The art of the boycott
For a number of summers
when I was an undergraduate, I worked at the East Moline plant of International Harvester
Co., which made harvester threshers and corn pickers. One summer I worked in the traffic
department, which routed shipments of the machinery and assigned orders to
specific rail cars and trucks. I got to
know many truck drivers and companies.
Years later when I was
released from active duty in the Army, I
went back to work at the IH plant on a correspondence desk. I was drafted during the time when the
military services were ordered to desegregate, and one of the biggest battles
during the Cold War years involved a race war.
Some members of the military acted out against blacks and latinos and
anyone who associated with them. There
were incidents of overt hatred and violence, and those of us who had
instructional duties were often involved in dealing with racial conflicts. When I was released from active duty and went
to work for IH, I made contact with civil rights organizations through church
and educational organizations. I and
some people I worked with were approached by people in these organizations about
a project they were working on that involved boycotts of some businesses in the
south.
Many Afro-American people
lived in communities that were segregated and where discrimination was a condition
of life. That discrimination was part of
business practices. While the merchants
sold their goods to black people—they did not mind taking their money—they
overcharged and often held black customers in debt where credit was
involved. There were instances in which blacks
could barely afford the food they ate, let alone any of the conveniences of
life at the time.
One of the concerns was
some merchants who sold household appliances were charging so much and
literally held black customers in debt-bondage.
Members of a civil rights organization worked out an arrangement with an
Afro-American church in which ranges, refrigerators, and washing machines could
be made available at discounted prices with the church providing delivery and
financing. One of the members of the civil
rights organization worked for a large appliance sales company which had a
warehouse full of used, scratch-and-dent, and superseded model appliances that
the company was willing to sell at a hefty discount. The problem was how to ship the appliances to
the church in the south which would act as distribution point.
As I had experience in a
traffic department, I was asked what would be the best way to ship these
appliances to the south. I rode home on
the train after being processed out of active duty at Fort Sheridan
with another veteran whom from my home area that I knew slightly. We chatted about our experiences in the Army
including the desegregation problems.
When he got home, he was returning to his job as trucker with his
father, who worked on contract for a freight company that hauled machinery for
International Harvester. I looked him up
and called him about how he would recommend shipping the appliances to the
church in the south. He came up with a
plan. He often hauled trailers that were
not fully loaded, particularly during heavy shipping seasons for farm
equipment. He said the appliances, as
long as they were carefully crated, could be hauled at a discount as partial
loads on trucks headed south. Over a
period of about a month, we managed to ship a very large inventory to the
church in the south by trucks that dropped off their partial loads as they
passed through the town where the church was located.
As time went by, regular
shipments of household appliances were made to the church. The leaders of the church organized a boycott
against the appliance dealers in their region, and helped black families get
working kitchen and laundry appliances without having to go to the dealer. The dealers felt the impact of the boycott to
the point that they had to scale back on their inventories and deal with the
fact that their market had shrunk.
The civil rights
organization also worked with churches in setting up food pantries at which
African-Americans could purchase food without having to pay exorbitant prices
and deal with the discriminatory practices of the merchants.
Those pantries quickly evolved into food co-operatives.
The boycotts had two
effects. They made life easier for the
people, and they showed the merchants that their discriminatory practices were
putting their businesses in jeopardy.
When black people found a way around segregation and developed their own
resources for necessities, the merchants began to soften their attitudes about
past business practices.
Ultimately, boycotts became
a significant factor in the civil rights movement. What could not be achieved through political
means was achieved through economic strategies.
They weakened the forces of segregation while strengthening the movement
toward civil rights.
However, the boycotts were
very quiet affairs. They were not
publicized. People simply stopped
patronizing those merchants who extorted their money and treated them with
disrespect.
