Tag Archives: Boycott

Stop Trump – Boycott US products

Stop Trump - boycott four major US food businesses Boycott International Food Companies is calling for a worldwide boycott of four major US food businesses to stop Donald Trump, re-elected president of the United States. Trump announced to become a dictator on day one and that’s what happens right now. Together with Elon Musk he turns American democracy into an oligarchic system.

Already a quarter of US consumers have stopped shopping at their favorite stores in response to company values and politics shifting, following the advent of the new Trump administration. Every third American said they had no interest in supporting the economy this year. Trump’s announcement that Canadian products would face a 25 percent levy was followed by calls on social media for Canadians to rethink their investments in U.S. companies and their patronage of American firms including McDonald’s, Walmart and Microsoft.

A group called The People’s Union are sharing the message of a 24-hour consumer spending blackout planned for February 28. Consumers are encouraged not to spend money in stores or online for the day, in response to the retreat of many companies from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and Trump’s actions to eliminate federal DEI programs. A second economic blackout aimed at blocking purchases from Amazon from March 7 through March 14 has also been announced by the same group. Billionaire Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), who owns the Washington Post, prevented election endorsements for vice president Kamala Harris during the hot election campaign phase.

Boycott International Food Companies focuses the worldwide boycott on four US companies: Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Amazon. Every citizen in the world knows their products and services and it is easy to avoid them in your country. Each of these companies have been targets of previous boycott calls, and all of them have a long story of human right violations, busting labor unions and destroying nature:

  1. Environmental group Mighty Earth revealed that the cows killed for McDonald’s meals are fed with soybean cultivated in deforested areas in Bolivia and Brazil.
  2. Coca-Cola creates the biggest plastic pollution footprint in six developing countries (China, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria): about 8 billion bottles which are burned or dumped each year.
  3. Starbucks has dramatically expanded its presence in Asia, opening 400 new stores in 2023 – with no plan to address its plastic waste. A large-scale boycott over union busting could hit the coffee giant where it hurts, as the change in popular attitude could prove detrimental to the company’s bottom line.
  4. Amazon is an official target of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee. In May 2021, as the Israeli military bombed homes, clinics, and schools in Gaza and threatened to push Palestinian families from their homes in occupied Jerusalem, Amazon and Google signed a 1.22 billion USD contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government and military.

YOU can join this worldwide boycott to STOP TRUMP any time. Drop Coca-Cola for healthier drinks, visit McDonald’s and Starbucks without ordering something – just pretend that you wait for your partner to get the stuff. It can be hard to imagine your life without Amazon. Support your local dealers instead of online shopping at Amazon. One thing is clear: whenever possible, reduce the amount of money you give Amazon, through not buying things from Amazon. There are plentiful of ethical online stores whether you’re looking for books, clothing or gifts. Many supermarkets offer delivery service for food that can be ordered online. WikiHow has compiled a list of tips to help you quit Amazon.

YOU can use your spending power to send Amazon a clear message. Let them know that you are not buying from them by emailing them in your country (in Germany: impressum@amazon.de). Take action now and sign the Amazon Free Pledge now!

We need to make Amazon pay in 2021

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon became a trillion dollar corporation, with CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in history to amass $200 billion in personal wealth. Amazon’s carbon footprint is larger than two thirds of all countries in the world. Amazon, with its expansion of the „smart world“, stands in all areas of everyday life for a vision of the future in which life is shaped through digitization and automation of one’s own generation of profit. Amazon wants to restructure existing labor standards and life habits entirely. Humans as a circumferential resource: customer, employee and data donor in one. To escape the future managed world of Amazon – with its monopoly attitude – will not be an easy path.

But the tide begins to turn. Participation of IT technicians at the global climate strike 2019 was followed by important concessions of the Amazon management. The Make Amazon Pay coalition, a cross-border alliance of more than four dozen social and environmental justice groups including UNI Global Union, Amazon Workers International, Progressive International, has managed to integrate the previously diffuse resistance of Amazon workers.

The Make Amazon Pay coalition staged a worldwide protest against Amazon on Black Friday, 27th December 2020, with actions in 15 countries: Brazil, Mexico, the U.S., the U.K., Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Poland, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Australia. Workers at several logistics centers across Germany are engaged in a three-day strike meant to disrupt Amazon’s profitable holiday sales during the retail industry’s busiest period.

Left-wing economist Yanis Varoufakis called on consumers to participate in a Black Friday boycott of Amazon, which he described as „a gigantic, behavior modification machine,“ pointing to the relationship between its data services, algorithms, and policy-making. The coalition also seeks to protect Amazon workers‘ rights to organize as well as unions‘ rights to promote the interests of employees—without fear of surveillance and retaliation, throughout the company’s global supply chains.

On Monday 22th March 2021, in Italy the first national strike against Amazon took place. About 40,000 Amazon workers in Italy participated in the strike. The national strike was truly a novelty, because it involved all the different figures working in the Amazon supply chain – sorting and storage workers, drivers, security workers – in an overall rejection of the working conditions imposed by the algorithm. With the vast majority of Amazon’s employees in Italy (between 70 and 80%) hired on a temporary basis and with precarious contracts, this mechanism produces a constant increase in the overall average productivity and work rhythms, and thus an accelerated wear on health.