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Boycott, efficient non violent action
Demanding Comsumer - 21.03.2003 13:06
One of the few non violent means to create political pressure are boycotts. News about consumer boycotts in the USA against French and German products and companies have already been used to apply political pressure on these governments ...
One of the few non violent means to create political pressure are boycotts. News about consumer boycotts in the USA against French and German products and companies have already been used to apply political pressure on these governments in the weeks before the US, UK, Australia and Poland breached International law by starting the invasion in Irak.
There are various ways to make a boycott efficient.
The best known is the consumer boycott. To be efficient a reduction of 1-2% of turnaround of a company (or product) is seen as the critical mass needed. It is crucial that the target company knows that a boycott is going on against them.
This means that a boycott on one single product like "Fanta lemon" might be more efficient than the ambition to reduce the turnaround of the CocaCola group. However this will need some good coordination between boycotting people.
One of the most efficient ways is the change in purchasing agreements between companies, accompanied with an explanation for the change in purchasing policy.
E.g. if the company decides to cancel a contract with a target company or a company from a target county this will be much more effective than an announcement not to eat at McDonalds (which as a continuos/demanding consumer you might not do anyhow).
While the company you work with might have a high threshold to change its existing procurement agreements (this often involves high costs for the company) the declaration to exclude target companies from future new contracts might be something viable with less pressure.
Also keep in mind that it will be much more difficult to convince you company to break a contract for special machine parts than convincing the chef of your canteen/lunch room to take some cheese from Kraft or a soda pop from Pepsi out of the program.
since you might need some more information to be able to start an efficient boycott here a (random) list of related website :
Adbusters
 http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/boycott_america/
English
Boycott America
http://www.boycottamerica.org
in English
Boycott Bush
http://www.boycottbush.org
if broken URL use : http://users.Swing.be/boycottbush/
Dutch, http://users.Swing.be/boycottbush/accueilnl.html
French, http://users.Swing.be/boycottbush/accueilfr.html
Spanish, http://users.Swing.be/boycottbush/accueilesp.html
English http://users.Swing.be/boycottbush/accueilang.html
BoycottBush.net
http://www.boycottbush.net
English
Boycott Corporate US and Britain
http://www.boycottwar.net
English
Boycott US
http://www.boycottus.net
English
Boycott USA multinationals
http://www.malamente.com/campagna/boicottaggio.htm
various languages including:
English German, French, Italian Russian Arabic
(requires: javascript, stylesheets)
Boycott USA.org
http://www.boycottusa.org/default.htm
English
Boycott the War at Mother Earth
(had problems with the links, hope that got solved when you read this)
http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index.php
English http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index_en.php
French http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index_fr.php
Dutch http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index_nl.php
Boycott the War!
http://www.bethecause.org/boycott/index.shtml
English
QuitUSA.com
http://www.quitusa.com
English
Spend for Peace
http://www.spendforpeace.co.nz/index.htm
[ http://www.spendforpeace.co.nz (resulted in an error: /htdocs/style.css not found)]
English (hosted in Australia)
Stop Shopping
http://www.stopshopping.org
English
Stop the War Against Iraq - Boycott War Now!
http://peace-action.inbyron.com/
English (Australian focus)
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