When the communities
realized that the African-Americans had obtained a degree of independence, the
more racially intolerant in those communities were enraged, and some attempted
to stop it. The church that took charge of
distributing the appliances and food was accused of dealing in stolen
goods. A team of lawyers was dispatched
to the community with inventories, invoices, and bills of sale and demanded
that the accusers come forth with their evidence. That charge was withdrawn, but the anger and
rage continued so that some of the segregationist practices were
intensified. But they were met with
massive demonstrations and publicity as the civil rights movement gained
momentum.
People do not understand
the power of the boycott. In a
capitalist country, it strikes at the
economic heart. It is a way for people
to manage their own lives rather than be part of oppressive and devious schemes
of the corporate mindset. Many people
find themselves doing business with companies they don’t like because those
companies seem to hold a monopoly on items that the people need. A boycott works only when people have an
alternative source for the things they need.
Like those people who were
paying ransom to merchants for the things they needed like food and household
appliances, many people find themselves purchasing products in oppressive circumstances because they have
no other choice. The key to a successful
boycott is to create other choices.
We have lived through three
decades when corporations, which want to be regarded as persons, have been
horrible citizens. They spurned American
workers by outsourcing production to other countries with cheap labor, mostly China. Now they are practicing “tax inversion” by
which they evade American corporate taxes by registering the headquarters of
their companies off shore in countries that have a lower tax rate. They use the American infrastructure to
market their products, but they don’t want to pay for it.
It is apparent that our tax
code needs revision, but that is no excuse for corporations to renounce their
citizenship while exploiting the American markets. Conservative folks are raging about the
influx of immigrants that are coming to the U.S. for jobs, but they ignore the
fact that corporations have sent jobs overseas and are becoming the corporate citizens of other countries
while exploiting the American marketplace.
If they want to take their
companies offshore, let them find their markets offshore. Don’t buy their products. As long as they base their corporations
elsewhere, the idea of buying American is rendered pointless. Buying American no longer contributes to the
national economy. It supports companies
which take the buyers' money and funnel it into the exorbitant salaries and
bonuses that have reduced workers’ wages and created a situation where a minor
percentage of people hold the nations
wealth and earnings. They are the
creators of wage inequality and the growing ranks of the poor. Every dollar spent on their products creates more poverty in the ranks of
those who actually do the nation’s work.
The Financial Times reports
that “In
1960, the US
was home to 17 of the world’s 20 largest companies. Fifty years later, only six
were headquartered there.”
Some
of the companies, according to Wikipedia, that have inverted are:
- McDermott International to Panama,
1982
- Helen of Troy to Bermuda,
1994
- Tyco International to Bermuda,
1997
- Fruit of the Loom to the Cayman
Islands, 1998
- Ingersoll
Rand to Bermuda, 2001
- Transocean
to Switzerland,
2008
- Ensco plc
to the United Kingdom,
2009
- Eaton Corporation to Ireland,
2012
- Actavis to Ireland,
2013
- Chiquita
to Ireland,
2014 (pending)
- Applied Materials to the Netherlands,
2014 (pending)
- Abbvie to Ireland,
2014 (pending)
- Medtronic
to Ireland,
2014 (pending)
- Walgreens
to Switzerland,
2014 (pending)
- Mylan to the Netherlands,
2014 (pending)
While the brands and services offered by some of
these countries are buried in subsidiaries, some, such as Walgreens, Fruit of the
Loom, Chiquita, are familiar. For me,
they are a place to start. I will not
patronize a Walgreens, buy Fuirt of the Loom t-shirts or skivvies, or a Chiquita
banana anymore.
If enough willpeople begin to understand how these
companies are betraying them, they boycott them and their products and let them
know that as they have chosen to leave America, they should find their
markets in their new homes, not in ours.
Conservatives
are in a rage about illegal immigrants, but they allow their corporate masters
to take out corporate citizenship in other countries and siphon American
dollars for their own benefit and that of their new countries.
We have a civil right to do business with those who
do not abuse us. One of the ways to take
America
back is to shun those who bilk and betray us.
