On Boycotts
On October 14th a boycott of Starbucks was called in relation to the conflict in Palestine. Countless posts were made on Twitter about how Starbucks had taken immoral stand, and that consumers should punish them by voting with their wallets, in support of Israel. This first Starbucks boycott was because a union associated with the coffee chain had made a statement in support of the people of Gaza, and Zionist defenders of Israel wanted to monetarily reject that. A few weeks later another boycott was called, this time from allies of Palestine for Starbucks support of Israel.
Starbucks isn’t the only company to end up on both sides of a boycott. Various McDonalds franchises saw themselves on either side as they made posts on Twitter in support of either Israel or Palestine. The National Football League was boycotted over Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem by those who opposed his protest, and then again by his supporters when he was blackballed from the league. The video game Overwatch was briefly boycotted for having too many “woke” characters and then again for the company Activision’s corporate culture of sexual harassment.
The implication of a boycott is that finical pressure can be applied to companies via withholding consumer dollars. Those dollars don’t cease to exist however, they always go somewhere else instead. Instead of Starbucks someone goes to a local coffee shop, that has to use chocolate made by child slaves because their profit margins are so thin. TOMs shoes famously promised to provide a free pair to children in need, but in doing so tanked the economy of various small towns and villages by offering no-cost goods that used to be purchased from local businesses. A young woman on TikTok makes a video about how she’s giving up McDonalds to support the children in Gaza while wearing a Nike hoodie possibly made by other children across the globe.
Consumer based politics in a globalized economy is filled with contradictions, and while the desire to do good is admirable, it’s virtually impossible when attempted in the context of just trying to spend money the right away. The supply chains that span the globe ensure that almost every person in the imperial core touches likely dozens of products each day that were made, harvested, processed, or transported with the help of intensely exploitative labor practices, yet attempting to move consumer dollars around remains a consistent activist practice.
This isn’t because those who care about these issues are misinformed necessarily. To live with empathy is to yearn for progress. Everyone wants the world to be better, and when there’s not a clear mechanism one can participate in, that energy will be filtered elsewhere. Unfortunately, the intense propaganda of a century of an uninterrupted capitalist superstructure has channeled that energy directly into the free market. While Starbucks stock may suffer, though at time of writing its actually up around thirty cents from where it was on October 7th, those dollars get spent somewhere and the cruelty is simply displaced.
This rhetoric of course leaves people understandably angry. If one can’t boycott, a widely accessibly practice that is by definition the easiest form of activism to participate in because it is literally just not doing something, what can they do? The easiest answer is that they can pick up their friends from the airport, or help their co-worker move, or water their neighbor’s plant while they’re away. Activism, the desire to make change, starts locally; nothing will be accomplished without a substantive community. Do whatever is necessary in your life to maintain rigid integrity when it comes to your own political views while supporting those around you and slowly working to bring them into the fold. It feels slow, but the fastest way to do something is to do it right the first time.