The whole thing is that a strike and a boycott pull in opposite directions The point of a strike is for the person providing a service to tell their customers "This service is essential, you need me" The point of a boycott is the *customer* saying "I *don't* need you"
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Which means if the service actually is that important and essential -- which it often is, if the company is doing something harmful enough to be worth boycotting -- boycotting is fucking hard
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The segregated buses in Montgomery sucked because almost everyone not rich enough to drive did, in fact, *have* to take the bus and the daily humiliation of being forced to move for white riders was something most working-class Black people *had* to just deal with
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So trying to protest that by having a huge chunk of their customer base refuse to take the bus at all during a long enough period of time to hurt their budget was really risky, and painful, and expensive
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Lots of people giving their time and money to run an informal taxi/carpool service (the "Freedom Riders") Extreme social pressure from the community to demand that everyone keep on doing it and not "cheat" (centered mostly around the church)
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A boycott that's actually pretty easy for you to do that doesn't affect your life much is... probably a boycott that isn't gonna do jack shit The company already wrote people like you off as part of the general churn of free-market competition
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Hence why all the people who said they were going to stop eating at Chick-Fil-A didn't come to much in the end They were already competing with a bunch of other fast food brands, they knew you were just one demo they were advertising to among many, it was a blip
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Customers as a class don't really have that much power, Marxism 101 is that power is wielded by *workers* and that "consumer power" is a lie Solidarity among customers is pretty damn rare
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organised a boycott of many popular Australian beers after 50+ ppl got sacked. Worked. 2016. Worked well enough organised a boycott against Unilever's icecreams in Aus in 2017 to stop the termination of another contract.
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Replying to @oldsauceboy
You'll note that successful boycotts are usually seen as actions linked to strikes and organized by labor unions in the relevant industry, and that's what gives them their power (The Montgomery Bus Boycott is notable because it was organized around a "non-economic" factor, race)
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The simple act of "refusing to cross a picket line" is a boycott, in fact under the legal definition that's a "primary boycott" Almost all boycotts we call "boycotts" are "secondary boycotts" (which are under the NRLB illegal for a labor union to encourage)
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