Alternative Resistance Tool: The Boycott

As I said in my last post, the methods of protest and persuasion are actually the weakest methods of nonviolent resistance against oppression.  There are much stronger methods, which are effective because they withhold from the oppressor the benefits he reaps from the compliance of the oppressed.

Let me introduce a concept that comes from the world of union and community organizing.  The first is the concept of power analysis - a means by which organizers of the oppressed map out the power relations among themselves, among their opponents, and between the oppressed and the oppressors.  From that power analysis you can then build a strategy for disrupting the power relations of the oppressor.  One excellent means of disruption is the boycott.

Boycotts are useful for the following reasons:

1. They are low-risk actions.  Riot police find it much harder to go after you simply because you refuse to support a business.  No one I know has ever been arrested for refusing to shop.
2. They are extremely hard to infiltrate.  Right now, I am hearing reports of violent white right-wing groups infiltrating many of the George Floyd protests.  They can't infiltrate a boycott.
3. They hit the oppressor where it really hurts.  Boycotters can do the financial equivalent of choking their oppressor to death.

But boycotts must be strategically planned in order to be successful.  A boycott without strategic planning is likely to fail.  The boycott should have a clear, quantifiable, verifiable goal, such as forcing the city of Minneapolis to reduce police funding by a certan percent and to lay off a certain percent of its police force.  On the other hand, if boycotters simply say, "We are boycotting everyone and everything until police brutality is ended!", that is not a clear, quantifiable goal.  The demand of protestors that all four of the officers who arrested George Floyd be arrested and brought to trial is a good start.  

Secondly, a boycott should focus on a specific target, namely a specific business whose compliance with the boycotters' demands would have a measurable strategic benefit, and whose downfall would send a clear message to the other businesses in its particular geographic location and market sector.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a good example of this.  Read also Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.  (But take Alinsky with a grain of salt.)  Or study the highly effective strategy used by the United Farm Workers in the boycotts of grape growers in the 1960's.  You can also read Why David Sometimes Wins by Marshall Ganz.

Lastly, here is a partial list of Fortune 500 companies based in Minnesota.  Whether any of them is a good boycott target will depend on the power analysis performed by the oppressed.  Whether a boycott succeeds in forcing your demands will depend on your strategy.  The list:

• Polaris Industries
• Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (Why am I not surprised that a Lutheran financial institution is in a racist state?)
• Hormel Foods
• Ecolab
• Land O'Lakes (a food company that makes cheese and other products)
• General Mills

These entries are taken from this source.  In your analysis, ask which of these firms are pro-police.

One other note: I believe that the violence perpetrated by infiltrators at the George Floyd protests were meant to give Donald Trump a strategic opportunity to boost his popularity by demonizing nonwhite people.  Now that it is being revealed that these infiltrators are mainly white, Mr. Trump seems to have lost his strategic advantage.