BUILDING THE MOVEMENT

Downsizing Corporate Power, Made Simple

Oddly enough, the most promising tactic available to our movement is one that has largely been overlooked. It gives individuals direct influence and has the potential to build the movement from the ground up, decentralize corporate power, end destructive corporate practices, effectively end corporate domination, and build alternative economic institutions, all at the same time. But because we are more likely to think of it as a corporate tactic, it has been largely forgotten as a movement strategy. Our weapon is our economic power, and it may prove to be the corporations' Achille's heel and the peoples' slingshot against the corporate Goliath.

It was our economic power that built these corporations - and it is our economic power that can break them.Over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 have built fortunes through the sale of products and services to consumers (the rest, through lucrative government contracts and wholesaling). Although government provides significant support ("corporate welfare") to companies, most of these would go out of business without adequate consumer support. For years, people have happily handed over wealth to corporations in exchange for goods and services. But as the cumulative costs of this pattern become evident, many people are rethinking their relationship with corporations. Those who are challenging corporate behavior find themselves going up against enormous economic forces, and it is now clear that it's counterproductive to fight the corporate monster with one hand while feeding it with the other.

Corporations have largely convinced us that consumption is apolitical, and that the only appropriate concern when making a purchase is concern for oneself-one's taste, one's style, one's safety, one's pocketbook. Buying should not be a matter for the conscience. But while the purchases of individuals are supposed to be free of any sort of political content or motivation,* corporations are extremely political in how they spend their economic influence. They are keenly aware of the political ramifications of their spending - while they encourage consumer activists to vote at the polls, and not in the checkout line, certainly they view their massive campaign contributions as "voting with the pocketbook." And while loudly decrying consumer boycotts, each year corporations launch more boycotts within the business community than do all environmental and social justice groups combined.

Every time we buy something from these giants, we're providing them with more power and resources to destroy the planet and crush our movement. Corporations are monstrous in part because we bought their products and made them monstrous. If we made them, we can unmake them. It's even easier than it sounds.

Size Doesn't Matter, People Do

There is a natural assumption that because many of the Fortune 500 have been around for 50 or even a hundred years, they must have a tremendous economic advantage over us. They have an enormous amount of resources at their disposal. After all, we've been giving them our money for years, and consequently their net worths are sometimes in the hundreds of billions. So isn't it a bit late to stop giving them money? But for corporations, it's not so much about what they have as what they don't have. What a corporation has doesn't count for much with shareholders; it's all about how much more it can have. Corporations are engaged in a constant struggle to please their shareholders and attract new ones. They do this by growing as much as they can, which usually entails making bigger profits, often through increased sales. Growth in profits usually leads to growth in stock value. But what happens if a corporation doesn't grow? Eventually it dies. If a corporation loses customers and can't sell enough of its products, it quickly finds itself in an extremely vulnerable position. Stock value drops and shareholders bail out, leaving the company with fewer financial resources, slashed budgets, and looming raiders.

So, should the movement ask people to stop buying from big corporations? Not exactly. It wouldn't sound very practical because most people still don't appreciate the potential effectiveness of their economic power. Furthermore, the effects of such a general, unfocused strategy would be hard to show, and therefore wouldn't help to attract people to the movement. And such a broad strategy would dramatically dilute the potential wallop of a more unified and focused effort, and thereby reduce the leverage that the movement could potentially exercise. (Of course, we don't want to discourage people from choosing to redirect their money away from corporations. It's just that initially, focusing on other strategies will do more to help build the movement.)

Boycotts: The Movement's Best Kept Secret (or, Why the Corporations Want You To Think Boycotts Don't Work)

In order to get the message to the public that they do have power over corporations, we need to begin with a succession of collective, highly focused campaigns against a series of corporate targets. We need to utilize a global tactic familiar to virtually everyone: the boycott.

Although the mainstream media does not report boycott success stories, there have been many: Heinz, the world's largest tuna company caved in to all the demands of boycotters upset over dolphin deaths; Folger's left El Salvador; Pepsi left Burma; Burger King got out of the rainforest; General Electric got out of the nuclear weapons business; McDonald's dumped its Styrofoam packaging; Home Depot and Mitsubishi USA made deals to protect rainforests; dozens of cosmetic companies ended the practice of testing their products on animals, and the list goes on. In fact, boycotting has become so successful that, in the 1990s, the amount of time it took boycotts to succeed dropped from an average of 7-10 years to only 1 to 3 years.

Of all the headaches a CEO can face - a hostile takeover, a class action lawsuit, a news story expose, a government indictment, shareholder resolutions, new government regulations - a survey of corporate CEOs ranked boycotts as the most troublesome. Because corporations are pumping record amounts into "image" advertising, and are increasingly relying upon their image to boost product sales and stock confidence, they are increasingly vulnerable to attacks on their image. Rather than be labeled to an entire generation as the 'baby-killing-company' (Nestle), or the 'Nazi-beer' (Coors), corporations are opting to do the right thing - when it pays to do so.

But boycotts are more than effective tools to attack destructive corporate practices. Boycotts are also natural movement builders. Boycotts provide people with a very direct, autonomous, and immediate sense of influence that is not dependent upon others (media or politicians) for effectiveness. At the same time, they educate participants about important social and environmental issues, and corporate policies and the nature of the corporate system, plus give a taste of the power of organized, collective mass action.

Boycotts are frequently at the forefront of mass movements. Because boycotts are by their very nature so direct and effective when done en masse, they inspire participants with a sense of empowerment and hope that is critical to any movement. The American Independence movement, the Abolition movement, the Populist movement, the Labor movement, the Civil Rights movement, the Free Speech movement, the Peace movement, the Farmworker movement, and the Marine Mammal Protection movement all followed on the heels of large boycott efforts. The boycott was a key strategy used in South Africa to end apartheid and is frequently used by student movements around the globe in their various struggles.

The full potential of the boycott as a movement tool has never been seriously pursued. Because media reporting of boycott successes is nonexistent, the dominant perception among most individuals - and even among many groups that launch boycotts! - is that boycotts are not effective. Despite this perception of ineffectiveness, general widespread ignorance of ongoing boycotts, and the resultant low levels of public support, boycotts continue to be launched and settled in record numbers. And many potential boycotts are settled before they are ever called, in order to avoid the embarrassing and potentially costly public airing of corporate dirty laundry. Because almost everyone can join or promote a boycott, it creates a spacious initial movement bandwagon that everyone can hop on. Various corporate targets can be selected to represent a variety of causes and concerns central to the theme of corporate dominance. Although the initial boycott targets may attempt to hold out, as more people join the movement and the boycotts, it will become increasingly costly to resist, and increasingly evident that such resistance is futile. As these targets surrender, the collective boycott force will grow in reputation, participation and success. A unified boycott force with a proven track record will ultimately prove unstoppable in targeting heinous corporate behavior. But this is just the beginning.

Boycotts can also have interesting side effects. The "boycott domino effect" occurs after a successful boycott, when other corporations, fearing they might be the next target, approach the boycott group and attempt to hammer out a settlement. After a 7-year boycott of Campbell Soup by tomato and pickle workers ended in victory, tomato conglomerate Heinz sought a conciliatory arrangement with the workers. After Star-Kist ended a two-year boycott by announcing its plan to sell only certified "dolphin-safe" tuna, its two largest rivals, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble-Bee, stepped forward the same day offering to make similar commitments. Some companies may unilaterally attempt to clean up their acts in a more quiet fashion to avoid getting fingered by boycotters.