Here's an excerpt of a boycott that worked...
But for really bloody histories, it’s hard to top the Middle East, and in few places are people so passionate about their food. And Israelis, God bless them, love cottage cheese. To me it’s gross and lumpy, but to them it’s essential. They gobble it up with scrambled eggs for breakfast and mix it into their salads for dinner. Yet by 2011 it was getting really expensive. Now, this wasn’t the only thing Israelis had noticed. For two decades, the formerly generous state had gone through a difficult process of privatization, and many social programs were cut. Tens of thousands of poor Israelis were scrambling to find apartments in an increasingly tight real estate market, which was controlled by a handful of powerful corporations eager to raze older buildings and replace them with shiny glass high-rises. But as anyone who’s dealt with a landlord can tell you, arguing for your right to an affordable rent is a hard battle to win. You’ll probably just be sent to Craigslist and told to look somewhere else. And in every city and state, you’ll always find lots of people who support gentrification and new development. So while less well-off Israelis tried to snag the scarce affordable housing they could find, plenty of other citizens did little but shrug and admire the sleek new buildings sprouting up all over the place. Even as the people seeking affordable apartments resented the new class of insanely wealthy, politically connected men and women who were enjoying a lifestyle of private planes and private clubs, most Israelis kept telling themselves that, compared to the rest of the world, life in Israel was still pretty good. They could afford to shop at Ikea every weekend, buy the latest flat-screen TVs, and take nice trips abroad. A few blowhards, the sort of humorless folks you’d politely try to ditch if you ever got stuck talking to one at a party, looked at all the new buildings and conspicuous consumption arising in Israeli society and cried out that a revolution was in order, that Israelis needed to get together and topple the system or, at the very least, the government. But nobody paid any attention. Just like us in Serbia, these grumpy Israelis had a clear vision of tomorrow that was based largely on their recent past. Even if nobody was listening, they still spoke about wanting to live in a country where a basic safety net existed to catch those who were down on their luck. They were still cool with the free market, and took pride in having created so many successful industries, particularly in high tech. What they hated—the term sprang up somewhere around 2010 and was soon on everyone’s lips—was “piggish capitalism.” For the most part, though, they had no idea how to stop it. This is where Itzik Alrov comes in. When Israelis think of their heroes, they imagine tanned and muscular warriors or beautiful models like Bar Rafaeli, not a scrawny ultra-Orthodox insurance salesmen who makes ends meet by moonlighting as a singer in local synagogues. But this Alrov was a thoughtful and passionate man. Like all the others, he didn’t like “piggish capitalism,” but he understood that for anything to change he needed to make the fight relevant to everyone, even those individuals who were relatively well-off. He knew that most people wouldn’t join an effort to do something that sounded really daunting, like forcing the prime minister to resign or coming up with an alternative economic program. He knew instinctively that when you have a vision of tomorrow, you can’t pick the big cataclysmic fight as your first confrontation. In the beginning, everybody is a nobody. And nobodies need to find the battles they can win. That’s why in all those movies Batman goes after common thugs in the first few scenes. He starts by picking easy fights, building a reputation and a name. Only then does he take on the Joker. No matter how important the big issues are to you, it’s imperative to start with something manageable. And in Israel, Alrov knew he couldn’t take on the entire economy right out of the gate. But he could do something about cottage cheese. Like all Israelis, he was crazy for the stuff. And like all Israelis, he knew its story only too well. Realizing that the cheese was a fundamental part of most people’s diet, the government had subsidized it as a staple, which meant that the price of one cup of cottage cheese couldn’t go above a predetermined price. It kept cottage cheese affordable. In 2006, however, the government changed its mind. As it had done with so many other industries and resources, it decided to let the market run its course, so it removed the subsidies. The minister of finance, a chubby guy with a beard who looked like a sketchy version of Santa Claus, addressed the policy in an interview where he jovially laughed the whole thing off. Israelis had no reason to worry, he said. With the cottage cheese market now open to competition, products were bound to improve. In a sense, he was right: within four years, scores of new cottage-cheese-based products flooded the market, from artisanal cottage cheese to cottage cheese blended with yogurt and other cheeses. What the minister forgot to tell the people was that losing the subsidy came at a price. From four shekels, or approximately one dollar, in 2006, the price of cottage cheese spiked to double that by the time Alrov was looking for ways to protest the cost of living. And it didn’t take him very long to realize that the uproar over cottage cheese was the perfect vehicle for change. Alrov created a modestly designed Facebook page, using a snapshot of a dollop of cottage cheese. He gave his new social network group an awkward name: “Cottage cheese is such a basic product and now it costs nearly 8 shekels. We won’t buy it for one month!!!” He advocated letting the cheese spoil on the shelves until prices were lowered. And in the apocalyptic language befitting a religious man, he opined that “if we don’t overcome our desire to buy cottage cheese, we will never succeed in making it affordable again.” At first, only thirty-two people, most of them friends of Alrov’s, joined his online petition. But Israel is a small country, and a local blogger, amused by the idea of a cottage cheese boycott, interviewed Alrov. The day after the interview