Episode 34 - Operation Breadbasket

Boycotts

There are at least 198 methods of nonviolent action. And within this list, the word “boycott” features 17 times. A boycott campaign consists of a concerted refusal to spend money – as well as to convince others to refuse to spend money – on a product or service in the hopes of changing specific conditions or practices of an institution.

Although boycott campaigns draw on an adversarial communication frame, reform and redemption narratives often also accompany these campaigns because it is necessary to convince people that already consume a given product or service to stop doing so for a period of time. After all, there would hardly be a motive for businesses to change their behavior if the only people boycotting were those who did not consume the product in the first place.

Boycott campaigns typically escalate in four stages: announcing that a boycott is under consideration; calling for the boycott to begin at a certain point in the future; publicizing boycott preparations and any organizing that is underway; and initiating the boycott via demonstrations or picket lines. Notably, many boycott campaigns achieve their goals before reaching the fourth stage of actually initiating the boycott.

For over 200 years, the consumer boycott campaign has been a method of holding corporations accountable for their environmental and human rights practices, as well as those of their suppliers.

Boycotts and Civil Rights

Quick Summary of Civil Rights Movement

In typical narratives, the civil rights movement gave way to the black power movement after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.[1]

The civil rights movement focused on ending discrimination, especially segregation, and establishing equal rights in law, whereas the black power movement emphasized black pride and black community control. The civil rights movement is most embodied by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was formed in 1957 following the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The black power movement is most closely associated with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), which was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panthers challenged police brutality through armed citizen patrols. They also carried out a number of community self-help programs like school lunches.

It is fair to say that the Black Panthers represent a more revolutionary movement, in contrast to the SCLC, which was tightly connected to Christian faith communities. The Black Panthers adopted a Marxist ideology and held the view that nonviolent direct action was inadequate to protect Black Americans from violence.

Deppe in his book emphasizes how these movements were really connected to a certain degree – ideologically, Operation Breadbasket took on elements of Black power as that movement started to gain ascendancy. 

One thing that I find interesting about the Breadbasket story, though, is that both movements were complementary. While Operation Breadbasket took a softer approach – negotiating with companies and occasionally practicing economic withdrawal – a looming background feature of their interaction with companies were the riots happening across American cities in the mid-late 1960s.

Why Operation Breadbasket?

Operation Breadbasket was a part of the civil rights movement that often gets ignored, but in fact it was one of the most successful elements of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)’s activities.[2]

One reason to talk about it is that it adds to our understanding of racial equality movements in the 20th century. As Martin Deppe argues in his book, Operation Breadbasket challenges the narrative that the civil rights movement faltered after MLK Jr.’s assassination and was replaced by the Black Power movement.[3]

Operation Breadbasket continued until 1971.[4] As Breadbasket continued, it incorporated certain elements of Black Power while also adhering to SCLC principles like nonviolence.[5]

And although Operation Breadbasket no longer exists in its current form, it continued as what is now known as Rainbow PUSH.[6]

A second reason to talk about Operation Breadbasket is broader: it provides a good model for how consumer power can play an important role in social change. Operation Breadbasket provides a successful model of direct action that continues today. It is also a powerful illustration of how well-organized boycott campaigns can work.

Boycotts and Civil Rights

Operation Breadbasket of course not first boycott movement used to fight anti-black racism in the US.

Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work

In 1929 Chicago, picketers launched a boycott of a department store called Woolworth under a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. Woolworth agreed to a policy of hiring 25% Black employees in its stores, resulting in 2,000 jobs.[7]

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Perhaps the most famous example is the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a boycott beginning in December 1955 that went on for 381 days. The bus boycotts were about more than desegregating buses. Black Americans did not only want to ride buses alongside white Americans: they also wanted to drive buses and own bus companies.[8]

The Birmingham Campaign (1963)

Campaign to end discriminatory economic policies. It included a boycott of businesses that hired only white people or maintained segregated restrooms.

