its not a boycott if you are only avoiding them for a single week, and returning to them without any changes being made.
it’s to teach the more hesitant people that you can, in fact, survive without those places
Stop calling it a boycott then.
A boycott is named after Charles Boycott, an English land agent who was cheating his master Lord Erne’s Irish tenant farmers. When they “Boycotted” him in 1880, the local people wouldn’t just not give him money - they wouldn’t interact with him or his agents in any way. Pretended they didn’t exist. Pretended they didn’t hear him or his lackeys speak his lackeys when they went to the shop. Cut them off entirely from their lives.
It should be noted that then he appealed to British establishment media and the British government sent 1000 police to protect 50 replacement workers - scabs - and provisions delivered from Protestant areas. It cost the Brits £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops, but they paid it to send a message. The government is not on your side.
This was 145 years ago. I know that seems like a lot to most people. In terms of the Irish resistance to British rule, it is remarkably recent. Not only that, but within 35 years, Britain had agreed to Irish home rule (and reneged on it). Within 40 years Ireland was independent.
In the words of Michael Davitt, leader of the Land League who inspired the protest:
You must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.
And in the weasel words of Boycott himself:
My farm is public property; the people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale. The locks on my gates are smashed, the gates thrown open, the walls thrown down, and the stock driven out on the roads. I can get no workmen to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody who knows the country.
Don’t interact with these business. Don’t interact with people who obey these businesses.
Look, I agree with you, and I avoid those places like the plauge, but I think you’re overestimating how much people care about the details. In an ideal world, yes, all communication would be accurate, but when addressing the masses, you have to use the common definition of words rather yellowstone the technical definition.
Charles Boycott
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott
For the lazy, like me, who wanted a source link to our favourite source aggregator.
US to the people in authoritarian countries:
why don’t they revolt and take back their country? I’ve made a fool proof plan if you need.
US when it needs revolution:
Best I can do is deal with 1 inconvenience in a day.
So far so good. I still occasionally have temptations to just order something on Amazon because of convenience and habit, but I can’t really bring myself to do it anymore.
Haven’t used amazon or walmart in years. Still ocasionally go to target though because I have to shop somewhere.
Yea, I mean I can imagine even if your anti-consumption, if there aren’t affordable smaller businesses to support or dependable mutual aid services that can provide food for enough people it’s gonna be tough to give up groceries from the monopolized supermarkets. Not saying Americans shouldn’t boycott, but we need to be aware that as long as there’s capitalism, we’re always gonna be choosing between compromised options.
