Conor Oberst, who fronts the band Bright Eyes (and is featured int he above video). Oberst wrote an intelligent and heartfelt response to Levy, saying that he regrets “any of the collateral damage the boycott is causing” and realizes “that the people of Arizona did not vote on SB1070,” but sees a far bigger picture—one that is “a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and Humans.”

Oberst has already seen a town in his home state of Nebraska adopt a similarly racist immigration law and is “in the process of organizing a fund-raiser for the NE chapter of the ACLU who is suing the town of Fremont.” But should the law pass statewide, he is fully prepared to “be the first to call for a boycott of my home state.”

Read the rest of this article »

• An estimated 797,000 workers demonstrated and unions staged nearly 200 marches in several French cities Thursday to protest President Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

• Around 50 cyclists in Brussels left their clothes behind Sunday during Cyclonudista, an annual naked protest meant to draw attention to the monopolization of public space by cars. The event was part of larger World Naked Bike Ride campaign.

• Postal workers picketed outside an Orlando post office on Monday to protest a proposed elimination of Saturday mail delivery to cut costs.

• In El Paso, Texas about 300 people marched in front of the Border Patrol offices on Tuesday to protest the June 7th killing of 14 year-old Sergio Adrían Hernández Güereca by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

• 1,500 members of the Swedish Dockworkers Union on Wednesday launched  a week-long boycott of cargo to and from Israel to protest the raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine people last month.

• About 200 unionized Phoenix employees marched to a meeting of the City Council on Wednesday to demand that officials protect local jobs and refuse to outsource more municipal services.

• Protests against the Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla continued around the world over the weekend. Several thousand people gathered outside Downing Street in London on Saturday. Thousands of Moroccans marched in the kingdom’s capital of Rabat on Sunday. Hundreds marched to Capitol Hill in Ottawa. And hundreds more marched to the Israeli embassy in Dublin (see above). In other news, the U.S. rock band Pixies has canceled a concert in Tel Aviv and dockworkers in Sweden are enacting a week long boycott of Israeli goods.

• Hundreds gathered outside BP’s DC headquarters on Friday to call for a “Citizens Arrest” of CEO Tony Hayward on the charges of criminal negligence. Meanwhile, several dozen people converged on a BP service station in Pensacola on Sunday to mobilize support for a boycott and a minor league baseball team in Viera, FL is changing the name of “batting practice” or “BP” for short to “hitting rehearsal.”

• A group of New York City immigrant advocates calling on lawmakers to pass the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act or “DREAM” joined high school and college students for a hunger strike in Washington Square Park on Friday. Some of the demonstrators had been fasting since Tuesday.

• About 100 people rallied on the California-Mexico border Thursday to protest the death of a migrant after a U.S. immigration officer shot him with a stun gun.

• Eight people were arrested after chaining themselves together outside the federal building in Santa Ana, CA on Thursday as part of a protest against Arizona’s recent immigration legislation. They were also calling on Santa Ana to declare itself a sanctuary city.

• Alabama fisherman, who’ve been idled by the massive ban on fishing in the oiled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, formed a blockade of the Mississippi Sound to protest BP’s hiring of more recreational boaters than commercial fishermen to aid in the cleanup.

• Around 400 workers from Chicago’s Hyatt Regency hotel staged a brief but pointed walkout last Wednesday to protest poor working conditions.

As oil from the BP rig continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, activists are stepping up to hold the company to account.

Last week, the Energy Action Coalition organized 45 “Crude Awakening” vigils, rallies and events around the country to mark the one-month anniversary of the offshore drilling disaster. (Click here to see a preliminary report, with pictures and links to local news coverage, on the actions.)

In London, two Greenpeace activists scaled BP’s office building and “hoisted a flag depicting the firm’s logo covered in oil and with the slogan ‘british polluters’ above the entrance in St James’s Square.”

And perhaps most significantly, a boycott of BP is taking off. Public Citizen is calling on folks outraged by what’s happening to pledge that they will boycott BP’s gas and retail products for at least three months.

