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“On Dec. 5, 2016 we are launching a boycott unlike anything this nation has seen since the Civil Rights Movement.”
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That’s the pledge ushering in the newly-launched Injustice Boycott on the movement's nearly 70,000-strong Facebook page. Spearheaded by prominent racial justice advocate Shaun King, the initiative is expected to see 75,000 people from all 50 U.S. states join the movement in the coming weeks to boycott business, institutions and entire cities with dirty track records of police brutality and racial discrimination.
On Monday, King announced "Phase 1" of the Injustice Boycott, saying it will last until Jan. 16, 2017 — also known as Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States.
The first three cities targeted by the boycott are San Francisco, New York City and the area of Standing Rock. King explained the justification for the first three targets, saying the selected locations have reputations for being “progressive, liberal, Democratic havens,” but in reality are otherwise battlegrounds for people of color, who continue to be victims of injustices at the hands of law enforcement and corporations.
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The boycott offers the municipalities 43 days to implement “reasonable and humane demands of local activists in those cities.”
If institutions ignore these requests, the Injustice Boycott lays out a four-part plan to pressure for change: a full tourism boycott; a divestment strategy calling on people to pull money out of financial institutions and investments that directly support racial injustice and police brutality; a national boycott of large corporations headquartered in those cities; and protests intended to shut those cities down.
The new movement is inspired by the 381 day-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began on the same date six decades ago during the civil rights era under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King after Rosa Parks' historic refusal to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus in Montgomery on Dec. 1, 1955. Reimagined for the 21st century, the Injustice Boycott is against cities, states, businesses, and institutions in a broad campaign to demand an end to police brutality.
“This is you making a pledge that you will boycott cities, states, businesses, and institutions which are either willfully indifferent to police brutality and racial injustice or are deliberately destructive," reads a statement pinned to the Injustice Boycott's Facebook page. "To be clear, to be willfully indifferent is to be deliberately destructive — so our boycott will treat indifference and outright contempt as one in the same."
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In an op-ed for the New York Daily News, King wrote: “On this Dec. 5, the anniversary of when Dr. King and others began the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, we are launching our own Montgomery Bus Boycott to show every city, state, institution and corporation in this country that meaningful, reasonable, achievable reforms on police brutality and injustice are not our long-term dreams. They are our immediate emergency priority.”
Aside from building on historical precedents that demonstrate the power of organized boycotts, the initiative is also drawing inspiration from present-day movement successes that prove that people power and mass resistance really do yield meaningful results.
“The hardfohard-foughtry won yesterday by the people of Standing Rock is both a lesson and an inspiration to all of us,” King wrote in Monday's release. “When we skillfully and passionately organize ourselves, when we focus on what’s possible and on what needs to happen, instead of how permanent it seems like injustice will be, when we put aside our differences and focus on making change happen, it can happen. It will happen.”
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