Utah Boycott: How shall we use our social media superpowers?
Our Story Up To Now…
Once upon a time in the land of California, there was a little piece of legislation named Prop. 8. It met opposition, but in the end (and thanks to the support of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), it turned out to the be the little proposition that could. It passed, amidst much controversy, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, out of which arose great protests.
The Boycott of an Entire State
One of these protest is virtual. Various bloggers and people with social media influence have called for a boycott on the entire state of Utah, attempting to damage the state economy by attacking its tourism industry. For those who don’t know, Utah is the headquarters of the LDS church and tourism is a huge chunk of its economy, bringing in about $6 billion a year.
Let’s make something clear: not everyone in the state of Utah is a Mormon, and not every Mormon is opposed to gay marriage. But everyone in the state of Utah will suffer if their economy tanks due to this boycott. People will lose jobs, children will go hungry, infrastructure will fail. Harm will be done.
First, Do No Harm
When people gain influence over others, they gain power. Social media allows individuals to amass an amazing amount of this power, swaying the actions and opinions of huge numbers of people in a very short time. The details of President Elect Obama’s use of social media in his presidential campaign is a wonderful example of just how truly remarkable the power of social media can be; in no other context can an individual unempowered by church or state gain such influence over others.
So we have otherwise ordinary people with extraordinary powers: social media superheroes. But what is the proper use of these powers?
Revenge Is Not Doing Good
I was originally going to do this as a poll, and talked to several people on Twitter and Rejaw. I decided not to go that route, because this really is much simpler than that.
The LDS and Catholic churches that supported Prop. 8 and took away the rights of others did a horrible thing, breaking both the tenets of their own faiths and the laws of the land, in spirit if not in letter. This has hurt many people and made them angry, and that anger is more than valid: it is righteous.
But to attack the entire state is not justice, it is punishment. It will not bring back anyone’s rights, it will only cause more harm and hurt more innocent people. The moment you move into the realm of revenge, you are no longer fighting the good fight or protecting rights and freedoms; you are just hurting others because you were hurt. This is wrong, and it is just as bad if not worse than those you are trying to punish.
Final Word
I am not a social media superhero. I am not an a-lister, b-lister, or even an n or m-lister. In fact, I am pretty sure we have to start getting into Greek letters to describe my status in the social media hierarchy. Thus I do not have the ability to use my influence to stop the boycott.
Instead, I must plead with my betters who may read this, those with more power and influence than I:
Please, do no harm. Do not pursue revenge. Do good. Help, don’t hurt. We need good people with power to do good things, desperately. We need heroes, not avengers. Please don’t support the boycott or any other retributive measure.
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Sterling Okura 12:48 pm on November 14, 2008 Permalink |
@thePuck. Thank you for sharing these thoughts.
I am a resident of Salt Lake City who voted for Obama and was saddened by the passing of Prop 8.
Most residents of Salt Lake City and Park City are liberals. The rest of the state, especially Utah Valley (home of BYU) and the rural areas are very conservative.
Park City, where the Sundance Independent Film Festival is held, is a very progressive town. It would be the area most affected by a drop in ski tourism. A boycott on tourism would actually be like shooting your allies.
Yes, we want to do something to make a difference, but I agree with you that punishment is not the answer. It will only cause further polarization and a “me vs. you” mentality.
For same-sex couple rights to be accepted in society, we need more integration, more understanding, and more acceptance of each other as people.
Sterling Okuras last blog post..The #1 Problem With Small Business Websites
Andrew Mason 1:27 pm on November 14, 2008 Permalink |
I’m not sure that it’s fair to call not giving someone your money “harm.”
If you decide not to buy machine guns from an illegal arms dealer, should you responsible for his children?
The state of Utah has made a decision that consumers disagree with. Consumer patronage is a privilege you have to earn, it is no one’s right.
A boycott is not revenge – it is simply consumers exercising their rights in a coordinated way. The only reason they need to coordinate is that these organizations are so large that a sense of futility stops us from doing it alone.
- andrew at the point dot com
thePuck 1:58 pm on November 14, 2008 Permalink |
@Sterling: thank you for your thoughts.
@Andrew: By the same token, those that supported Prop. 8 did no one any harm. They just organized and were active politically. Rights are given through a political process, thus when the vote came down there were no “rights” for them to be impinging. Except that’s just not reality.
Reality is organized activities like this cause harm, their activity to pass Prop. 8 caused harm and this boycott will cause harm. Maybe under some sort of legalistic thinking that’s not causing harm, but in the really real world, organizing a boycott on an entire state attacks their economy and infrastructure, causing suffering. This is harm, and the choice to cause harm. If you want to be legalistic and say “No, it’s just withholding money” you are willfully choosing to ignore the consequences of doing it, just as those who say “It’s not discrimination or bigotry, it’s defending God’s will” are willfully ignoring that, in this case, defending their god’s will leads to discrimination and bigotry. This is a basic concept of contingency…if I organize an agenda that will cause harm as an obvious and foreseen consequence, then I am the cause of that harm.
A boycott is organized with exactly the goal of causing harm…harm to a bottom line, and thus to motivate change in the agency boycotted. Otherwise there is no point, and we don’t organize it, people just don’t buy things.
Besides, it just doesn’t pass the “straight face” test. What other goal does the boycott have except punishment and revenge? It won’t give anyone any rights, won’t change the law in California, won’t help a single person do anything but feel a vindictive sense of joy. But the economic cost will be massive for residents of Utah, none of whom, you know, VOTED in the California election.
