Alien Encounters - Boycott??

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

On Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:23:20 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:

>The idea behind a boycott is as an organized effort, targetted to
>a specific company for a specific reason.  It's a tool to get things
>to change, one company at a time.

I don't think theres a lot of evidence that it works.. but please
correct me if there is any evidence.

We've been picketting some local Porn shops here. Its a pretty well
organized effort. Ive been doing it for almost a year. There are 6
shops. One that we havent picked has closed, probably because of a
lack of backing: these busioness are very competitive.=20

I told the organizers when we had a chance to meet the city elders,
prayer would make all the different.. but, they were too nervous about
it, so activisim has taken the typical course of yielding difficult to
measure results.

Prayer changes things, and doing something positive is 100 times more
powerful than NOT doing something negative.

I think it goes back to the old days when people stopped buying milk
from the farmer when he moved in that little hussy from the city. Or,
when the city neighborhood store was actually local enough so that, if
the old ladies didnt like the girly calendar behind the butcher
counter, they would go across town.. The effect of boycott on both of
those systems depended on closed economies.

Now, we are (in case anyone hadnt noticed), in a global economy. No
walls. Virtually infinite routing possibilities when contructing a
market. KMART, the local porn store (if its money sources have enough
diversification), Disney, they can all design to operate very well at
the 87% (arbitrailly speaking) figure to which a boycott MIGHT at the
greatest effect, reduce the their volume. IN those days, the potential
50% or greater cut into their volume would be immediately fatal..=20

See, these things depend on social pressure, in the form of
embarrasement. if theres no one there to be embarrased ... then what ?


The old time local vendors had to consider their PERSONAL
relationships in the community. But now, its silly... Being talked
about by a few Christians in a town of 60,000 is not an issue.
Besides, there is no personal face in the store. Thres quite a case to
be made in that no one in the good old days of Kennedy and the
Jetsons, ever boycotted the drug store because they sold Playboy.

Im not opposed to civil activism and am as agrivated by Disney's
slouch toward Gommorah (to borrow the title of Robert Bork's excellent
and recommended new book) as anyone... So, keep it up if you have a
conscience to do it, but I just dont see penny pinching and judicious
shopping as being on par with holiness and a powerful gospel witness.

The kind of revival it would take to reverse this country is way
beyond anything we are talking about here.  You can debate the
pertinence and value of Christians involvement in politics and
pressure groups and all, and it all is good, I just dont any of it in
the Bible - and the PREACHING and TEACHING the WORD is where our
strength is.

-mwb