What do you get when you combine good old direct action tactics, a boisterous hotel boycott and a Lady Gaga hit? A YouTube flashmob called "Caught in a Bad Hotel." On May 8th, San Francisco Pride at Work teamed up with One Struggle One Fight and the Brass Liberation Orchestra in a direct action to urge a boycott of the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. Workers at the hotel have been fighting for a fair union contract that includes decent wages and healthcare benefits, and are now calling on the community to boycott the Westin St. Francis, along with other downtown hotels. This 5-minute video is one of the funnest political protests I've ever seen. As one participant later said, "it's more fun to protest with the gays, cause we've got the attitude and we know how to dance." For more details, check out http://www.sfprideatwork.org
The problem I always have with boycotts is where they end. Rarely when someone, be it a citizen activist or a large organization, announces a boycott do they simultaneously announce an end point. Then, over the years, they either forget about it altogether or something more important comes up as a reason to ignore it, and no one cares anymore. I'm thinking about all this as I saw this post from Bil Browning at The Bilerico Project, an LGBT-focused blog:
Uniting the T and the LBG
Filed by: Bil Browning
April 27, 2010 5:00 PM
Last year I celebrated my birthday in Washington DC with hundreds of friends and readers at the National Equality March. This year, I'll be celebrating in Phoenix, Arizona, and, of course, you're all invited.
I'll be a plenary speaker at the Transform Arizona conference this year on October 16. Presented by TransMentors International, Phoenix Pride & H.E.R.O., this Arizona gathering has become on of the most respected transgender conferences in the nation. Transmentors sponsors these conferences around the nation; New Hampshire, Oregon and Florida will also host Transform conferences this year.
This year's theme is "Uniting the T and the LBG" I'll be speaking about the importance of trans allies.
Fellow speakers include Allyson Robinson of the Human Rights Campaign, performance artist Peterson Toscano, author/editor Matt Kailey, Ernesto Ortiz from 1VCC & Phoenix Pride, and Anthony Barreto-Nedo of T.O.P.S.
Predictably, a number of commenters attacked Bil for going to Arizona, to which he replied:
I feel okay working with TransMentors on this one. Usually I get paid to give speeches, etc, but this one is a freebie. I feel okay about going to Arizona for this speech, not because I think their government is on the right track, but to support the Arizona trans community - who are rising up to support the coalition of people fighting the law. After all, what could be a better vision of "The role of trans allies" than the coalition building they are doing right now?
What I think is that if this conference took place five years from now and the law were still in place, no one would give a damn. Boycotts tend to lose their sexy action potential as time goes on. But it's this year, so it presents a conundrum. Is that fair? No, and and it's obviously a difficult decision for Bil.
What it brings up is prioritization. If Arizona became a swing state in 2012 and were critical to Obama's victory, I'd bet anything he'd go, and a lot of people would support that, too. If I were in Bil's shoes, I would probably go, not because I don't care about supporting allies and boycotts, but because there are other critical issues out there to work on, and because if I had to weigh the relative activism impact of Bil not going in support of a boycott versus going and lending an important voice to this critical topic, I would choose the latter. While there's something to be said for supporting allies whenever possible, boycotts should not be inviolable in a broader progressive movement. Activists have to weigh the impact of their actions on a case-by-case basis, and with careful consideration.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would sign SB 1070 on Friday. I knew the teabaggers wanted their racism codified into law, but "show me your papers or go to jail" was so fascist I just couldn't imagine anyone wanting to declare a race war over such grounds. I was wrong.
As the messages to Boycott Arizona begin to fill my inbox and feeds, I wanted to escalate. My Mom's side is Latino and I'm actually a lot darker skinned than my name might suggest. My first thought was that beyond the boycott, we also needed to apply pressure through socially responsible investment. That's when I started thinking about the State of California's role in helping end Apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa. Then I knew the move.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has over $200 billion in investments and a history of activism. A few years back, they charted a new approach towards investing in emerging markets, requiring countries to provide, "evidence of political stability, humane labor laws, a fair and functional legal system." I want CalPERS to take the same approach to investments in Arizona companies and real estate holdings in the state. On all three counts, Arizona fails.
Next, I needed a mechanism to spread the word. I decided upon Act.ly, which isn't a boring old petition site, but a list of everyone who has decided to broadcast their position on a move to everyone who follows them on Twitter -- petitions 2.0. Quickly, big names in progressive politics jumped on board and the first 250 to sign are followed by 187,133 people (obviously with overlap, if you look who has signed you should be following most of them).
