boycott

Mitchell Atencio 11-16-2022
A red football helmet against a white background has parts of its outer shell disintegrating and floating off.

Gearstd / iStock

EARLY IN THE 2022 NFL season, I watched as the Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a second head injury in the span of five days. Although the NFL would not admit the first of those was a concussion, it was painfully clear that Tagovailoa suffered serious brain trauma.

In that moment, I felt the culmination of years’ worth of fretting over the sport I loved and its relationship to head injuries. I determined then and there on a Thursday night that I would quit the NFL. Why? The NFL is violent — and Christians are called to peace.

The league is unrepentant and unaccountable in its abuse of the brains and bodies of its players, and no amount of reform can change that. I am convicted that if I am to love my neighbors — if I am to love God — then I must resist the NFL.

Liz Bierly 6-07-2022

Boycott, directed by Julia Bacha / Just Vision

FROM THE BOSTON Tea Party to the Montgomery bus boycott, expressing patriotic dissent by withdrawing support from goods, services, people, or structures has long been an integral part of our American democracy.

So, when Alan Leveritt (publisher of the Arkansas Times newspaper), Mikkel Jordahl (an Arizona attorney who provides legal services to incarcerated people), and Bahia Amawi (a Texas public school speech pathologist) were asked in separate incidents to certify that they would not “engage in boycotts of Israel” as a condition of doing business with or being employed by their states, they were troubled. Leveritt, Jordahl, and Amawi each decided to defend their First Amendment rights and push back on legislative efforts that have the potential to outlaw peaceful political boycotts related to a variety of issues.

Their stories are central to Just Vision’s new documentary, Boycott, which exposes the wave of anti-boycott legislation and executive actions in 33 states since 2015. These laws require Americans to give up their right to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a campaign formally begun in 2005 in Palestinian civil society to urge the international community to leverage economic influence to encourage the Israeli government to address its human rights record. (Some Israeli officials and others claim that BDS efforts challenge Israel’s right to exist and are inherently antisemitic.)

The logo of Home Depot is seen in Encinitas, California April 4, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

In a statement, Bishop Reginald Jackson, who oversees Georgia's African Methodist Episcopal churches, said Home Depot had rejected requests to discuss the new law.

the Web Editors 12-05-2016

Image via a katz/Shutterstock.com

The Injustice Boycott has selected three locations that it plans to affect: New York City, San Francisco, and Standing Rock. The initiative will give the government leaders of those locations until Jan. 17, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to answer to the demands of local activists and organizers, and if those demands aren’t answered by that day, the Injustice Boycott will launch several actions against the city. These actions will include a tourism boycott of those cities; pulling money out of banks, financial institutions, and large corporations that either support racial injustice and police brutality in those cities or have not come out against them; and protests in the city that will be designed to shut down the work of businesses and city government.

Rick Herron 3-07-2016

Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Image via CWMc/Flickr

The boycott stems from Wendy’s refusal to CIW’s Fair Food Program, a workplace-monitoring program that the group designed to prevent worker abuse and exploitation, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Wendy’s has moved some operations out of Florida — where tomato growers had begun implementing the Fair Food Program — to Mexico, where worker abuse in the industry has been widely documented.

the Web Editors 12-01-2015

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving known for shopping, has become a rallying point for #BlackLivesMatter activists, not just retailers looking for a holidays bump in sales.

After the non-indictment decision in Ferguson, Rahiel Tesfamariam of Urban Cusp created the #NotOneDime boycott campaign, that “calls for a cease on all non-essential shopping from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and reclaiming Black Friday as a national day of action and service,” according to the campaign’s website.

When Time Magazine announced that Black Friday sales fell $1 billion this year, many on Twitter called it a victory for #NotOneDime.

David Gushee 6-15-2015
Photo via REUTERS / Jim Young / RNS

A Wells Fargo branch is seen in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, 2015. Photo via REUTERS / Jim Young / RNS

Boycotts are most likely to work when the boycott is very carefully planned; when the boycotters clearly have the moral high ground; when they can convince the broader public that the boycott is a last resort; when they can build a critical mass of public support; and when there is some chance that a boycott can make a meaningful difference.

Graham’s effort to boycott Wells Fargo failed on all five counts. 

Jim Rice 5-11-2015

WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told an audience this spring that “an occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state.”

McDonough decried the illegal construction of settlements in Palestinian territory, under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessors, as intentionally seeking to divide Palestinian communities. He added, “like every administration since President Johnson, we will continue to oppose Israeli settlement activity since it undermines the prospects for peace.”

But many activists refuse to continue to merely decry the occupation, year after year, decade after decade, while facts on the ground worsen and a just peace grows seemingly more elusive. For these activists—and they include many U.S. churches, peace groups, and humanitarian organizations—the time has come to put teeth into efforts to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and thereby impel progress toward a just peace in the region.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been debating various divestment measures since 2004, and last year the denomination voted to divest from three companies that supply equipment used in the occupation of Palestinian territory.

