Towing of the platform to its final position began on 11 June. By this time, the call for a boycott of Shell products was being heeded across much of continental northern Europe, damaging Shell’s profitability as well as brand image. […]
On 20 June, Shell had decided that their position was no longer tenable, and withdrew their plan to sink the Brent Spar […]
So it needed more than a week of concerted boycott action to bring big business into trouble, but not unlimited boycott.
That boycott had a demand attached, to prevent the sinking of the Brent Spar buoy. Effectively “unlimited” boycott until Shell gave into the demand.
This and the last no shop Friday thing seem mostly pointless. I mean fuck Amazon for sure but shouldn’t there be some goal? “Boycott Amazon until X, Y, and Z” not “No buy from Amazon for a week but then we’ll be back so no worries!”
A whole 7 days??? Gosh gee willakers!!! You think people can uphold a boycott a whole 7 days???
Look. Boycotts are effective, but you gotta be stubborn. It’s gotta be “boycott from now on” with no end date.
Otherwise, it’ll just look like normal fluctuations in their business.
“Oh, this week was slightly down…ah, but then it stopped. We’re good!”
But if you boycott forever, then their numbers continuously go down. And if you get other people boycotting, those numbers go down faster.
THAT’S how you make an impact.
In 1995 we boycotted Shell for environmental reasons and it worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar
So it needed more than a week of concerted boycott action to bring big business into trouble, but not unlimited boycott.
That boycott had a demand attached, to prevent the sinking of the Brent Spar buoy. Effectively “unlimited” boycott until Shell gave into the demand.
This and the last no shop Friday thing seem mostly pointless. I mean fuck Amazon for sure but shouldn’t there be some goal? “Boycott Amazon until X, Y, and Z” not “No buy from Amazon for a week but then we’ll be back so no worries!”
The implicit demand is to stop supporting fascists.
for a week
Implicit demands are for mob bosses and boat owners. If you’re threatening a corporation you need to be clear and direct.
Less
More
Or whatever. Clear, concrete, demands.
With the time skip, that’s going to be a long boycott.
Boycott action, and a smidge of arson.
Okay, so start boycotting Amazon now and don’t stop.
This is how strikes are organized generally. You do limited time events too minimize the hurt on both sides, and bring them both to the table.