A Call to Consumer Activism

OP ED

Croton's irrationally unbalanced administration speaks from both sides of its mouth. One side pretends to be concerned about the commercial health of the community's businesses. The other side repeatedly announces that the Village has made sweetheart deals that fundamentally damage the very businesses it claims to be its primary concern.

A case in point is the so-called winter farmers market about to open on Saturdays in the former Blockbuster store in the cramped little strip mall adjoining the earlier Z-shaped Van Wyck mall. There cannot be a more unseemly and inappropriate time or place for such an establishment in Croton. Navigating that strip mall’s tight little parking area requires nearly professional driving skills.

Croton residents looking for a way to express their displeasure at the high-handedly precipitous granting of a special permit based on no research by the Village can use the powerful weapon of the boycott. This would also demonstrate support for the taxpaying local retail businesses damaged by the Village's irresponsible action.

The boycott takes its name from Capt. Charles Boycott, a land agent for absentee landlords in Ireland. In 1880, after evicting tenant farmers from lands he controlled in western Ireland he attempted to recruit local farmers to harvest his crops. They refused and Boycott was forced to bring in workers from Northern Ireland. He also brought in police, but predicted violence never occurred. In the end, Boycott spent 10,000 Pounds to harvest 500 Pounds worth of crops. Irish nationalist leader Charles Parnell quipped that “it cost one shilling for every turnip dug from Boycott’s land.”

Extended boycotts have a long and honorable history, including the boycott of British goods by colonists during the American Revolution a century before and the boycott of British textiles led by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s. Gandhi also advocated that Indians spin their own yarns to make cloth. Other notable boycotts include the year-long Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1956 and the grape and lettuce boycotts led by Cesar Chavez in the 1970s. Notable, too, was the US-led boycott of the summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980

As a form of protest, the boycott is legal under common law and. can be highly effective. Abstaining from patronizing the farmers market by consumers and supporting established local businesses would also send an unambiguous message to Croton’s duplicitous administration.