Selective Patronage

Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia selective patronage, which refers to the strategic withholding of black patronage from businesses that discriminate, especially on Black employment. Selective patronage was inspired by the sit-ins in the deep South.

Leon Sullivan created a program where teams of ministers negotiated for jobs with corporations doing business in Black communities, with the threat of boycotts. By 1963, this program had opened up 2,000 skilled jobs in Philadelphia.[9] Sullivan was asked to present on this model to the SCLC in Atlanta. That presentation led to the creation of Operation Breadbasket in Atlanta in 1962.

Operation Breadbasket

Economic Liberation

Between 1916 and 1970, more than 6 million Black Americans relocated from the rural South to cities in Northern, Midwestern, and Western America. This Great Migration was prompted by the harsh segregationist laws and poor economic opportunities in the south. Economic opportunities for Black Americans during the first and second world wars helped to spur this trend.

When WWI ended many Black Americans were fired or expected to return to unskilled jobs. The Great Depression was particularly harsh on Black unemployment: in 1931, 58.5 percent of employable Black women and 43.5 percent of employable Black men were unemployed.[10]

While Black employment rose during WWII and continued during the period of general economic prosperity in the 1950s, by 1960 the job ceiling for Black Americans became an increasing point of contention.[11] By the mid-1960s the unemployment rate amongst Black Chicagoans was twice that of white Chicagoans, for example.[12]

Deindustrialization and the loss of American manufacturing made this situation worse.[13]At the same time, the mid-1960s was a period of protest – which in some cases resulted in violence. There was a growing sense that Black Americans “would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.”[14]

President Lyndon B Johnson is quotes as saying privately: “The Negro…[is] still nowhere. He knows it. And that’s why he’s out in the streets. Hell, I’d be there too.”[15]

It was in this context that SCLC moved north in the 1960s to address a new form of segregation – the slum. Housing equality and economic liberation became focal points. Early housing efforts failed due to intransigence from the Mayor, and so jobs became the primary focus. Operation Breadbasket “was a response to the color line in employment.”[16] 

Operation Breadbasket

The SCLC first established Operation Breadbasket in 1962 in Atlanta. Breadbasket was explicitly modelled on Leon Sullivan’s selective patronage.[17] Operation Breadbasket in Atlanta began with the bread industry. The first campaign was against Colonial Bakery, which gave in to Breadbasket’s demands after a boycott and picketing. Between 1962 and 1966, Atlanta Breadbasket won 4,000 jobs and $15 million of income to the Black community there.[18]

Chicago Breadbasket

When SCLC moved north to Chicago, Operation Breadbasket was formed there and became a core element of the SCLC’s overall strategy. Specifically, Breadbasket was launched in Chicago in 1966 with a group of 60 pastors who together formed a steering committee.[19] Reverend Jesse Jackson led Chicago Breadbasket, with guidance from Martin Luther King Jr..[20] Breadbasket was significant in launching Jackson’s civil rights career.[21]

Operation Breadbasket obtained its name from the concept of a breadbasket as “putting food on the table in the form of a steady job”[22]

The Breadbasket Model

Operation Breadbasket had a number of components, but its main focus was creating job opportunities for Black Americans through consumer pressure. The model included six core steps:

1.     Information gathering: a team of clergy would go to the company and request a copy of its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission annual report, a document mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They also asked for salaries by category.

2.     Committee Evaluation: Then, the committee would decide on a set of demands. The baseline was a minimum demand of 20% Black employees (28% of Chicagoans were Black at the time), but this could be adjusted based on factors like where the company was operating.

3.     Education and negotiation: then a team of clergy would meet with company executives to try to reach agreement on targets and deadlines for a “covenant”.

4.     Economic withdrawal and picketing: when CEOs refused to share information or to continue discussions, pastors would call for a boycott from their pulpits. This would be coupled with picketing and leafleting. Economic withdrawal was not necessary in every case, but it was pretty common.

5.     Agreement/Covenant: when the Breadbasket team and the company agreed on a set of targets, they would formalize it in an agreement or covenant. At that time, any economic withdrawal would be officially called off. The agreements would be signed at a formal ceremony.

