Timing leads me to interpret this as a reply to the Chicago DSA thread I reposted; but if so, it said "Boycotts that work are focused on a clear target and have a specific demand, and are built on long-term, deep organizing": they can work, but not viral social posts to not buy anything for one day. - ThreadSky

graue.bsky.social • 15 hours ago

Timing leads me to interpret this as a reply to the Chicago DSA thread I reposted; but if so, it said "Boycotts that work are focused on a clear target and have a specific demand, and are built on long-term, deep organizing": they can work, but not viral social posts to not buy anything for one day.

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sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

That was part of it but I started thinking about this a few days ago; mostly based on people being surprised and skeptical that in Canada a protracted boycott with no long-term deep organizing is happening, and realizing that I myself don't have any precedent for that sort of thing

sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

what I was trying to get at in the thread is that there is an assumption that long-term, deep organizing is always necessary, but I think it's only necessary in the US because of a large degree of apathy and being happy with the status quo

graue.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Do tanking Tesla sales count as an organic boycott? Anyway, it's a point well taken.

sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

yeah, I would say so, I'm maybe being a little unfair to the American consumer because so far I'm pretty optimistic about that one

It probably helps that most people weren't going to buy a Tesla driver and that Tesla drivers were already disliked

sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

thinking about it more - going on kind of a tangent

actually effective unorganized boycotts came in response to a crisis

Crises seem likely in the future for all sorts of reasons (climate change even if everything else gets fixed tomorrow)

maybe we should think about crisis resiliency more

tektology-enjoyer.bsky.social•14 hours ago

The Canadian boycott has different bottlenecks - store owners and governments are pulling American products, it's not mass action that materialized out of nowhere. Much easier to coordinate pulling all American booze out of liquor stores in the province if you're The Liquor Control Board of Ontario

sanaer.bsky.social•14 hours ago

true in that particular case, but from what I've heard from my family a lot of the grocery store boycotts are fairly unplanned, and those plus other decisions like not planning any future travel to the US are probably more impactful than liquor stores

sanaer.bsky.social•14 hours ago

it also sounds like there's a huge amount of social pressure to not buy American, and people are talking about it all the time in a way I've never heard of happening here (at least among boomers, who polls show are the most on board with this stuff)

coautonomous.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Its a very simple message to get across, Buy Canadian, then anywhere but US. Doesnt take a ton of organizing.

Trump provided the motivation himself. Turns out threats of annexation have a galvanizing effect on a populace.

He kind of did us a favour in that regard.

signaltap.bsky.social•15 hours ago

I think the interesting thing with boycotts is that they can happen with relatively minimal organizing, so even though they're more likely to succeed if they're well organized and have a goal, there's a possibility that a spontaneous one happens and actually gets attention

signaltap.bsky.social•15 hours ago

You're definitely right about the apathy and support for the status quo in the US, but like the bud light boycott happened pretty spontaneously and was amplified by right wing media into something with actual economic impact super quickly.

sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Yeah

one thing that is difficult about the current situation is that the right wing seems to view their made up fake problems as existential threats, whereas it's hard to get people to care about actual dangers

sanaer.bsky.social•15 hours ago

I have this theory that people are making up fake (and easily defeated) threats in order to avoid acknowledging and to somehow cope with the real ones, and that this accelerated around Covid

signaltap.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Absolutely! Also, a non trivial percentage of light beer drinkers are right wing (light beer has broad appeal) and there are loads of brands and breweries to choose from.

signaltap.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Is there something that is easy to boycott without meaningfully changing consumption patterns that could be targeted? Another beer, some brand of chips, some type of food?

signaltap.bsky.social•15 hours ago

I'd like to think that something similar could happen outside the far right? But idk

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