In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.
History shows that all protest movements rely on symbols - boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, flags, songs. Symbolic action on whatever scale - from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to wearing a simple wristband - is designed to disrupt our everyday complacency and force people to think.
I am against boycotts in general: boycotts against us as well as anything and everything that can be boycotted.
A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.
I can say unequivocally that the boycott does not work. It's never complete enough to have impact unless it's backed by force, and I don't think anybody in America seriously proposes that.
A boycott is directed against a policy and the institutions which support that policy either actively or tacitly. Its aim is not to reject, but to bring about change.
I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.
My retirement, back in 1976, began as a one-year boycott to challenge the media on that question. I refused to return until the media, and radio stations in particular, got a hold on identifiably Canadian songs.
I believe boycotts are wrong.
I didn't want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.