The Editors 2-11-2015

A video depicting the social responses to boycotts during the civil rights

BORDERED BY strip malls, chain restaurants, and drug stores, four-lane Hillsboro Pike in Nashville, Tenn., carries cars from the Vanderbilt University area out to suburban neighborhoods. Every afternoon, thousands of drivers heading home from the city crest a ridge and pass a long, red-brick church.

That church, Calvary United Methodist, is where I was confirmed, participated in youth group, and sang in the choir. In the archives room off the education wing, a visitor can open a filing cabinet drawer, flip past photos of youth group retreats and church league basketball games, and find a manila folder labeled “Rev. Dr. Sam Dodson, 1958-1965.”

The folder is thin, but its contents are weighty. A letter to the local Methodist bishop from the church’s board explains that Dodson cannot adequately minister to his congregation while participating in political activities and suggests he be demoted to assistant pastor. A newspaper clipping from 1965 announces that Rev. Dodson and his family will be moving to Athens, Greece, where he will head St. Andrew’s American Church. I recognize some of the names signed to letters calling for Dodson’s demotion—an usher who pressed strawberry candies into my palm whenever I asked, a woman who looked me in the eye when I was 11 and told me I would be a leader in the church someday.

Photo courtesy DangApricot via Wikimedia Commons

Hobby Lobby store in Ohio. Photo courtesy DangApricot via Wikimedia Commons

Hanukkah comes early this year. But it apparently never comes to Hobby Lobby.

The national craft store owned by conservative billionaire Steve Green seemingly refuses to carry merchandise related to Hanukkah because of Green’s “Christian values,” and some Jews are taking offense.

“I will never set foot in a Hobby Lobby. Ever,” wrote Ken Berwitz, the New Jersey blogger who brought the Hobby Lobby Hanukkah flap to light in a Sept. 27 blog post.

Berwitz’s outrage has spread to other bloggers who are taking Hobby Lobby to task as a store that courts the general public, but refuses to stock anything related to Judaism — even in communities with significant Jewish populations.

Lisa Sharon Harper 12-15-2011

Lowes pulled its ad dollars from a show that aims to tighten the tapestry we call America because of a faux controversy drummed up by a hate group that said, through its claims of “propaganda," that it's not possible for Muslims to be American.

But the fabric of our nation exists because of the genius of our nation’s founder, who, in the very first amendment to our Constitution, protected the integrity of religion by forbidding the establishment of any one religion as the religion of the state.

In every single society before the founding of our Union, religion and state were married. History has taught us that religion co-opted by the state loses its integrity and its prophetic power. 

Ours was a grand experiment that built America into a grand tapestry of ethnic and religious groups that thrive side by side in relative peace—more so than in any other nation in the world.

Sisters Shadia, Suehalia, and Samira from All American Muslim. Image via TLC.

Sisters Shadia, Suehalia, and Samira from All American Muslim. Image via TLC.

They are dangerous. And no, I’m not talking about the five Muslim families in Dearborn Michigan depicted in TLC’s new series All American Muslim.

I’m talking about the Florida Family Association(FFA). They are a group with a campaign targeting the show's advertisers and who have successfully gotten Lowe's to remove their commercials.

From the FFA website:

The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish. ...Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.

Yup. That’s their complaint. Having a show that would dare to depict “ordinary” Muslims.

Julie Clawson 2-08-2011

I admit, I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Yes, it's crass and consumerist, but seeing how marketers decide to spend millions of dollars in an attempt to manipulate me each year holds some sort of strange appeal (twisted as it may be).

Diana Butler Bass 8-10-2010
As a working mother who lives in the Washington-metro area, I admit that I was dreading Bravo's new program The Real Housewives of D.C.
Will Travers 7-22-2010

Since the recent passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 29, those of us working for social justice in the United States have a rare opportunity to register a particularly effective form of protest.

Rose Marie Berger 6-08-2010
It appears that BP has decided it needs tips from the Spin Master to protect its thoroughly corroded reputation in the U.S. No, they haven't hired Republican strategist Frank Luntz.
Rose Marie Berger 5-18-2010
I was in a "webinar" (live online presentation thingy) recently with Erica Chenoweth from Wesleyan University.
Cesar Baldelomar 5-07-2010
Someone please pinch me. This must be a nightmare. After all, is it possible that, in this land of freedom, one of its states -- which back in 1993 refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.
Jonny 5 4-30-2010

I am a rapper. I rap in a band called Flobots. Today is day one of our spring tour promoting our new album Survival Story, so I am writing this from a tour bus in a hotel parking lot in Albuquerque.