6.     Monitoring: this was a later addition to the strategy, but it proved important. Breadbasket team members would regularly follow up to monitor the implementation of the agreements. When companies didn’t hold to their commitments (or reasonably close), Breadbasket would initiate another economic withdrawal.

Outcomes

Chicago Breadbasket began with the bread, milk, soft drink, and soup companies, before moving on to other industries like supermarkets and construction.

In the six years that Operation Breadbasket operated, it created 4,500 jobs for Black Chicagoans, an estimated $29 million in income annually.[23] That’s not including the income it created for black products and service contracts – if you include that, Breadbasket created $57.5 million annually for the African American community by 1971 (equivalent to $391.8 million in 2016 dollars).[24]

Operation Breadbasket is forerunner to Operation PUSH (1971), which is now the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (formed in 1987).

The Challenge

Stop Hate for Profit boycott movement, which is calling on companies to boycott Facebook Ads until Facebook agrees to establish and empower permanent civil rights infrastructure so products and policies can be evaluated for discrimination, racism, and hate by experts.

Stop Hate for Profit is promoted by a coalition of various racial equality groups, as well as at least one union and Mozilla.

Footnotes

[1] Deppe, Martin. (2017). Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.

[2] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[3] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[4] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[5] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[6] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[7] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[8] Ezra, Michael. (2013). Introduction: The Economic Dimensions of the Black Freedom Struggle. In M. Ezra (ed.) The Economic Civil Rights Movement: African Americans and the Struggle for Economic Power. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-5.

[9] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[10] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[11] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[12] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[13] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[14] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.7.

[15] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.7.

[16] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket p.5.

[17] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[18] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[19] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[20] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[21] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[22] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket xxvii.

[23] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

[24] Deppe, Operation Breadbasket.

Episode 25 - Ten Things We Learned About Black Lives Matter

We wanted to do something to lend our voices in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. As allies, the best way we could think to do this was to highlight our own learning journeys. So here are five things each of us have learned since the killing of George Floyd.

What Kristen Learned

1. Americans have donated an unprecedented amount of money to bail funds around the country, including $30 million for the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

Community bail funds are really important because they free people who are being imprisoned without having been convicted of a crime.

470,000 Americans in local jails have not been convicted of a crime; they are in jail because they cannot afford the bail bond that has been set for them.  Over half of the people in jail who could not make bail were parents of children under 18. Bail can cost thousands of dollars or more. Many view it as discriminatory and unjust. Bail is also racist: bail rates are twice as high for racialized Americans.

Bail can be used in an undemocratic way. The threat of arrest and pretrial imprisonment are deterrents to political protest. Police sometimes use arrest as a tactic for suppressing protest. Bail funds can help to support democratic dissent by providing a financial safety net against pretrial detention.

 At least 9,300 protesters have been arrested in the American George Floyd protests so far.

 Black Lives Matter learned the importance of bail funds from their experience in the 2014 protests following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But this isn’t by any means a new tactic. Black Americans have been pooling money to free family members and friends going back to the slavery era. 

Donating to bail funds is a good way to support protesters who are arrested in the course of exercising their rights to peacefully dissent. The use of bail and legal defence funds can combat the punitive measures that police try to impose and alleviate the pressure to plead guilty.

 If you want more information, here is a guide to donating through bail funds, community organizations, and direct aid.

2. Most Canadian police forces do not wear body cameras.

 The Calgary Police implemented a body camera policy in 2018, following the conviction of an officer of assaulting an Indigenous man. But most Canadian police forces do not use body cams.

Body cameras have been successfully piloted by some police forces. Toronto Police ran a successful pilot project using body cameras in 2016. Although body cameras were recommended as an outcome of the pilot project, the department ignored the recommendation.

