Word: boycotts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Netanyahu's efforts are just one part of a still small but growing U.S. finance trend known as "terror-free investing." Modeled in part on the economic boycott of apartheid-era South Africa, "terror-free investing" is designed to isolate countries on the U.S. terrorism list like Iran, Sudan and North Korea by purging U.S. pension funds of the stock of any company that might do business with such regimes. The state of Missouri has gotten its multibillion-dollar Missouri State Employees Retirement System screened to remove what it regards as terror-related investments, with counsel from State Street Global...
...more on workers’ factory conditions and environmental disposals, the prices of its product would necessarily go up. If their customers are not willing to pay these increased prices and stop buying the products, Coca-Cola will produce less, causing its workers to lose their jobs. Thus, the boycott will have harmed the very people it aimed to help...
Coca-Cola wants to maintain its reputation with young people and keep them customers for life. University-wide contracts are crucial to this loyalty. A boycott that successfully forced a university’s administration to terminate its contracts and divest in Coca-Cola (which has happened at colleges such as Smith in Amherst, Massachusetts) is a real way for students to do something about the company’s business practices...
...threat of such a boycott and the negative publicity associated with it are the key issues that (thankfully) pushed Coca-Cola to agree to investigations last spring. But again, the only way that workers can be saved from losing their jobs is if the protesters demonstrate their own willingness to pay more for products. As Coca-Cola could see from Killer Coke’s campaign to incorporate local soda makers into Harvard University Dining Services (which likely would have cost more money), money is less of an issue than humanity...
Unfortunately, not all boycotts fit this mold, and often they are founded on illogical premises or myopic hatred for “big business.” For now, my goal remains to avoid supporting questionable corporations, and hopefully other people feel the same way. One person’s boycott is a drop in the bucket, but a collective protest might be enough to make it overflow...