Act.ly provided an immediate way to kickstart this move, identifying who supports it concurrent with the researching going on to bring this move into the real world on Monday. If you'd like to see CalPERS make this move, please join. After the jump, you can see the chronology of how this move rolled out via tweets and retweets. And please use the comments for ideas.
The boycott of Whole Foods we helped spur a couple weeks ago continues to gain new members. And now the UFCW is involved:
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and CtW Investment Group, an arm of several unions including the Service Employees International Union, are part of the boycott effort and say Mackey should be ousted as CEO of the grocery chain.
They also are pushing for the Bravo cable network, owned by NBC Universal-General Electric, to drop Whole Foods as the sponsor of its popular “Top Chef” show.
CtW also pushed for the ouster of Ken Lewis at Bank of America. The UFCW has fought with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Whole Foods and Bashas Inc. over unionization efforts.
"Mr. Mackey attempted to capitalize on the brand reputation of Whole Foods to champion his personal political views, but has instead deeply offended a key segment of Whole Foods consumer base," CtW Investment Group's Executive Director Bill Patterson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is part of Change to Win, said it will be giving out information to Whole Foods shoppers about health care reform. The group said Mackey's op-ed was an "attempt to undermine Obama's health-care reform."
A Facebook group created to get spread the word on the boycott now has almost 30,000 members (update: mark hit). Help them to that mark if you can.
Update:The New York Times reports on a picket at the grand opening of a new Whole Foods in New York.
(h/t HouseOfProgress in Quick Hits)<!--Session data-->
The Whole Foods Boycott, now nearing 15,000 members on Facebook alone, is putting financial pressure on the grocery company. Monday the stock took a big drop but partly rebounded during today's trading. That is, before CNN ran a story critical of CEO John Mackey at 5 p.m.
The company was already under some stress before the boycott, according to CNN:
Whole Foods, like most other retailers, has struggled to grow its sales through the recession as consumers..... clamped down on their spending or shift more of their purchases to lower-priced offerings.....
Michelle Chang, analyst with investment research firm Morningstar, said the company has been struggling with declining store sales for the past three quarters.
They've been trying to lose their high-price image, said Chang. She said the retailer's acquisition of rival Wild Oats in 2007 also was a "costly endeavor" and its international expansion hasn't been as successful as it had hoped.
So it probably wasn't a great time for the CEO to alienate most of his customers.
"Whole Foods relies heavily on its brand and image," Chang said. "Any concern about its image would damage sales heavily."
"Whole Foods holds a certain appeal to consumers and if it deviates from that it could see some negative reaction from consumers," she said.
The above quotes are from the meat of the story, the lead is even more devastating:
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey is known for his tendency to shoot from the hip.
This time, Mackey may have shot himself -- and his company's brand -- in the foot by getting too personal on the very public issue of health care reform which has sparked calls to boycott the grocer.
"Certainly when our customers tell us they are unhappy to extent that they are boycotting our stores, we are concerned," said Libba Letton, spokeswoman for Whole Foods. "We don't want them to leave us."
So this story ran at 5 p.m. today right during after hours trading. Guess what happened to Whole Foods (WFMI) stock? Details inside.
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey has struck a nerve with his anti-worker, anti-common good, failed libertarian arguments in the Wall Street Journal. It's important that we push back hard against this CEO ideologue who seems intent on joining the right wing noise machine.
Mackey is essentially promoting a bankrupt free market philosophy as the anecdote to a failing public commons. It's been known for quite a while to those of us who have worked in and around the food industry that Whole Foods' CEO is anti-union and anti-consumer co-op. Yet many advocates of natural and organic foods and many progressives and liberals have continued to support Whole Foods with their dollars.
After I moved back to NJ from Minneapolis I patronized Whole Foods for their meats even though I knew from interviews with Whole Foods butchers and meat cutters in Minnesota and Texas that Whole Foods feed lots much of their beef at the end of their life cycle -- even the natural and organic cuts. And I always shook my head at the lack of locally sourced produce, fruits, eggs and dairy at Whole Foods, even in a Garden State like New Jersey.
