With the Tea Party's national
boycott day is planned for this Wednesday, a boycott we predict
will not only
fail because it will be useless, but because one-day boycotts always result
in the fading away of the events organization, the one day boycott will also
have some media attention challenges.
First, there is the obvious
factor of the Haiti earthquake being the big news story, eclipsing all other
news coverage, but even without the Haiti situation, the major factor hurting
the news coverage for Tea Party's one-day boycott will be the fact that it is
not only difficult to boycott nothing
since you cannon boycott the economy you are a part of, but the fact that the
boycotters in this case tend to have jobs and various family responsibilities
to attend to during the work week thus limiting the number of people who can
show up to gain media attention to boycott nothing.
The La Raza boycotts on May 1,
2006 were attended in the thousands, where previous Tea Party boycott events
have only been attended by about 200 people at best, but in all fairness have
still been effective. Even with thousands of activists hitting the streets, the
La Raza boycotters accomplished nothing. If history is any indication, the
numbers just do not add up for the Tea Party activists.
Moreover, the timing for the Tea
party boycott is bad. The criticism for their boycott from political
progressives will undoubtedly focus around complaints of the Tea Party
activists not supporting Haiti rescue events which are much more important now,
while the tea party activists will counter their boycott was declared and
planned long ago. If both groups really want to have an impact, they would
challenge each other to day of donating their complete one-day's salary the
Haiti relief effort, something which may occur in rhetoric, but would be better
to see on paper.
That idea would benefit both
political organizations and especially the people of Haiti. While we at Boycott
Watch would love to see that happen, we doubt it would, recognizing both sides
would somehow use it as political fodder. It would, however, be a great show of
American unity while helping those in crisis. |
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