Who to Boycott
"Whatever you do will be insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it."
Mahatma Gandhi.
While ten doesn't sound like many, the top ten boycott's involve a wide range of products and services that we all use everyday. Of course everyone will not boycott every product and service at once, it is a process of changing our buying habits and getting others on board when the opportunity arises.
We have provided links with list's of products and services to boycott and a few reasons to boycott them as well as links to alternative's. Please familiarize yourself and others with the boycott against corporatism. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
BBoycott FOX News / News Corp & Their Sponsors
Fake News - Omissions - Distortions - Lies
BOYCOTT THESE FOX SPONSORS: POSTED 1/20/08
AMERICAN EXPRESS - AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE - AT & T - BMW - BAYER - BLACK & DECKER
BOEING - BRISTOL-MEYERS - BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY - CELEBRITY CRUISES
CHEAP TICKETS.COM - CINGULAR - CIRCUIT CITY - DANNON - DIRECT TV
DODGE - DITECH.COM - EARTHLINK - ELOAN.COM - ENOVA - FIDELITY INVESTMENTS
HYATT - INFINITY - JEEP - LENDING TREE - LEXUS - FORD LINCOLN MERCURY - MERCEDES BENZ
MORGAN STANLEY - NAPSTER.COM - NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL - OFFICE DEPOT
PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE - SPLENDA - TARGET - TRAVELOCITY - WAL-MART STORES
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Department Stores
Boycott Target Stores
Sweatshop labor - Discrimination - Executive Compensation - Legal Disputes
Target changed its tradition and no longer permits Salvation Army bell ringers to solicit contributions in front of its stores during the holiday season.The charitable organization stands to lose $9 million each season.
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Boycott Wal-Mart Stores
Corporate Influence - Cultural Impact - Discrimination - Sweatshop Labor - Workers Rights - Legal Disputes - Union Busting - Child Labor - Health and Safety
Corporate Influence: In May, 2004, Good Jobs First showed that Wal-Mart has received more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from states for its stores. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows states are cutting subsidies for publicly funded health insurance, child care, federal employment, both higher and lower education, and programs aimed at public safety and people with disabilities.Taxpayer dollars continue to subsidize Wal-Mart, who took in more than $200 billion in revenue and netted nearly $9 billion in profits last year, while paying worker near-poverty wages, and violating environmental regulations. They further contend that the arrival of new Wal-Marts would decimate small businesses and town centers, create poverty-level jobs, and have severe negative environmental impact. Source: The Associated Press, May 25, 2004. Walmart has been Criticized for its Resistance to Unionization
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Boycott JC Penney Stores
Outsourcing - Sweatshop Labor - Discrimination - Ethics
Sweatshop Labor: In December 2000, the Department of Labor released the finding of an investigation into the Daewoosa clothing factory in American Samoa that made apparel for JCPenney and other clothing retailers. The Labor Department reported that workers at the factory were often beaten and "management admits that they withhold meals from employees as a form of punishment when workers complain about food." According to The New York Times, workers were fed rice and cabbage and lived 36 to a room.Outsourcing: JCPenney has been Criticized for Outsourcing practices. In January 2003, JC Penny’s vice president and director of sourcing announced the retail giant’s plans to make Vietnam its largest production base for apparel and textiles.
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Product Lines
Boycott General Electric products
Corporate Influence - Ethics - Disclosure - Human Rights - Animal Testing - Executive Compensation - Nuclear Energy - Superfund Sites - Weapons
Nuclear Energy: General Electric has been Criticized for its corporate Ethics practices. Although GE has designed 91 nuclear power plants in 11 countries, its nuclear reactors around the world have a fatal flaw. In the event of a nuclear meltdown, there is a 90 percent chance that radiation from GE-designed reactors would be discharged directly into the atmosphere. While the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is aware of the problem, it continues to license GE nuclear reactors.
Superfund Sites: In March of 2004, a federal appeals court revived General Electric's lawsuit against the US Superfund Law of 1980, which permits the EPA to hold corporations responsible for cleaning up their toxic waste. GE has been deemed responsible for 78 Superfund sites around the US.
