I have a penchant for protesting. I don't mean that I grab a placard and join the chants of “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! [Something I dislike] has got to go!” or “What do we want? [Thing that we want]! When do we want it? [Reasonably soon timeframe, bordering on immediate]!”
No, I'm rarely that energetic. Instead, I'm a boycotter. I vote with my dollars.
aside:
I was surprised to note that my spellchecker claims “boycotter” is a real word. I thought I was making it up. If I gave titles to my blogs, this one would be called Welcome Back, Boycotter because I am funny.
end of aside
I've been boycotting Canadian bookmonger Chapters-Indigo for quite some time because the owner bans books. She has a near monopoly in Canadian retail book sales, and she refuses to permit the ordering of certain books which are legally obtainable within Canada. I don't have an issue with how she divides up the shelving in her stores: display space is a limited quantity, and obviously she should give shelf room to the books that sell most or which are the most profitable. But that's a far cry from banning special orders of individual books she finds disagreeable.
She censors literature, so I won't give her my money. It doesn't matter that these aren't books I want to read.
I was thinking today that there should be an online service where people could “buddy up” to make their personal petitions and boycotts more powerful. I might sign up to say I'm boycotting Chapters, and others could agree to join in my boycott if I joined them in theirs. A guy who is upset with a local business could agree to stop shopping at Chapters if I agreed to stop shopping at the business that shafted him.
It would be ever so nice to be able to send a letter to Chapters to let them know that their policy of censorship has caused me to withhold my patronage from them … and, oh by the way, I've rounded up scores of others who are going to forego shopping at Chapters in solidarity to my cause.
It would also be interesting to see lists of businesses people boycott and their reasons for doing so.
I suppose we could give it an innocuous name like Boycott Buddies, but personally I'd prefer something with an edge because I'd like to hear a stuffy announcer on CBC radio having to discuss “recent developments at Stick It To The Man Then Ram It Home And Give It A Twist dot com.”
Of course, it'd only be a matter of time before some business owner was upset enough at the site to urge people to not visit it. But then again, who cares about one little boycotter?
