Forgiving Myself for a Slight Lapse, and the BIG Lesson
Dear Boycotters,
Welcome back to this aperiodic post on boycotting.
My boycotting journey has gone well. In fact, despite a few snags in finding products to repair major fixtures in my home (Lowe’s, which I am boycotting, is less than 2 miles from my home, and traveling the extra 3 miles to a local hardware store did not seem to be the best approach when trying to obtain certain item based on cost). Boycotting isn’t perfect. It also is time-consuming. Imagine me in the store, scanning the bar codes on products to see if the companies have rejected demands that they desist from supporting apartheid in Israel (Take a look at the app from www.boycat.io)? Yes, it’s time- consuming, and the good news is that there are alternatives --- decent, and not always more costly ones.
I also am learning a more important lesson on this journey. More on this in a bit. . .
Back to the Lowe’s experience. When I entered the store, I was approached by someone, a pleasant young Black man, who was wearing a Lowe’s jacket. He worked for another company, and that I could be given an estimate on gutter work as a home owner. I felt annoyed just being in the store because I felt a little defeated knowing that ended up choosing convenience at the sacrifice of ethics, and I felt compelled to tell him that despite my visiting the store, I was a boycotter of Lowe’s. I also stated my reasons for boycotting it, which he seemed somewhat interested in hearing.
It’s not his fault, of course. Was I picking on him? I tried not to, and I know that boycotting has an impact on those who work at these businesses. (Yes, I have discussed this issue with friends and will address it in future post.). I am pretty certain that the message didn’t mean much to him, but I felt determined to practice being more expressive about my boycotting decision in the hope that the message gets passed along. I’ve shared this message with employees at other stores and with the workers at the “alternative” stores I’ve frequented about why I chose to patronize their store.
I like hearing that companies are feeling the sting of boycotting. While the costs of certain products and services are rising, and the economy may eventually topple in the coming year due to jumps in unemployment and other indicators of a recession, boycotting also has and can continue to have an impact on corporate bottom lines. The contractor I work with on my house repairs told me that the manager of our local Lowe’s store asked him pointedly, “Are you boycotting us?” I smiled. It’s a small but notable sign that people are noticing, even when some news media outlets, also compromised by corporations, are not always letting on.
I mentioned earlier that I am learning something very important on this journey that I didn’t quite expect. Because of the time it is taking me to learn about the companies and simultaneously finding alternative companies whose practices I perceive to be more ethical, I’s come to realize that my time is not at all wasted. I also am spending less of my money overall. With less spending, I get the benefit of learning how to live without the things I thought I needed when in fact, I don’t need them at all.
By the way, I admit to having had a past heyday of spending, especially when I didn’t have a lot of money as a young woman but was convinced that I needed to spend on clothing, hair products, and knick-knacks for my apartment.! I know very well the intoxicating effect of having “things,” and now as I live through my 60s, I am in a position of better appreciating the peaceful feeling of a clutterless home and having fewer but more cherished clothing items. When my mother moved from the home that she and my father (now deceased) bought some 35 years ago and where my 5 siblings and I grew up, she faced a crawlspace that had rarely been cleaned out. In this space were the clothes, toys, games, broken instruments, school notebooks and projects from kindergarten through the 12 th grade that had gathered over this span of years. With help, she managed to rid herself of this mountain of junk and in her next home, insisted on having only the basics --- a few pieces of furniture, only the dishes and pots and pans she needed, and so forth. She called herself a professed minimalist. To tell you the truth, she would returned to some of the hoarding behavior, but nothing like the past behaviors. She also made more regular trips to donation centers.
What I learned from both my father and mother’s habits is that like them, I can easily get caught up in the steady practice of buying in ways that are mindless and that offer temporary feel-good experiences. But along with my own experiences of this proclivity to possess things that aren’t necessary, to be lured by advertising and peer pressures, is that I wasn’t paying attention to how my behaviors were connected to the greed of corporations whose labor practices, lack of genuine concern and attention to diversifying their workplaces, from top to bottom, and efforts to sway politicians in any way that ultimately tied to their wealth to the detriment of progressive social change. In my recent readings on the compromising of “quality” of products by consumers (look up the writings of consumer guru Ralph Nader, for example), I would come to learn that the zeal I have long held for things ends up perpetuating unethical corporate practices.
Together, boycotting and spending less are actions that make me feel less helpless. I make calls and write to elected officials nearly every day on matters related to the ravaging of people’s lives, I join in on special calls and read extraordinary posts on Substack or Bluesky (I no longer am on Facebook) from experts, But the day-to-day action of being deliberate about where I spend money and when to spend it means that I am breaking a conditioning that is driven by corporate influences. I feel more in control of my life and less like a puppet. And I love the pauses I take before I buy virtually anything: do I really need it? I splurge with deliberation and when it is to celebrate small and big wins, and I am generous in my donating as I always have been. This is a feeling of empowerment, of recognizing the self, as psychologist Linda James Myers (https://www.drlindajamesmyers.com/) has written, as a manifestation of a higher being (God or Goddess, for example) and deserving to be cherished. I need not take part in immoral acts. This journey makes me feel more connected to other people.
Finally, I leave with a story. I have a friend who occasionally asks me to drive her to Walmart where she does her regular grocery shopping. Renita doesn’t own a car, and I am happy to take her. We go typically after we visit the gym on Thursdays. We talk each Thursday about all sorts of things, especially the struggles in the U.S. and around the world, and the joys of resistance. As she was leaving my car when we got to the local Walmart, she turned to me seriously and said, “I shouldn’t be going here, should I?” The question surprised me, but in many ways, it made since. I often talk about my boycotting efforts and in fact, I have received much of my information for this journey from people who are more than willing to share their own journeys or send me information about the latest calls for boycotting. “Oh no, Renita. This is a no-judgement zone! I believe everyone has to experience their own journey. I am under no pretense that my way is the only way, and it’s just my small way of helping by sharing with us how I am going through this journey” By the way, “no-judgment zone’ is an expression I’ve borrowed from Gena Brown from Studio G https://www.studiogfitness.com/, which is a logo of this wonderful gym.
There is no perfect way to get there. And it’s my hope that people overall will understand the power of boycotting because ultimately, it only works when it’s done collectively, when there’s a clean path and strategy, and with good timing (see https://www.pbs.org/video/do-boycotts-actually-work-1w8b06/ for more information on boycotting.
