Hell no, we won’t go!
The Adult Video News (AVN) trade magazine reprinted an article by Larry Flint that was posted on Huffington Post over the summer in which he offers his analysis of the recent actions by President Obama and his decisions of late to support his advisers concerning the banking industry.
Many liberals have criticized Obama’s attempts at focusing solely on the financial sector as opposed to a more balanced approach on both Wall Street as well as Main Street. The figures showing a marked improvement in the stock market have been offset by news of increasing unemployment numbers with no end in sight.
This “jobless recovery” as leading economists refer to it, will continue to worsen because the Wall Street gains were brought about by dealing in price speculation, abstract debt and potential economic forecasts rather than real profits and losses by businesses. Much of the same thing took place prior to the original crash late last year.
Flynt, while supportive of Obama, doesn’t feel that he’s done enough to right the economic ship of state, choosing instead to surround himself with the same financial insiders who advised Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson. Flynt’s concerns mirror others in the progressive community who have called for the administration to 1) bring the CEO’s who were in charge of the disaster into account 2) end expensive bonuses for the staff of companies who took federal bailout money and 3) enact another stimulus package geared toward infrastructure projects and assistance to state and local governments who are becoming overburdened by the rise in unemployment and the subsequent need for social services.
The answer to these issues, Flynt believes, is for the everyday people this crisis is affecting the most to take to the streets like they did in the 20’s and 30’s to protest the lack of government action. Yes, he’s calling for a national strike in order to accomplish:
Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.
Additionally, he’s also calling on a mass consumer boycott, urging people to not buy anything on whatever date they decide to stage the protest. While this could certainly be a powerful sight and action to commit to, it’s also one of the most impractical ones and would be bound to fail if even attempted.
Why? Two big reasons. First, Flynt doesn’t seem to grasp that the culture in the 20’s and 30’s that allowed for mass protests to occur doesn’t exist anymore. Sure there are pockets of communities that support each other, but the middle and lower classes in America have fallen victim to the same “You get yours, I’ll get mine” mentality that pervades the upper class and helped propel them to success.
Probably the biggest motivating factor that made these protests effective was the sense of unity and camaraderie citizens felt for one another and the knowledge that they were all part of something larger. While that kind of grassroots, bottom-up approach is still in existence today, it’s no where near as cohesive or reliable as it once was. Think about how long and hard the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle were to manage and orchestrate and how many times you’ve seen that level of organization since.
Secondly, mass consumer boycotts don’t work. One need look no further than Buy Nothing Day, a anti-consumption protest scheduled every Black Friday, to see this is true. People literally don’t know how not to spend. We, as a culture, have made pain-free shopping practically a science now. Buy all you want and the pain will come…someday.
And even then it’s possible to keep putting it off and off and off. Or at least it was until the bottom fell out of the economy because too many people were financing their debt on housing bubbles and false hope.
The only examples in recent memory of boycotts working are ones that have been very focused with a great deal of organizational and strategic planning behind it. The “Dump Glenn Beck” advertiser boycott carried out by Color of Change after Beck’s remarks referring to President Obama as a racist is a superb example of punishing a corporate entity (Fox News) by going after its advertising base for a specific show based upon actions by the host of that show. There were no protests in the streets, just an intense, focused effort on a specific list of advertisers to pull away from a single show in order to avoid the threat of action against themselves.
So you see why what Flynt is proposing is a intriguing, yet wholly impractical idea. We’re not the people we were 70 years ago. If progressives want to effectively pressure Obama to act on the promises of his campaign, they’re are going to need a better, more modern strategy that appeals to both those who can appreciate the threat they face as well as those who are open to being convinced of it.
