Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Strategic NVR In Action: The Colorado Trucker Boycott
Saturday, May 1, 2021
The Strongest Nonviolent Weapons
“[The] tyrant and his subjects are in somewhat symmetrical positions. They can deny him most of what he wants — they can, that is, if they have the disciplined organization to refuse collaboration….They can deny him the satisfaction of ruling a disciplined country, he can deny them the satisfaction of ruling themselves….It is a bargaining situation in which either side, if adequately disciplined and organized, can deny most of what the other wants, and it remains to see who wins.”
In denying the oppressor what he wants, the oppressed must of necessity bear some costs themselves. However, the oppressed can win only by bearing those costs in a disciplined manner, from a position of mutually helping one another so as not to provide any support to the economic structures of the oppressor. Each member of an oppressed population must ask whether he or she is willing for the "disciplined organization to refuse collaboration" with the oppressor. Those who are not willing become Uncle Toms (UT's) and Aunt Tammys (AT's). Given enough of these UT's and AT's, a nonviolent liberation struggle collapses. Bleeding-heart conservatives such as former President Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher cry great crocodile tears at the sufferings which oppressed people take on themselves in their struggle to liberate themselves. Yet those tears will turn to laughter if the oppressed are persuaded to sabotage themselves. We who are of the oppressed must remember that some things are non-negotiable. It was for the purpose of learning to organize exactly the kind of strong, coercive nonviolent action described by Schelling that I spent over two thousand dollars of my own money a couple of years ago to take a series of community organizing classes. I mean business.
As for me, I have a four-pronged hoe that I've been using for several years. A few weeks ago, the wooden handle broke. The next hoe I buy will not be from Home Cheapo. Let's boycott!
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Farewell to YouTube
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Alternative Resistance Tool: The Boycott
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- They hit the oppressor where it really hurts. Boycotters can do the financial equivalent of choking their oppressor to death.
- 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
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.