The recent death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto has renewed calls for the use of body cameras on the Toronto Police force. Korchinski-Paquet’s death is still under investigation, but the mother alleges that Korchinski-Paquet was pushed off of the balcony by police. Though we may never know what happened, as police were the only ones inside the unit with Korchinski-Paquet, her situation echoes several other killings in the GTA by police in situations where the victim was experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2015 Andrew Loku was shot dead within five minutes of police arriving at his apartment. D’Andre Campbell was fatally shot by police in April 2020 by the Peel Police in Brampton. Mental health was a factor in all three incidents, which highlights ongoing problems with police’s ability to de-escalate.

 The other unifying factor in all three of these cases (and others) is race. Black people in Toronto are twenty-times more likely to be shot by police, according to an Ontario Human Rights Commission report.

A petition calling for Toronto police officers to be equipped with body cameras has more than 100,000 signatures. You can sign it by clicking here.

The RCMP piloted body cameras twice: in 2010 and 2013. Then they did a feasibility study, which was released in 2015. While the technical requirements of body cameras listed in the feasibility study matched an existing device made by Axon, the RCMP announced a year later that they were indefinitely postponing the implementation of body cameras due to a lack of available technology. The feasibility report itself found that using the technology would be worthwhile to improve accountability and transparency.

 On May 5, 2020, a 31-year old man in Clyde River, Nunavut, was killed in an altercation with an RCMP officer. This incident inspired renewed calls for the RCMP to wear body cameras. The Nunavut RCMP is currently under investigation for three police shootings in 2020. And that’s just the cases in Nunavut, which has a population under 40,000 people.

3. There is a thing called a public health approach to crime prevention, and it’s pretty cool.

A public health approach essentially treats crime and violence as a contagious disease rather than an individual moral failing. And because it is an illness, violence can be treated. The public health approach seeks to prevent violence by proactively addressing the social factors that make it more likely to spread, rather than reactively punishing perpetrators. And it recognizes that violence reflects inequalities in society.

 Basically, the idea is: “If dangerous behaviour is like a contagious disease, perhaps positive relationships can serve as an antidote.” (quote from this article) This approach uses public health principles to carry out interventions that prevent violence through the contextual factors that influence it. For instance, people that experience violence often perpetrate it themselves. It tends to be service-based, rather than punitive. So, you might address things like homelessness, addiction, trauma, and unemployment.

Scotland has effectively used this approach to reduce the murder rate in Glasgow by 60%. It is the only country that has a public health model embedded across its police force.

 To deploy a public health, you have to really understand a community and what is driving violence – since the causes aren’t the same everywhere. But one solution that has been used in a few places, including Philadelphia, is converting empty lots into green spaces – basically making them into parks. Studies have found that this project reduced crime and made nearby residents feel safer. 

4. The extent to which municipal budgets are dominated by spending on police.

 Calls to defund the police generally are not about abolishing the police completely – although that is a position that some have. More commonly, though, defunding the police means remedying an imbalance in how we allocate resources. It means spending more on education, mental health, housing, poverty reduction, transit, and any number of other things.

 Which makes a lot of sense when you consider that municipal budgets are often dominated by spending on police. In Toronto, for instance, more than 20% of property tax revenue ($703.31 of an average property tax bill of $3020) goes to police. It is the single largest expenditure. And that’s actually small compared to some other places. Percent of operating budget spent on policing in a few American cities:

And part of the problem is that police budgets have been increasing at the same time as we disinvest from other kinds of social spending, or at a higher rate of increase than other spending areas. Vancouver’s spending on police has increased by 140% since 2001.

Elamin Abdelmahmoud talked about this in a really accessible way on the June 4 episode of the Party Lines podcast.

5. It’s okay to fuck up.

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself.” – Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race.

There are lots of good resources on allyship out there, but I particularly recommend this one, this one (which actually argues that the term ally is problematic, as the fight needs to be ours too), this one, and this one.

Lots of these guides point out that on our learning journey, allies will discover lots of things that are obvious to the people experiencing that form of oppression, in this case racism. And inevitably, in the process of becoming an ally, you are going to fuck up. You will fuck up more at first, and less over time. But you will always fuck up a little because the only way to truly understand oppression is to live it.