But what choice did I have in winter and early spring? New Jersey lacks the great collection of local food co-ops that Minnesota boasts and the resources for locally raised chicken and pork like southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa. And Whole Foods is a pleasant shopping experience. Many of the smaller Whole Foods have a great market feel to them, and Whole Foods' stores are well merchandised, exceptionally clean, and make great use of lighting. Rather than overwhelming you with signage, the flow and format of the stores guides you to where you need to be.
It's a good place to shop from a merchandising perspective. However, Mackey and Whole Foods fail to live up to their mission statement and fail to fully respect the lnterdependent Web of Life of which we are all a part.
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist, Whole Foods Shopper, and founder of the Interdependence Project has a must read essay on our collective responsibilities to one another and John Mackey's failure to embody this in his Wall Street Journal commentary. Nichtern writes:
"the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true communally.
If John Mackey wants to take his failed libertarian ideals and his Whole Foods brand into battle against President Obama and meaningful healthcare reform than I say bring it on. Not only will we fight you on the healthcare front, we'll extend the battle to EFCA and workers rights and right on into agriculture and organic standards.
We'll fight hard to get back to a true free market economy where an abundance of farmers, local markets, small businesses and regional chains supply locally raised and grown foods to our tables. We'll fight hard for a free market economy where butchers and food workers make middle class wages and can afford to live in pleasant communities with good schools, good libraries, and abundant recreational opportunities. And we'll fight hard for collective bargaining and the right to organize to ensure that butchers and other workers earn middle class wages and are treated with dignity and respect.
Our public commons have been failing for a long-time because of people like John Mackey. It's time we became the change we believe in and not let failed libertarian ideals and naked corporate greed hijack our opportunity to move the nation forward.
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey has struck a nerve with his anti-worker, anti-common good, failed libertarian arguments in the Wall Street Journal. It's important that we push back hard against this CEO ideologue who seems intent on joining the right wing noise machine.
Mackey is essentially promoting a bankrupt free market philosophy as the anecdote to a failing public commons. It's been known for quite a while to those of us who have worked in and around the food industry that Whole Foods' CEO is anti-union and anti-consumer co-op. Yet many advocates of natural and organic foods and many progressives and liberals have continued to support Whole Foods with their dollars.
After I moved back to NJ from Minneapolis I patronized Whole Foods for their meats even though I knew from interviews with Whole Foods butchers and meat cutters in Minnesota and Texas that Whole Foods feed lots much of their beef at the end of their life cycle -- even the natural and organic cuts. And I always shook my head at the lack of locally sourced produce, fruits, eggs and dairy at Whole Foods, even in a Garden State like New Jersey.
But what choice did I have in winter and early spring? New Jersey lacks the great collection of local food co-ops that Minnesota boasts and the resources for locally raised chicken and pork like southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa. And Whole Foods is a pleasant shopping experience. Many of the smaller Whole Foods have a great market feel to them, and Whole Foods' stores are well merchandised, exceptionally clean, and make great use of lighting. Rather than overwhelming you with signage, the flow and format of the stores guides you to where you need to be.
It's a good place to shop from a merchandising perspective. However, Mackey and Whole Foods fail to live up to their mission statement and fail to fully respect the lnterdependent Web of Life of which we are all a part.
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist, Whole Foods Shopper, and founder of the Interdependence Project has a must read essay on our collective responsibilities to one another and John Mackey's failure to embody this in his Wall Street Journal commentary. Nichtern writes:
"the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true communally.
If John Mackey wants to take his failed libertarian ideals and his Whole Foods brand into battle against President Obama and meaningful healthcare reform than I say bring it on. Not only will we fight you on the healthcare front, we'll extend the battle to EFCA and workers rights and right on into agriculture and organic standards.
We'll fight hard to get back to a true free market economy where an abundance of farmers, local markets, small businesses and regional chains supply locally raised and grown foods to our tables. We'll fight hard for a free market economy where butchers and food workers make middle class wages and can afford to live in pleasant communities with good schools, good libraries, and abundant recreational opportunities. And we'll fight hard for collective bargaining and the right to organize to ensure that butchers and other workers earn middle class wages and are treated with dignity and respect.
Our public commons have been failing for a long-time because of people like John Mackey. It's time we became the change we believe in and not let failed libertarian ideals and naked corporate greed hijack our opportunity to move the nation forward.
Some new developments today in the Whole Foods boycott. The purpose, to reiterate, is a show of support for real health care reform and to oppose the Whole Foods CEO who wrote an editorial favoring pretty much the opposite of what we'd like to see in health care policy.
