Remember that boycotting (or not crossing picket lines, including symbolic ones) is not about ethical consumption. It’s not about ethics at all, and it’s not about performing purity. It’s an organized action toward a material goal. Crossing a picket line can be thought of as working against the material goals of a strike.
If for whatever reason you can’t participate in a boycott in solidarity with strikers, it’s good practice not to make a lot of posts justifying your right to cross a picket line, or how you don’t believe in strikes for ethical reasons, or you don’t care, or whatever. At best, it shows that you are ignorant about what boycotts are and the issues at hand, at worst, you are just like… doing unpaid labor for Amazon. At worst you are doing harm to workers. And literally everyone has heard it before. If you want to end performative internet politics, start with you! 😉
Happy strike, everyone!
Thank you! I’ve seen a lot of posts going around disability Tumblr/Twitter recently that compare observing an organized boycott with inaccessible lifestyle choices (ex: not using straws). I get that it may not be feasible for every single person to avoid every single Amazon purchase, but if at all possible, please try to hold out until the strike is over.
There are so many people saying, “individual consumption doesn’t matter – we need to change the system.” Collective action is how we change the system.
To those of you who have disabled/housebound friends, please step up and offer to run errands!
Yeeeeees.
Supporting a workers’ strike is a real part of collective action. Ethical consumption is not. Consumption boycots alone do not have significant power, boycots in solidarity with and as part of a collective diversity of tactics from refusing to work to sabotaging the website does have power.
QueerAnarchism 