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!