Andrew Mason 2:12 pm on November 14, 2008 Permalink |
A boycott is a formal word for something we do every day – choosing not to patronize organizations and businesses who make decisions that don’t support your worldview.
When you decide to buy groceries from a local store instead of WalMart, when you choose to buy a sweater because it uses organic cotton, you are making exactly the same kind of decision.
I’m not raising technicalities here – a boycott is simply a coordinated way of doing something that we do anyway.
If you choose to be a vegetarian, there are cow farmers to whom you are doing harm. If everyone became a vegetarian, some people would become poor. If everyone stopped littering, some people would go poor. If violent crime stopped, some people would go poor.
thePuck 2:29 pm on November 14, 2008 Permalink |
@Andrew I don’t see your point. Why does “we do it every day” and “these people do it all the time” rebut “this action causes harm, please don’t do it”? It is harm, it causes harm, it is meant to cause harm. I don’t care that others do it, I don’t care that people do it every day, and I don’t care that there is some strange ethical cut-out circuit about “It’s my money, I’ll do what I want.”
I care that it does harm. It really does harm. It doesn’t matter that some abstract set of rules say somehow, magically, it doesn’t cause harm when we do it with special words or magic pieces of paper. People who did nothing wrong will suffer because a bunch of people are choosing to attack them financially because they are angry. Real reality, not a legislated reality made out of words where as long as you hurt people certain ways, then its ok. You know, reality. Where the hungry people are.
And you are also willfully avoiding the fact that the arms dealer is actually the person dealing arms and the meat industry actually sells meat, thus choosing not to participate in those industries causes only those people harm who are actually connected to what is being opposed. The state of Utah, the Sundance Film Festival, their tourism industy, their state infrastructure, none of that had a single thing to do with Prop. 8.
Josh 2:33 am on November 15, 2008 Permalink |
Thank you for writing this article. I’ve spoken my mind about it to anyone who will listen and especially living in Utah I don’t want to see a huge back lash for what a RELIGION did.
The state did nothing, a religion did. A religion who went against it’s own doctrine and who broke a promise they made to their God (a promise they have been breaking for a while now, just not to this extent).
If you’re not familiar with it the Mormon religion has a book called the Doctrine and Covenants, which is literally what it sounds like. It’s the doctrine that they should be preaching and living by and it’s a list of the covenants (sacred promises) they make to their God when they get baptized, and they broke it.
D&C 134:9
” 9 We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.”
There it is in black and white, written in millions of copies of their book. Their prophet who condoned using the church’s official web site to spew forth their political agenda has broken a promise to his God and so has any member who is using their faith as a scapegoat.
Not only do we live in a country where there is supposed to be a clear division of church and state (that’s one of the big reasons our forefathers fled England) but for this particular religion their God has told them that it is not just to mingle civil government with influence.
They have denied people their rights and they have mixed government with their religion, went against their own doctrine and have broken a sacred promise to their God. Flat out what they did is wrong as prescribed by the tenants of their own religion, and the 50+%of us in UT who are not mormon* and the even greater percentage of us who had nothing to do with this should not be punished for the sins of a religion.
*I say 50+% because I’m taking into account people like me who had our names in the church’s logs but were not active in any sense. Which I am not even on the longs anymore since the night of the last big protest. Which I might add had over 3,000 people who were against the church show up and less than 40 who were for the church. Even the church’s “faithful” didn’t show up to defend the erroneous actions of their religion.
Keith 6:15 pm on November 17, 2008 Permalink |
@thePuck
Ok, I will not go into whether I think the Prop8 is right or wrong, but I agree with you 100% that boycotting an entire state because a church that supported the proposition is headquartered there. Why not boycott the entire state of California? That is where the people actually live who voted it in? Seems pretty ridiculous huh?
Seems to me the people of California spoke at the polls, and the Prop8 passed.
Skinny line they are walking when it comes to Church and State, as most would probably share their support for this proposition based on religion or some form of it.
I do believe that ALL legal Americans deserve the same treatment, but at the same time, I also believe marriage to be a religious act. So, basically, I am glad I didn’t have to vote on this one (my way of copping out;).
All that being said, the boycott of a State will harm people who had nothing to do with it. So, in my opinion, WRONG ANSWER!
Just my 2cents.
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WootMama 3:06 pm on November 18, 2008 Permalink |
They can boycott, but that doesn’t mean they win. I just saw this one:
Leatherby’s Boycott Melts–The Inside Scoop
Supporters line out the door in support of Family Ice Cream Parlor, delivering a humiliating defeat to protesters
Leatherby’s was targeted Sunday for protest by No on 8 supporters because owner Alan Leatherby, his business, and his relatives gave a total of $20,000 supporting the “Yes on 8″ campaign. Proposition 8 was a measure passed by California voters on Nov. 4 that put a ban on gay marriage in the state.
The inside scoop from the front lines on the Leatherby’s boycott is that Leatherby’s loyal supporters pommeled the opposition. Standing in front of the store holding signs and giving away free ice cream, the dozen or so protesters were perplexed by the stream of constant customers.
http://beetlebabee.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/leatherbys-boycott-melts/
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Jacques 12:05 am on February 6, 2009 Permalink |
Wow some real interesting and intelligent conversation going on here. Excellent.
Jacquess last blog post..Tips for Writing Quality Content
Monado 12:05 pm on February 15, 2009 Permalink |
You can get a list of who donated how much to either side. Then you can make a list of businesses to boycott or patronize, as the case may be. There’s no need to boycott an entire state, is there? What I think we need is to get enough dedicated boycotters as possible. As the first commenter said, boycotting the tourist trade harms the liberal cities more than the conservative countryside.
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