Boycotts traditionally require a lot of coordination to make them work. They require:
- a target (who is supposed to change behavior)
- a demand (so the target knows what they have to do to get the boycott to stop)
- boycotters (a lot of people who used to be customers refusing to be customers anymore)
- leadership/negotiation committee (people who can show the target they’re hurting their bottomline and negotiate over demands)
- a way to communicate with the boycotters (a structure and massive social reach!).
We need to make Tesla synonymous with tiny dick and imminent graffiti… On our way on that one
Gotta feel bad for Nikola Tesla, he’s 0 for 2 on getting his legacy sullied by talentless hacks masquerading as inventors.
leadership/negotiation committee (people who can show the target they’re hurting their bottomline and negotiate over demands)
This is the part that I have some trepidation about. There seems to be little organizing (at least in my community) outside of small pockets of people like groups of friends. One person I know went to some DSA meetings, and he reported that it’s total chaos where 100% consensus is being used as a metric and a desire to be “leaderless.” I don’t know what others are experiencing, but this is worrying me.
If others are seeing what I am, then we need to get over our (frankly legitimate) issues with vertical hierarchical organizations. It doesn’t need to be a big and expansive organization that follows Roberts Rules of Order or uses formal bylaws, but there needs to be some chain of command and method to make and take decisive actions.
I think it’s completely possible to delegate negotiations to a committee or even individual as long as the selection of negotiators is bottom up and has norms or procedures to keep then in line with the desires and interests of other interested individuals or groups.
However, I would not use the words hierarchy or chain of command to describe such a system as they naturally imply a domination by leaders over followers which should be avoided at all costs. Such negotiators should serve the collective and not vice-versa as is too often the case in conventional organizations.
However, I would not use the words hierarchy or chain of command to describe such a system as they naturally imply a domination by leaders over followers which should be avoided at all costs
I’m not certain it should be avoided, and in fact, it might be necessary, especially for larger groups. Smaller groups, can be flatter, but the larger the group, the more vertical it needs to be. I agree that there can be domination, and that’s what I mean by our legitimate issues with a vertical hierarchy. But, such a structure is not inherently exploitative or even domineering. I envision a structure similar to a tree where the organization is built, and the group decides who fills each leadership role.
For example, the chief is ultimately in charge of everything, and she wants to plan a protest march. So, she engages with the operations and logistics officers to tell them to plan the march details; they have two weeks to bring a plan to the next meeting. The operations officer works with his assistants who propose routes and how the march should look. The logistics officer engages with the finance officer and the assistant officers to figure out how to get people in and out safely and quickly, etc. Then at the next meeting, the operations and logistics officers discuss their plan, and other officers can ask questions and make suggestions. The chief then weighs the original plan, any suggestions brought up, etc. and then makes a decision to execute that plan.
Ultimately, all the members of the group get to decide who gets to take the responsibilities based on their qualifications, which is fairly democratic. Additionally, there would have to be measures in place to recall them.
What I just described is a fairly standard hierarchical structure. There’s a reason it’s used globally to organize governments (particularly executive branches), militaries, and corporations. It’s effective. Additionally, the different leaders aren’t meant to be dominators. Quite the contrary. They are meant to be the representative of their sub-organization and just the “button-press” for the higher to access the lower and for the lower to access the higher. It’s about information sharing, communication, and abstraction, not power.
That said, different groups can work differently; that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I do think that once a group becomes sufficiently large (probably greater than 45ish), it will have to take a more traditional structure like this. By 15-20 people, though, there will need to be a designated leader because not everything can be voted on.
