A Whole Foods Buycott

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Pursuant to a recent post, reader Dismuke emails me about an activity you may be interested in, which is an outgrowth of the Tea Party demonstrations:

The national leadership team of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition this morning announced a series of Tea Party Buycott events designed to support John Mackey and the Whole Foods grocery chain. Mackey is the CEO whose op-ed in The Wall Street Journal opposing Obamacare and supporting free market health care reform has sparked unprecedented and unwarranted attacks from left wing propagandists.

The first two events are scheduled for Tuesday evening, September 1, 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri and Dallas, Texas, with additional events in other cities and locales to come. The St. Louis event will be held at the Whole Foods store located in Town and Country, Missouri off Clayton Road and will begin at 6 pm. The Dallas kickoff event will be held at the Whole Foods Market located at 11700 Preston Rd., Dallas, Texas and will begin at 7 pm. Details of these Tea Party Buycotts and future buycotts can be found online at http://www.teapartybuycott.com.
If you are participating in either of these or know more, feel free to leave a comment.

Two more things I more or less randomly thought of upon hurriedly posting this... (1) I am glad to see that the Tea Party folks are characterizing themselves as "fiscally conservative." (2) Were I -- as someone pretty unfamiliar with the stores -- to participate in such an event, I might consider showing up a day or so before to become familiar with the layout of the store. One drawback I can see to one of these events is having a huge mass of people who don't know where anything is in the store at once attempting to do their weekly shopping!

-- CAV

Updates

Today
: Added last paragraph.

3 comments:

Andy said...

Now that you're in the Boston area, though, you can participate in a distributed fashion. Lots of WFM sites around town.

Dismuke said...

Here is what I like about the idea of a "buycott" in general: It is an old tactic of Leftists to attempt to smear and destroy those who are effective in making arguments that the Left is simply unable to rebut using facts and logic. The only way the Left can "rebut" Mackey and other critics who speak the truth is by some means other than facts and logic - and all of those alternatives are pretty ugly.

It would be very nice if, when the Left sets itself upon destroying an individual or company that refuses to tow the Party Line, that both the Leftists and their victims could count on a groundswell of organized moral and economic support on behalf of the victims.

Considering that, based on my experience of shopping at multiple locations over the years, Whole Foods has a very strong focus on customer service, I have no doubt that Mackey was aware of the ideological leanings of many of his customers and that a certain percentage of them have bigoted attitudes towards those who disagree with them. Outside the realm of people's sexual practices, the notion of "live and let live" is not in the Left's vocabulary. So for Mackey to speak out required guts and courage. I think it is great that people, many of whom may disagree with Mackey on a variety of other issues (such a vegetarianism, the organic movement, etc.)are taking time out of their lives and money out of their pocket books in a recession to stand by him.

If other prominent people who had the courage to speak out against the Left could count on similar support, more people would be willing to take that risk - and the Left would be forced to think twice before employing its usual Alinskyite tactic of targeted personal destruction.

Gus Van Horn said...

Andy,

Not really. I've got one that's kind of close, so I'll buy a few things tehre each week.

Dismuke,

Here's the problem this poses for the left: (1) Employ those other alternatives now and lose ALL moral credibility, or (2) back off and encourage the opposition with a win.

That is why one should never back down from the left.

Gus