Category
May 9, 2025
Tactics suggested for resisting the many depredations of the Musk-Trump team, fossil fuel industries, and the military industrial complex, often include boycotts and a general strike. I think these are good ideas—but only if done right. Let me explain.
A boycott usually means a campaign to get people to stop buying a particular product, or from a particular company, until certain demands are met. The problem here is that even if the campaign succeeds in getting enough customers onboard to get the target to actually sit up and listen, what is the likeliest response? Those at the company who must address this campaign are focused on the bottom line. If the campaign generates enough clout to threaten that bottom line, the company may well react. But will it react by a change from a previously profitable practice to one endorsed by the campaign? Maybe. It’s likely that the change will be either temporary—reverting to the old practice as soon as the boycott is called off and attention is focused elsewhere—or cosmetic. For example, if people are upset about a company clearcutting old growth forests, the response may be to spend money on ads depicting beautiful, mature forests full of cute animals, and language about how deeply the corporation cares about Nature. Meanwhile, they have new policies to leave a beauty strip along highways to hide their clearcuts, and locked gates on access roads.
As for a general strike, workers across the board, rather than those in a particular company or a particular industry, would need to refuse to work. To be effective, it should also involve a refusal to buy anything. Sometimes a general strike is scheduled as a one-day event, which is unlikely to be effective. But it could be a recurring event—for example, every Monday. After a certain number of weeks if demands are not met the general strike could take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays…
At this point I need to address the question you likely have about either of these tactics: how can I get by without buying groceries, gas, drugs I depend on, without paying my water/electric/rent bill? This issue is a key reason why the most important part of doing a general strike right is to prepare well in advance. It takes weeks if not months to do enough outreach to get a sufficient percentage of the population on board, and the lead time allows people to stockpile necessary supplies. Obviously, if you’re boycotting blueberries Monday by buying them Sunday, you’ll have no impact. Which brings me to my most radical proposal.
Consider ways to engage a permanent boycott. Can you grow it yourself, make it yourself, trade locally for it? Efforts in this direction, increasing the self-sufficiency of your household, your family, your neighborhood or community, can accomplish three things at once.
1-You stop supporting companies that treat you and the environment badly.
2-You increase your resilience, because you don’t depend on a distant corporation for something you need, something that could be cut off.
3-If it’s a food item, you likely improve your health as you aren’t using toxic inputs, and in any case there is an environmental benefit because the shipping is no longer necessary.
Of course, it isn’t practical or realistic to do everything for yourself, which is why a community network of some sort makes so much sense. This could be a Transition Town, a Mutual Assistance group, or just an informal arrangement among neighbors or friends or family.
The fact that boycotts backed by self-sufficiency—maybe collective self-sufficiency—can simultaneously remove critical support from the corporations and oligarchs threatening our rights and health, make us more resilient in the face of an uncertain future, and reduce our environmental footprints, is why they’re critical tactics. These tactics are too critical to be thrown away by attempting to use them without adequate preparation.
But if the many organizations fighting for justice, for environmental defense, for peace, for a decent future for our children, can unite to work together, there is the potential to make real change at last. We have accomplished little by voting, lobbying our representatives, marching and attending rallies. But a well planned general strike backed by self-sufficiency could not only push the powerful to accede to our demands—it could also be the groundwork for the transition we need, in which we don’t depend on persuading unaccountable leaders to make hard choices that don’t benefit them, but instead we’re simply doing it ourselves.
Mary Wildfire
