BOYCOTTS
Activism 101 encourages you to boycott to implement a consumer preference against the products and services of those companies and related institutions that are behaving unethically. To provide some guidance for this effort, we will periodically add new boycotts. However, this does not mean that outstanding boycotts should be suspended. They will continue until the organizations involved change.
To the organizations that are placed on the list, we demand that you refrain from your unethical behavior, and further that to the best of your ability you correct your wrongs: that you pay all of the costs of your actions and henceforth become responsible social citizens. When we are convinced that such steps have been taken, you will be removed from the list.
We will begin with the
three examples mentioned on the homepage:
1. China: boycott all goods "made in China," and continue to
do so until the nation becomes a democracy. For additional information, please
see the reasons given for this boycott on Dictator
Watch.
As a personal incentive, you should also recognize that China is the most significant
factor driving higher energy costs around the world. Demand for cheap Chinese
goods, produced in sweatshops and with no environmental safeguards, particularly
such demand from the U.S. (where the largest retailer of such goods is Wal-Mart,
please boycott them as well) has fueled the explosive growth in the Chinese
economy, and hence its abruptly increased appetite for oil. The more you buy
Chinese goods, the higher your energy costs will be.
(Energy prices are of course also increasing because the world, again foremost
the U.S., is not improving its energy conservation and efficiency, and because
of manipulative speculation in the oil market.)
Boycott the 2008 Genocide Olympics in Beijing as well.
2. Nike: this company
should be boycotted until, at a minimum, it stops it aggressive and ubiquitous
advertising campaign.
3. Starbucks: this company should be boycotted without end. We do want
the towns and villages of the world to have coffee shops, but under local owners
and in a personal, idiosyncratic style; not some franchised, corporate approved
model that bars indigenous character.
4. Boycotts are not limited to specific organizations such as corporations.
We should also boycott the values that they disseminate as part of their programs
of domination. For this type of protest, an excellent place to start is to Boycott
Cool!