Ultimately, however, we should use the horror of this environmental disaster to push for more fundamental change. As Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, writes:

…cash compensation for economic harms caused — while necessary — doesn’t bring back destroyed ecosystems and does little to mitigate the company’s culpability for not preventing the blowout in the first place.

The only good that can come out of the BP disaster is if it forces the United States to fundamentally reorient energy policy. As a matter of simple common sense, the Obama administration should reverse its new policy and stop offshore drilling expansion. More fundamentally, BP’s oil gusher is yet another reminder of the need for a massive shift away from fossil fuels and to investments in efficiency and renewable energy.

On Sunday, the Washington Post ran a story on the  growing boycott by Palestinians of products that come from Israeli settlements, which not surprisingly included quotes from an unnamed “Western diplomat,” an Israeli official and a Palestinian grocer who question the motives and effectiveness of the tactic. Nevertheless, the boycott is clearly beginning to take a toll:

In Mishor Adumim, a bougainvillea-lined industrial zone inside this West Bank Jewish settlement, at least 17 businesses have closed since Palestinians began boycotting its products several months ago.

For the Israelis, it’s “an insufferable situation,” according to Avi Elkayam, who represents the settlement’s 300 factory owners. But for Palestinians, it might be the strategy they have been looking for.

[...]

“We are definitely committed to a path of nonviolent resistance and defiance in the face of the settlement enterprise, and we are defiantly expressing our right to boycott those products and I believe it is working,” Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has attended bonfires of settlement products, said in an interview last week. “We will continue to do more.”

In addition to forcing factories to close or relocate to Israel proper, the boycott is also deterring other Israeli businesses from moving to the settlements.

Interestingly, the Palestinian Authority is getting involved by enforcing a ban on selling settlement products. So far, more than $5 million worth of settlement goods have been confiscated and destroyed.

Nine environmental groups have agreed to end their boycotts of 21 forestry companies in exchange for a commitment to suspend logging and road building immediately on nearly two-thirds of Canada’s forests, stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland. According to The Guardian:

The immediate gains include an end to highly destructive logging in the last remaining expanses of intact forests, protection for the remaining woodland caribou, whose population has shrunk to 36,000, and preservation of an important resource in fighting climate change. Scientists believe that the soil and trees in Canada’s coniferous forests store up to 20bn tonnes of carbon.

Unfortunately, we can’t expect that logging companies are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. So what’s the rub? According to Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, which represents the companies:

“We know that tomorrow’s markets are going to be judging forestry products on their environmental credentials. Having the environmentalist community on our side means that we are getting a huge branding advantage.”

Such bluntly opportunistic wording reminds me of how the World Wildlife Foundation came to the aid of IKEA when it was facing bad PR, as detailed in a recent great story by The Nation about the corruption of major conservation groups:

When it was revealed that many of IKEA’s dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company’s defense, saying–wrongly–that IKEA “can never guarantee” this won’t happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a “marketing partner” with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?

If we are to learn from this story, we must buffer our excitement over the news of this environmental victory with a commitment to make sure it isn’t later corrupted by corporate power.

Greenpeace dubbed its campaign against Nestlé a success earlier this week when the food giant announced that it will no longer use products that drive tropical rainforest destruction, specifically palm oil that comes from companies like Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group. Despite this success, which should by no means be overlooked, there is a lingering question: how does this effect the 10 million palm oil farmers in Indonesia?

I raised this point last month after coming across an article in the Jakarta Globe that said farmers were prepared to boycott Nestlé products and block all exports of crude palm oil to the US and the EU in an effort to save their jobs. While it doesn’t seem like anything came of these plans, the crisis facing a country with millions of low-wage workers dependent on a single crop that is no longer desired by a global food giant remains.

On the flip side, their silence could be evidence that Nestlé’s decision doesn’t have as dramatic an effect on palm oil production as we in the West would like to believe. For starters, Nestlé buys less than one percent of the global production of palm oil, which means there is still plenty of demand for the product. Secondly, Sinar Mas Group weathered an even greater loss in 2009, when Unilever, the world’s biggest consumer of palm oil, canceled its contract after learning about a dossier of evidence to be published by Greenpeace. As Media.Asia recently reported:

Read the rest of this article »