2:46pm July 16, 2014

if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age

navigatethestream:

its the notion of boycotts

you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?

because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go

they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces racist policies so don’t take it and FUCK if you can’t get to work on time or where you need to be!”

they said “hey you’re paying to get on the bus and not even being given a seat let alone being ejected if a white passenger needs your seat. here’s a potentially better alternative where you pay to sit down and get to where you need to go”

all this “boycott Target, Walmart, Monsanto owned companies” comes from a notion of boycott located in the politic of privileged white people

and that’s why they are largely unsuccessful

its why Obama just gave Monsanto the green light to commit even more fuckery to your food

its the reason why cooperation are considered people

its the reason why Walmart is allowed to usurp safety and labor regulations in their factories, and underpay their American workers

because you say “don’t spend your money there” and that’s the end of the story

you expect people to locate their survival in a politic of “abstaining from unethical choices”

and then from there those unethical choices are somehow supposed to magically disappear. when really only a small percentage of people are able to boycott so many things

there wouldn’t be a movement located around the “99%” if 99% of people could really afford to stop shopping at the unethical places and stop buying the unethical brands

good luck with your hocus pocus activist logic

AND that the boycotts were organized with enough concentrated numbers relative to the area being pressured to affect the economy.

AND that boycotts also came with specific demands for legal policy change upon specific authorities. Lawyers were helping draft best plans of action based on establishing precedent.

Unified messages were created and plans were made for publicizing those messages so that when the white general populace started to see the difference and inconvenience when those boycotts kicked in, they’d know EXACTLY what was being asked of them.

Plans were laid for boycotts months ahead - not only were alternative means set up, plans were laid out for what it would look like in the long haul for a lot of people. Plans were made for what they’d have to do in the face of backlash - beatings, arrests, white mob violence, lynchings, police abuse, etc.

The difference, of course, is that all of this is about organizing and acting as a movement, instead of just shilling consumer activism…

Of course, the other half of this kind of ignorance is because of raw anti-blackness. These folks just imagine “Well, the Black people did it, so it can’t be that hard…” and come so unprepared and shoddy with it.