ran, his petition had nine thousand signatures. The mainstream media soon reported for duty, reveling in the unlikely working-class hero who had fallen into their hands. Before too long, Alrov’s page had a hundred thousand followers, which in a country of only seven million people is a lot. Alrov had found an easy fight to pick, and since everybody wants to join a winning team, his following continued to grow. The three or four companies who control Israel’s dairy market did what big and powerful organizations—corporations, governments, dictators—always do. At first they ignored Alrov and his followers. As the cottage cheese protests gathered steam, Tnuva, the largest player in the market, announced a new product called Cottage Cheese Munchies, individually packaged tubes of cottage cheese with small compartments containing various toppings like fruit or chocolate chips. The new product, a Tnuva spokesman said in an official announcement, “allows Tnuva to further differentiate itself from its competitors, as it charges the consumer more money for its innovation.” It was a dumb statement, but in 2011 Tnuva felt so secure in its position of power that it didn’t worry about it too much. It was a mistake. Alrov realized that talking about cottage cheese was a cover for Israelis to talk about the economy, about injustice, and about national priorities. Most people don’t really understand how the economy works—my wife and my bank manager will tell you that’s very much the case for me as well—but everyone understands how infuriating it is when the one product you really can’t live without gets progressively more expensive for no good reason except the greed of a few companies. People didn’t want innovation; they wanted their cheap cheese. Moved by Alrov’s call, more Israelis took the plunge and gave up their beloved cottage cheese. Tnuva’s chairwoman sent a stern message through the press, saying she wouldn’t lower prices. In doing so, she gave the cottage cheese protest just what it needed: a villain. Enraged with Tnuva’s arrogance, Israelis vowed to punish the behemoth. They didn’t stop at cottage cheese: now chocolate milk—shoko, the national addiction of Israeli children—gazed longingly from supermarket refrigerators as previously loyal consumers sneered while passing it by. Smoothies went unsipped. Swiss cheese grew moldy. Around water coolers in offices all over Israel, people boasted about their commitment to go dairy-free. It was the world’s first case of politically motivated lactose intolerance. And it worked. Within two weeks, the large supermarket chains, panicking over a noticeable drop in profits, announced that they would place all cottage-cheese-related products on sale. Still, that only lowered the price so much; if consumers were to win the battle, Tnuva and the other dairy corporations had to bow down. Sensing the tremors, the milk mongers tried to play nice. Tnuva’s chief, sounding much more welcoming than before, released another statement; she said that while she regretted not being able to reduce the price of cottage cheese, she promised not to raise it again until the end of the year. Most pundits expected this gambit to work, but they were underestimating the resolve of the cheese-addled masses. Alrov and the scores of activists who joined him were now sensing that they could win. They were like sharks who smelled blood in the water, and they pressed on. Five days later, Tnuva announced that it was reducing the price to just under six shekels. The protestors still wouldn’t budge. For them, it was five shekels or bust. A few days later, victory was theirs. All of the dairy companies issued separate statements, each pledging low prices. Tnuva’s chairwoman, under the scrutiny of her disapproving board, announced her resignation. But the real victory of the cottage cheese protest wasn’t just the triumphant return of the now affordable dairy product to the tables of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Watching Alrov and his followers, a small group of young and idealistic Israelis had a bit of an epiphany. Unlike Alrov, whose main concern was being able to feed his family, they were college students who had spent their adolescence advocating for a host of causes related to social justice. They lived in communes, marched in demonstrations, read rousing literature, and wrote insightful blog posts. And they’d gotten nowhere. But now people were getting a better idea of how these protest movements could coalesce into something that actually achieves victories. They saw the importance of starting small, and doing what the American writer and activist Jonathan Kozol advises: “Pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win.” By choosing such an easy target, Alrov gave them the missing piece of the puzzle. Now that they’d experienced a victory, people were emboldened and willing to pick bigger fights. Just a few weeks after the cottage cheese rebellion was won, these students too launched their own Facebook page, targeting the rising cost of housing. They invited people to join them in one of Tel Aviv’s loveliest, leafiest boulevards, bearing tents. Until they were given options they could afford, they argued, they would live in the street. While before the students were ignored, here were thousands of ordinary Israelis answering the call. If it worked for cottage cheese, went the thinking, why not for housing? Hundreds of thousands more showed up at a series of mass demonstrations. Like Tnuva, the government first ignored, then tried to deflect, then sought to appease, and finally capitulated. A committee was appointed, and many of its recommendations were signed into law. Because some random insurance salesman picked a fight over lumpy cheese, young Israelis were now much closer to achieving their seemingly impossible vision of tomorrow. A big part of a movement’s success will be determined by the battles it chooses to fight, and a lot of that has to do with how well it understands its opponent.
TL;DR The lesson is companies which have perishable goods are hit hardest when those things spoil. Milk, Cheese etc.
If you bother about company X and issue N, then go hit at its perishables.
Submitted April 21, 2015 at 06:25PM by gitacritic http://ift.tt/1Genwhj india
No comments:
Post a Comment