American Politics Journal -- Boycott Home Depot, Lowe's, Others

Boycott List Update
Boycott Home Depot, Lowe's, Others
Help further a regime change -- in the US
by Jackson Thoreau

Sept. 5, 2002 (APJP) -- Our forefathers and foremothers, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, used boycotts to protest the Stamp Act and other unjust actions by the British rulers more than two centuries ago.

We should start doing likewise against corporate leaders who work closely with far-right groups like the Federalist Society and RepublicaNazi Party that prop up the illegitimate Bush regime.

Bush talks about regime change in Iraq; we need to clean up our own house first before we start overthrowing other countries' governments, if we do that at all.

As RepublicaNazis have lectured, money talks, and this is one way we can help take back our government that the corporate elitists have hijacked.

I have long boycotted Exxon-Mobil and Belo Corp., two of Bush's strongest corporate supporters. I am now adding Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse and Home Depot to that list. Companies that have been in the news for various crimes like Enron, Halliburton, and WorldCom are a given target of a boycott.

I'm targeting Lowe's because Robert Strickland, a longtime executive with the company who helped build Lowe's, is on the business advisory board of the Federalist Society. The society is celebrating 20 years and has brought us such closet Nazis as Antonin Scalia, Ted Olsen, Kenneth Starr, and Robert Bork. Moreover, the society has continually hounded Clinton with frivolous lawsuits and pushed for many un-democratic laws to benefit an elite few. The group is a cancer on our country.

I'm targeting Home Depot because co-founders Bernard Marcus and Ken Langone were two of the biggest individual donors to the RepublicaNazi Party between 1997 and 2000, helping it subvert democracy and steal the White House in 2000. Marcus gave a whopping $503,550 to Republican committees and candidates during those years, while Langone gave about $100,000. If I target Lowe's it's only fair I target one of their biggest competitors that is just as close to the far right.

There are other business advisors for the Federalist Society and their companies I will boycott:

C. Boyden Gray, Chairman of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, a big law firm
John Stewart Bryan, CEO of Media General Cable, a large cable company
Joseph Cannon, CEO of Geneva Steel, produces and markets coiled and flat plate, hot-rolled sheet, ERW pipe, and slabs
R. Crosby Kemper, president of United Missouri Bank
John G. Medlin Jr., chairman of Wachovia Corp.
Nicholas John Stathis, vice president of Orpheon Inc., a philanthropic group
Paul S. Stevens, counsel of Investment Company Institute, the national association of the U.S. investment industry,

Some of these executives may have retired or left the above firms, but they still helped build the companies while lending their firms' names and contributing greatly to the far-right.

If you come across goods and services by any of these companies, I would urge you to boycott them.

This is just a start. We need to hit these major league assholes [I can say that because Bush said it in public, right?] where it hurts - in their wallets. Money is the only thing they really understand. We need to do street protests, letter-writing, and other duties as well, but a boycott is something anyone can do without others knowing.

We all don't want to confront some fascist, RepublicaNazi-protecting police officer in riot gear as he shoots rubber bullets at us and sprays us with tear gas. By boycotting products, we are helping without seriously jeopardizing our health. Don't get me wrong; I have participated in street protests and will continue. But we have to find other ways more people can join our revolution.

As the recession deepens and stock market continues to decline, such boycotts will become more effective. The assholes will have to at least listen to us and stop working with far-right groups that support Bush.

There is reason for hope. Groups like the Northampton [Mass.] Bill of Rights Defense Committee [the site includes a good list of links and suggestions on what to do] have formed recently to target Bush's crackdown on our liberty. Cities like Northampton, Boulder, Colo., Ann Arbor, Mich., Berkeley, Calif., Amherst, Mass., and even Carrboro, N.C., have passed resolutions critical of Ashcroft's Patriot Act. Even the Portland, Ore., police, who have deservedly gotten raked over the coals for firing rubber bullets and spraying tear gas at protesters who included babies and the elderly, have refused to go along with the FBI's plan to question people with Middle Eastern backgrounds who are not suspects in a crime.

There are also many consumer boycotts going on, including against Wal-Mart, Nike, Dupont, and others. Just do a simple search with the word "boycott," and you will pull up more sites than you thought were out there. As a site called Boycott News [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3199] points out, boycotts have been effective, including against tuna manufacturers to make dolphin-safe tuna and even against Nike.

I don't know if we need to re-enact the Boston Tea Party, such as going to Exxon-Mobil gas stations and dumping gasoline to protest the Bush regime's blood-for-oil war against Iraq. Maybe these non-violent boycotts and street protests will do the trick.

A final note: There are some groups and individuals who consider themselves conservative but oppose the way Bush came to power and how he is ruling. I have to make a distinction that I am targeting the far right who unthinkingly supports Bush's brand of fascism.

If we get a big enough movement going, perhaps we should call ourselves People of Liberty. Sons of Liberty had its day in the 18th century, but that name is too sexist for this age. Besides, Sons of Liberty is already taken by a conservative outfit that fittingly doesn't care about being sexist.

Jackson Thoreau is co-author of "We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate White House". The 110,000-word electronic book can be downloaded at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor or at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html.

Thoreau can be emailed at jacksonthor@justice.com.