The Boycott and Me

Here's a nice drawing of Charles Cunningham Boycott, which, Wikipedia assures me, is in the public domain:

I am in mind of Captain Boycott these days since his name is much in the news. Well, not so much his name as the activity that his name has come to represent: the boycott, of course, the idea of which gets flung up with astonishing regularity whenever someone is unhappy with someone or something.

Most recently, of course, it's Target that we're being called upon to boycott. A few weeks ago it was BP. And Arizona. Walmart is pretty well ensconced on the boycott list. I'm sure there are dozens of others at the moment that I'm unaware of.

Well, I've signed a couple of petitions calling on Target to quit supporting the right-wing Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. I think corporations should stay out of elections, and I particularly think that corporations who don't--now that the Supreme Court has granted corporations "personhood" and allowed them to make unlimited contributions to buy elections--should be made to realize that some people are paying attention, and that we will make our decisions as consumers based in part on their decisions as corporations.

Certainly, news of the $150,000 Target contribution to Emmer's campaign has made me unenthusiastic about spending money at Target, which once was one of my favorite retailers. But boycott? Hmm.

In my youth, I was quick to boycott anything and anyone. Poor service? Boycott 'em! Lousy product? Boycott 'em! Odious social or political position? You guessed it.

Truth to tell, I never quite understood the difference between my self-righteous boycotts and simply no longer frequenting a restaurant or otherwise doing business with a given entity, but boycott sounds pretty damn impressive, I guess.

Now the problem I have with boycotts is trying to figure out who's really going to get hurt.

And I conclude that it's almost never the people whom I intend to hurt.

Let's take Target. It would be very easy for me to quit spending money there; in fact, my household's visits to Target had declined to practically nil until the corporation opened a store on "our" side of town a few months back. We've been frequenting it fairly often since then, but it would be pretty easy to drop back. They have nothing that we can't get elsewhere, and for probably about the same price.

Obviously no one at Target will notice one way or the other if I cut them off. Which is why we're all supposed to boycott them. And, to be sure, they would notice if significant numbers of Target shoppers stayed away in droves.

But what would be the most immediate effect? Upon noting a decline in sales, would the board of directors resign? Would the CEO be replaced? Would there be massive layoffs in the executive suite at Target Corp.?

Seems unlikely. Seems more likely that a bunch of minimum-wage clerks at various Target stores would be canned. Or, worst case, stores would be closed and they'd all get canned.

Not quite sure how my getting some high-school kid working part-time at Target thrown overboard translates into my bold and noble stand against the faceless corporation.

Ditto with BP. Early on, the call went up to boycott BP. Certainly my sentiments were in that direction, but there was the practical consideration: How the hell do I do that? In my environs, BP is represented by a local convenience store with a handful of locations around town. Easy enough to boycott them--not that they'd notice, since I seldom gas up there anyhow. But, again, the question is who's getting hurt? BP? Not much. The local store owner? Yeah, a little. What's his reaction apt to be? Dissociate from BP? Probably not. More likely that he will, yes, throw some part-time employee over the edge.

But I am still left with the fact that I am severely disappointed in Target, sorely ticked off at BP, and just generally leery of Walmart. What do I do?

As in every corner of existence, it's a question of balance. As is my wont with Walmart (I counted awhile back, and discovered that I have shopped at Walmart a grand total of five times in my life), I will think twice about parting with money at Target--and most of the time I imagine I will find an alternate route. But I don't know that "never" will be a big part of the vocabulary.

I would prefer that the bad publicity about their support of a candidate who expressly opposes fundamental rights for gay people will cause someone at Target HQ to wise up. It could happen--even if experience indicates that the more likely response is to dig in heels and weather the storm.

And then of course you always have the chip-on-shoulder contingent, which always can be counted on to say something bright like, "I don't like gays so I'm gonna shop at Target all the time now." Those people I'd like to find a way to boycott.

Why I'm Not Boycotting BP

I've received a fair amount of e-mail lately--form letters from various organizations that have me on their mailing lists; "real" messages from real people that I really know; and messages from presumably real people whom I know only via the interwebs--encouraging me to boycott BP.

In my youth, I was pretty well inclined to boycott businesses and products that seemed particularly odious. And to this day there are plenty that I tend to avoid--Walmart at the top of the list; big surprise--but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a boycott.

And right out of the box I rejected the idea of boycotting BP.

Why?

Innocent bystanders.

Look, I'm as nauseated as anyone about what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico, about the people who were killed when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, about BP's ineptitude and its putting profits ahead of people. And if I had a really good way to hurt BP, believe me, I'd use it.

But in practice "boycott BP" really means "boycott service stations and convenience stores that carry the BP brand." And that would injure the "innocent bystanders"--the kid working the cash register for slightly more than minimum wage, maybe--way more than it would hurt BP.

Besides, the amount of business I run through the local BP-affiliated convenience stores is practically nil already. I would have to start shopping and fueling there exclusively for the next six months in order for anyone to notice the blip when I then withdrew my business. Not worth it.

My sentiments are not rooted entirely in nobility, mind. There's a visceral component as well. I was jettisoned from my position of nearly a decade with the local office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (see my previous posts, Said, and Done and What Passes for Christianity) when too many people in too many congregations, mad at the national ELCA organization because it voted last summer to move toward doing away with bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, decided to express their anger by withholding funding from the national body. Unfortunately this has the effect of withholding funding from the local synod as well (for some non-givers this effect was unintentional; for some, not), and the ensuing decline in receipts led to the elimination of two positions (including mine) and the near-elimination of a third.

Innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire of unthinking and uncaring people.

Well, having been on the receiving end of that kind of thinking--if "thinking" is the word I want--I'm not in a real hurry to practice it. Actions have consequences, and not always the consequences we intend or expect.

Certainly I won't go out of my way to start fueling at BP stations in my community. But nor will I boycott them.

Then if the kid behind the counter loses his job, at least my conscience will be clear.