MLK Day and How You Can Cause Change

In the chaos of today's social climate, many of us are left in awe and feel inspired to take action. We wonder how we can do this while still maintaining all the other facets of who we are: friend, employee, sister, parent. But there is one facet of our selves and our voice that we can use every day to speak toward our values, and it is a force that Martin Luther King Jr. himself used to mobilize thousands to create real measurable change. That is, our role as the consumer.

MLK understood that businesses and corporations don't see color or social consequence, they are designed to optimize for profit, to provide what the consumer demands. He understood that by asking communities to leverage their purchasing power, or rather withhold their dollars from companies and businesses that were acting against the social interest of their communities, that those companies would be forced to respond, or die. In a word, this is called a boycott, and this tactic was very effective.

Harvey Milk rallied the gay community in 1970's San Francisco to boycott any bar that served Coors Beer, a company that was part of an anti-union campaign to to fire without cause workers suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer from its Colorado-based brewery. These bars saw a dramatic drop in profit, the boycott was a movement heard around the country and Coors eventually agreed not to discriminate. To this day, it is still very difficult to find a Coors in San Francisco.

If you want your message heard by big companies, legislators, and the like, think about where you give your dollars every day. Do you buy gifts from local small businesses, do you bank with Wells Fargo or a Community Bank, do you shop sales at H&M or do you invest in better quality clothes that are ethically made?

Until one of the organizations we support puts out a call to action for a focused boycott effort, let's become informed consumers who vote everyday with each dollar. Buy Local, sustainable, and support businesses who promote standards of social and environmental responsibility such as BCorps. Together, we can redefine success and encourage businesses to adopt a triple bottom line for people, planet, and profit.