Animal Testing: Animal Testing According to PETA, General Electric annually proposes to kill large numbers of animals in chemical toxicity tests while ignoring existing data and public comments on its testing proposals. In 2002, GE proposed to test three different chemicals on more than 2,600 animals, some of them pregnant. Weapons GE is among 30 companies that rejected Human Rights Watch's humanitarian appeal to forego any future production of antipersonnel mine components.
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Boycott Nestle products
Products - Infant mortality - Ethics - Genetic Engineering- Corporate Influence - Child Labor - Biological Diversity and Habitats - Human Rights
Ethics: As of December 2004, an international boycott against Nestlé was in effect in at least 20 countries. Baby Milk Action reports that worldwide boycott efforts will continue until the company stops marketing breast milk substitutes and abides by the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, 1.5 million children die per year because they are not breastfed.Nestlé's claims did not stand up to scrutiny. They still don't. It's aggressive baby food marketing practices are contributing to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world.
Special Awards: In January 2005 on the opening day of the World Economic Forum, the Berne Declaration and Pro Natura - Friends of the Earth named Nestlé winner of the first "Public Eye Awards" for its irresponsible corporate behavior. Nestlé has been criticized for labor conflicts in its factories in Colombia and for its aggressive marketing methods for baby food, which jeopardize breastfeeding.
Corporate Influence: Nestle was part of the Coalition Again$t the Costly Labeling Law, a group of companies that worked against Oregon’s Measure 27, which would have required the labeling of GMO products sold in that state. The company donated over $84,000 to defeat the Measure.
Genetic Engineering: According to Greenpeace, Nestle uses genetically grown ingredients in some products in the U.S. It's products may be produced with ingredients, additives, and animal feed derived from genetically engineered plants. After pressure from Greenpeace, Nestle Hong Kong has announced a phase-out of genetically engineered food, and is in the process of removing GE ingredients from remaining products. Nestle was accused of incorporating double standards because of the company's earlier phase-out of GE material for European consumers.
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Boycott Monsanto products
Corporate Influence - Ethics - Genetic Engineering - Toxic Discharges - Legal Disputes - Superfund Sites
Genetic Engineering: Monsanto is genetically engineering corn, beets, rice, and soybeans to make the crops resistant to Monsanto's own herbicide, Roundup, which is then used to kill off weeds and other competitive vegetation, despite concerns that the human health consequences of the herbicide are not completely understood.
Ethics: At the 2001 United Nations Conference on Bio diversity Greenpeace accused Monsanto of "biopiracy" after the company applied for a patent simultaneously in over 100 countries on a type of soybean. According to Greenpeace, the company is claiming rights to a "natural gene sequence discovered in wild plants originating from China...As 90 percent of the world's wild soya is growing in China, the patent would have large scale consequences. Chinese scientists were shocked when Greenpeace informed them of the applications. Monsanto continues to build a monopoly over soybeans and many other crops.
Corporate Influence: In August 2000, a Florida jury ruled that Fox TV's Tampa station illegally fired reporter Jane Akre for refusing to run a false report about Monsanto's bovine growth hormone (BGH), used to increase milk production. In 1998, Samuel Epstein, a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois' School of Public Health issued a statement linking Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, rBGH, with possible increased risks of prostate cancer in U.S. males.
Ethics: Monsanto is among those companies that has supported "pollution secrecy" legislation, which would provide blanket immunity for environmental crimes, no matter how serious, to companies which disclose regulatory violations as part of a voluntary audit. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, are concerned about the implications of allowing corporations to hide civil and criminal pollution-related misconduct from judges, juries, and the public.
Genetic Engineering: According to Organic Gardening magazine, an international committee has found that use of Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH) may produce chemicals in cows' milk that could cause breast or prostate cancer in humans who drink the milk, as well as reproductive disorders and other diseases in treated cows. Millions of U.S. consumers are unknowingly drinking milk from cows treated with rBGH, which was approved several years ago in a controversial decision made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Click on Profile for a long list of alarming information that that threatens our right to grow our own food safely, without Genetically Engineered patented seeds that are untested or proven to be hazardous to our health.
