So is everyone avoiding the term "strike" because they don& #39;t want to create legal problems with the players& #39; union (this is obviously a wildcat strike -- a wildcat "solidarity strike" if you want to get technical) https://twitter.com/NYTSports/status/1298805947616440325">https://twitter.com/NYTSports...
I want to be picky about this because "boycotts" and "strikes" are pretty fundamentally different and the difference matters -- people need to get that boycotts, though important, aren& #39;t nearly as effective as strikes and you don& #39;t get the same brownie points for being in one
The line can be fuzzy but a strike means you withhold your *labor* and a boycott means you withhold your *money*

Strikes are carried out by *workers* and boycotts are carried out by *customers*
This doesn& #39;t cover everything

Like I agree that a rent strike counts as a strike, and so do the various strikes by, say, transit riders (where you actually don& #39;t go to work, as a group, because you haven& #39;t been given a safe and affordable way to get there)
I would say that the broader definition is that a strike is refusing to perform an action for which there is an obligation

A boycott is refusing to perform an action seen as voluntary

NBA players who don& #39;t play games are striking, NBA fans who don& #39;t come to games are boycotting
The reason there is an important moral difference here is that the connotation of a strike is that if the strike fails you will be punished

You will be fired or evicted or even arrested

By contrast when a boycott fails, the boycotters just go back to business as usual
This is why boycotts are kind of bullshit much of the time, and need a lot of work to actually be effective

(The famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a boycott and not a strike because they couldn& #39;t afford to actually not go to work the whole time, took LOTS of organizing)
The whole thing is that a strike and a boycott pull in opposite directions

The point of a strike is for the person providing a service to tell their customers "This service is essential, you need me"

The point of a boycott is the *customer* saying "I *don& #39;t* need you"
Which means if the service actually is that important and essential -- which it often is, if the company is doing something harmful enough to be worth boycotting -- boycotting is fucking hard
The segregated buses in Montgomery sucked because almost everyone not rich enough to drive did, in fact, *have* to take the bus and the daily humiliation of being forced to move for white riders was something most working-class Black people *had* to just deal with
So trying to protest that by having a huge chunk of their customer base refuse to take the bus at all during a long enough period of time to hurt their budget was really risky, and painful, and expensive
Lots of people giving their time and money to run an informal taxi/carpool service (the "Freedom Riders")

Extreme social pressure from the community to demand that everyone keep on doing it and not "cheat" (centered mostly around the church)
A boycott that& #39;s actually pretty easy for you to do that doesn& #39;t affect your life much is... probably a boycott that isn& #39;t gonna do jack shit

The company already wrote people like you off as part of the general churn of free-market competition
Hence why all the people who said they were going to stop eating at Chick-Fil-A didn& #39;t come to much in the end

They were already competing with a bunch of other fast food brands, they knew you were just one demo they were advertising to among many, it was a blip
Customers as a class don& #39;t really have that much power, Marxism 101 is that power is wielded by *workers* and that "consumer power" is a lie

Solidarity among customers is pretty damn rare
Like the Montgomery Bus Line actually depended on a large working-class Black population that was their customer base

In other circumstances they could& #39;ve just been like "We& #39;re the racist bus company, that& #39;s our brand!"
All the people going "Well then I& #39;LL eat at Chick-Fil-A ALL THE TIME to own the libs"
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