The first thing to understand about boycotts is that they are difficult to organize and, often, do not directly have the effect of forcing a company or a country to change their ways. The reasons for this are,
- In order to get a boycott going, you’ve got to get millions of people all doing the same thing – namely, refusing to do business with a given country, industry, or company.
- Once you’ve got your boycott going, opponents of the boycott will respond by going out of their way to steer their business to the target in order to try to frustrate the boycott.
- Finally, the targeted country, industry, or company often has substantial resources that they use to simply wait the boycotters out.
Now this is not to say that all boycotts fail. The biggest recent success was the boycott against South Africa’s apartheid policy which, when paired with substantial resistance to apartheid within that country, resulted in an eventual dismantling of that policy. In addition, there is the boycott against North Carolina in 2016 for passing a law that mandated that people use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificate. That boycott directly succeeded in forcing the law’s repeal… but unfortunately, since then, many other states have passed such “bathroom bills” without apparent fear of consequences – see this NPR article for details.
However, even if boycotts don’t directly force a change in behavior, they often call enough attention to the issue at hand that others join the movement and eventually achieve the goal a few years later – Gandhi’s boycotts against the British Empire and Southern blacks boycotts against racially segregated businesses are two good examples of this.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that there are times when nothing but a boycott will do. For instance, if there is a company or person that is violating our norms and laws but cannot be straightened out by the government (or if the government declines to take any action!), then a boycott is the logical next step to increase the pressure on that company or person. Joining an ongoing boycott is pretty easy. If, however, you want to start a boycott, you should be be prepared to do a lot of work and, perhaps, have a limited reward for your efforts.
Let’s turn our attention now to a few ongoing boycotts that you might want to join and then, a bit later, we’ll offer a few pointers if you’re in the mood to organize a boycott of your own.
- Boycotts against Elon Musk’s interests.
- Boycotts against Donald Trump’s interests.
- Boycotts against Linda McMahon’s interests.
- Boycotts against Jeff Bezos’ interests.
As for organizing new boycotts, we don’t have any experience in this matter but would refer you to resources on the web written by those who do.
- The University of Kansas discusses boycotts in their wonderful Community Toolbox site which describes many other ways you can organize and make a difference.
- The Ethical Consumertalks about how to organize a boycott and even has a list of boycotts that are already in progress (why start a new boycott when you can lend your support to one that’s already established?)
- The Democracy Education Network has a four page flyer you might find very helpful as a starting point.
- If the target of your boycott is an individual, you might find Celebrity Net Worth to be a helpful starting point in figuring out what their financial vulnerabilities might be.
- Beyond these four, there are many other sites with more advice for you to dive into – just Google “how to organize a boycott”!