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Fast food / Retail
Boycott KFC - Taco Bell - Pizza Hut - Long John Silvers
KFC: As of December 2003, KFC refused to respond to PETA’s requests that the company produce proof it has reduced the cruel treatment of animals by their suppliers. PETA began its "Kentucky Fried Cruelty" campaign against KFC after McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s agreed to adopt new measures for the treatment of animals raised by their suppliers. PETA’s shareholder resolution with Yum! Brands calls upon the company to issue a report detailing exactly how its animal-welfare practices conform to its stated goal to only deal with suppliers who "provide an environment that is free from cruelty, abuse and neglect."
Taco Bell: In addition to the direct boycott of KFC the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has an ongoing boycott of KFC's sister company, Taco Bell. The CIW has targeted Taco Bell because they directly profit from farmworkers' sub-poverty wages and sub standard working conditions - including sub-poverty annual wages, no right to overtime, no right to organize, a per bucket piece rate that hasn't changed since 1978, no sick leave no health insurance and no benefits whatsoever. Taco Bell pays artificially low prices for the tomatoes Immokalee farmworkers pick, and the extreme exploitation of farm labor in the production chain keeps these prices low. IndyMedia.us
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Boycott Starbucks
Genetic Engineering - Fair Trade - Human Rights - Greenwashing
Genetic Engineering: Starbucks refuses to guarantee that milk, beverages, chocolate, ice cream, and baked goods sold in the company's stores are free of genetically engineered ingredients, including recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). Starbucks is reportedly still using milk from dairies that allow cows to be injected with Monsanto produced rBGH. The hormone is banned in every industrialized nation besides the U.S., is known to cause health problems in dairy cows, and is "associated with a higher risk of cancer in humans."
Disclosure: In light of the EPA’s on-going investigation of the PFOA family of manufacturing chemicals which are known to contain the questionably hazardous chemical C-8, in July 2003, the Environmental Working Group asked food chains, including Starbucks, to disclose whether the food packaging products they use contain a chemical coating made of fluorinated telomers. DuPont, the first manufacturer of Teflon, which is produced with C-8, claims the chemical is not harmful to humans, but it has been found to cause reproductive and developmental problems in laboratory animals. Presently, only two food packaging products are scheduled for EPA testing. According to the EWG, "Details about the products are being claimed as confidential by the industry, and publicly available information is limited." As of October 2003, Starbucks had not replied to EWG inquiries about the contents of its packaging materials.
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Boycott ExxonMobil
Global Warming - Corporate Influence - Disclosure - Ethics - Human Rights - Chemical Spills - Toxic Emissions - Legal Disputes - Animal Welfare - Animal Testing
Corporate Influence: Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) received a memorandum from the White House Council on Environmental Quality detailing plans to remove a top scientist from an international panel that provides policymakers with global warming assessments. The document detailed ExxonMobil's confidential campaign to remove Dr. Robert Watson from his chair on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a position he held since 1996. The NRDC reports that the campaign began in the first weeks of the Bush Administration, and that the memo "reveals ExxonMobil's intention to replace Watson and other key scientists with contrarians known for disagreeing with the prevailing consensus that man-made pollution is causing global warming." The administration has since decided to oppose Watson's appointment to a second term as chair.
Biological Diversity and Habitats: In August 2001 Greenpeace asked ExxonMobil to declare a moratorium on seismic tests--a series of underwater explosions--conducted near Sakhalin, which is feeding grounds for endangered Gray whales. The organization asked the company to halt the tests, which they said are illegal, until the conclusion of further research into the causes in the decrease of the population of these whales. Western Pacific Gray whales were declared a critically endangered species last year by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) after studies by Russian and American scientists showed that there are less than 100 of these whales and only 12 of them are known to be bearing young.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: ExxonMobil, who has reportedly set no targets for reductions in CO2 emissions, has confirmed that its greenhouse gas emissions rose 2% in 2003 to 135.6 million tons. Exxon’s worsening emissions may be caused, in part, by an increase of flaring of gas in Nigeria. Flaring, which is illegal in most countries, is when natural gas is extracted simultaneously with oil and burned off straight into the atmosphere. Exxon’s emissions are more than 50% higher than their closest competitor’s, despite only a slightly larger production of oil and gas.
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