Here are the newest developments: 1) a demonstration at Whole Foods headquarters in Austin today. A couple dozen sign-carrying demostrators came out to agitate for the cause, bringing the boycott right to corporate headquaters. Some local media coverage will likely result.
The other new development concerns the boycott Facebook page which is nearing 10,000 members. It needs just over 500 more members to hit that milestone. Here is a link to it, please help spead the word and get it over the mark. Tomorrow could be a pivotal day. It may be the day Wall Street traders really notice the story. Two publications, the Motley Fool and The Business Insider, ran stories late Friday and this weekend respectively. They took a mostly pro-business stance, not surprisingly, but it served to bring the controversy to investors attention. Fox News was the latest national media outlet to run a story.
The Whole Foods boycott we helped initiate with a post late Wednesday night finally got a response from the company this evening. I'll respond more fully tomorrow with a post here which I'll cross post at the Big Orange Satan. But here are a few things to chew on in the meantime:
1. The apology doesn't come from CEO John Mackey but from the PR team at Whole Foods. It's kind of a "sorry our CEO is an asshat" kind of thing.
2. The PR folks say he was just giving his opinion on health care not Whole Foods' opinion but then they go on to defend his opinion. Huh? When I give my own personal opinion I don't have a PR team which doesn't represent me then go and defend me.
3.They blame the WSJ editors for a misleading headline which made it seem like it was a Whole Foods' position, not just Mackey's but a) Mackey's piece included Whole Foods' health plan as an alternative solution and b) was invited into the WSJ because it was written by the Whole Foods CEO, not just some citizen named John Mackey. In short, their headline was not surprising. And it was clear from the piece he was not a fan of almost every health care reform element the President has advocated.
4. You can't have it both ways. You can't have a CEO against real health care reform, using his CEO status to write high profile opinion pieces, and at the same time say "sorry, it's just his personal opinion. Please keep shopping here because we're a progressive store and many of our employees have tattoos even if our CEO wears an ass-shaped hat."
5. "Coincidentally" this apology comes just as Wall Street noticed the boycott. A piece ran this evening on Motley Fool, a widely read report on stock trading which is affiliated with CNN.com's Money section.In after hours trading the stock continued it's downward fall and finished the day down 2%, a sizable one day drop. The Dow fell 0.82% today and the Nasdaq 1.19%. A few days before his WSJ OpEd, Mackey sold more than a million dollars worth of Whole Foods' stock. Details here.
You can see my earlier post on this here but there have been several new developments. This all stems from a WSJ piece written by the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods called "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare" in which he argues for insurance industry deregulation and a shrinking of the Medicare program. Here are the new developments:
1. A newly formed Facebook group promoting the boycott will soon surpass one thousand members. Not bad for a few hours but please join and send to your friends/family.
2. I cross posted the original Open Left post at Daily Kos this morning and it sat atop the rec list for three hours, useful exposure.
3. The Austin American Statesman (hometown of Whole Foods headquarters) has run a piece on their business blog with a link to both the Open Left post and the Facebook group.
4. The subject "Whole Foods boycott" has been Twittered about 200 times today with links to the aforementioned sites.
Help keep the momentum going and join the Facebook group, send the stories to your own networks, Twitter if you got it. It's only been hours but if we can increase this by an order of magnitude or two it will get significant publicity and send a message to corporate America.
Ok, this is really weird. Today, Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was on Fox talking about whether Bush would boycott the Olympics' opening ceremony, and talked about the issue of "Tibet." Later the same morning he went on ABC and discussed the same issue, but he consistently talked about "Nepal."
(As Think Progress and CrooksandLiars point out, these are 2 distinct places.) Very curious -- is Hadley just a moron? Or is there some diplomacy-speak reason that someone would tell him to actively switch from "Tibet" to "Nepal" between shows?
For the last 3 decades and more companies have virtually shut out citizens from the legislative process.
I consider it important presently to take our politcal fight to some of the companies that give money to regressives in both parties.
I have created 3 telephone campaigns to peacefully take back America and I hope you will join them and tell as many people to make these phone calls as possible.
STATE BLOGS
Some new developments today in the Whole Foods boycott. The purpose, to reiterate, is a show of support for real health care reform and to oppose the Whole Foods CEO who wrote an editorial favoring pretty much the opposite of what we'd like to see in health care policy.
Some local media coverage will likely result. 
