One of the best examples of how corporations have used it as a club against local democracy, that I've read so far, is International Dairy Foods Association v. Amestoy (1996)
International Dairy Foods v. Amestoy
in which the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that a Vermont statute -- passed in response to consumer/citizen/voter concerns and demands - compelling dairy producers to label products containing growth hormones violated the corporate agribusinesses First Amendment right not to speak, and must, therefore, be repealed.
But today I ran across another interesting case, from 1980:
State of Missouri v. NOW
In that case, the State of Missouri sued the National Organization of Women under the Sherman Anti-trust Act, claiming that NOW's convention boycott of Missouri, a response to the Missouri legislature's refusal to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, violated the Sherman Act by causing economic harm to Missouri businesses, especially hotels and restaurants directly engaged in serving convention customers.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the boycott was a protected form of political speech under the First Amendment, and not a violation of the Sherman Act.
The interesting piece was that the Court took the time to identify the source of the term "boycott," in footnote 5
Examples of political boycotts include the boycott of Florida citrus products which was to protest against the Miami referendum withdrawing protection for gay civil rights, and the refusal by colonists to import British goods in order to communicate the strength of public feeling against the Stamp and Townsend Acts early in our country's history
One of the more famous political boycotts occurred in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the racial segregation and discrimination on city buses. There have been consumer boycotts on meat, supermarkets, grapes, iced tea in cans, sugar or soft drinks, slacks, lettuce, textiles, chocolate, Saran Wrap, Mexico, tuna, animal skins and furs, Russian products and Japanese products.
The term boycott was derived from a method of retaliation used against a land agent, Captain Boycott, who paid starvation wages to tenants and then evicted those who protested these wages. Tenants rallied the support of Boycott's servants, herders and drivers, and all agreed to cease relations with the Boycott family. See Webster's Third New International Dictionary 264 (1971).
It got me to thinking about all the metaphors lately about consumers "snapping their wallets shut," refusing to spend, refusing to do their consumerly duty and drive the (hollow) American economy.
The prevailing view is that this is an act of defeat by the American people - wages stagnated since the 70s, credit took the place of wages in the intervening decades, credit has dried up, jobs are disappearing, people just can't afford to spend anymore - would if they could.
But the collective wallet snapping could also be framed as a positive, conscious, deliberate choice - an explicit rejection by the American people of the corporatist, globalized, perpetual growth economic model - a "mad as hell" statement that we're not going to willingly participate in undermining our own wellbeing anymore. I'm not saying that's what every person actually is thinking when they decide not to buy something, just that it's a different framing of the same phenomenon, and one that's more empowering, more part of a narrative of reclaiming citizen power, and possibly a useful communications tool for progressives going forward.
Comments are closed on this story.