That is kind of a freeing notion. It means that you should try to do your best, but if you approach the fight with earnest intentions and humility you’ll be fine. Apologize when you fuck up and don’t take it personally. It also means that there is always more to learn. This guide offers some good questions that you can ask yourself to become a better ally.

On your learning journey, you have to teach yourself. Don’t put this burden on your BIPOC friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. They have enough shit to deal with. Sometimes if a friend is close enough they can answer questions, but you have to really know that relationship and know that the person you are asking feels comfortable enough to say no to you. As a starting point why not check out this resource, which answers common questions about the Black Lives Matter movement? You can also check out this antiracist reading list.

Because it’s actually not about you. Try asking yourself what BIPOC people are getting out of you as a potential ally, and how you can be better.

What Kyla Learned

1.       Looting

Here is an article discussing the responses to the argument “looting never solves anything”.
Terry Nguyen has written an interesting and more nuanced article on looting as well.
And one more article about wealth redistribution, because I can’t help myself and the real looters are people and companies who hoard wealth and don’t pay tax.

I.            Most of the looting, at least in New York, appears not to have been done by protesters but by opportunists not associated with the protests.

II.            We’re living through a time when people, especially in the USA, can’t get their basic needs met during a pandemic where many have lost their jobs and the healthcare attached to those jobs. People are angry and desperate and the police are instigating violence during these protests.

III.            The media focuses on looting, saying it takes away from the cause, when they’re the ones who choose to focus on it instead of focusing on the cause. The vast majority of protesters are there for the cause and not looting.

IV.            It’s pretty hypocritical considering how Canada and the USA were founded on property theft from the people who already lived here.

V.            After years of peaceful protests being ignored, maybe some property damage will get the attention needed for systemic change.

VI.            People’s lives are more important than property.

VII.            Large companies are guilty of wage theft. Nearly $15bn/yr in the US. Even if these companies didn’t have insurance, they can stand to lose a few items off the sales floor.

VIII.          Most places have insurance, even the small businesses.

IX.            People’s lives are more important than property.

To finish this first section, here is a quote from an Atlantic article by Olga Khazan:
For one thing, looters and peaceful protesters aren’t typically the same people. Dana Fisher, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, has studied protests for 20 years, and she says it’s rare for peaceful protesters to start stealing and setting fires at random. People flock to the sites of protests with different motivations, and those who want peace tend to stay peaceful. “I’ve never seen somebody come in who’s peaceful and then it’s like, Hey, they just broke that window over there. I’m going to now start looting,” she told me.

Those in the looting group also have varied motivations. In their 1968 study, Dynes and Quarantelli note that vandalism during protests focuses on objects and buildings that are “symbolic of other values.” For example, people are more likely to attack symbols of authority—such as the CNN building or police cars—than apartment buildings.

In this way, some of the looting is a lashing-out against capitalism, the police, and other forces that are seen as perpetuating racism. “Widespread looting, then, may perhaps be interpreted as a kind of mass protest against our dominant conceptions of property,” Dynes and Quarantelli wrote. It is a “bid for the redistribution of property.”

2.       Counter-Intelligence Program

Credit to a twitter thread from Claire Willett that was circulating.
Started by J. Edgar Hoover, it was an illegal spying operation run by the FBI meant to discredit progressive activist movements, mostly the Black Civil rights leaders. Behind the Bastards have covered the Black Panthers, and it’s well worth a listen. Here’s Part One and Part Two.

3.       Police officers are worse than I thought

They don’t need military gear.
They’ll pretend to support protesters for the optics and escalate situations after the photos are taken.
It’s nearly impossible to prosecute or fire a cop. Police Unions will often protect officers who should be prosecuted.

4.       Defunding the police means reinvesting in social programs. See Kristen’s 3rd point above

5.       I’ve learned more about awful historical hate crimes.

However bad I thought history was, learning the details makes it so much worse. Schools need to be teaching black history in the normal curriculum. If you support this, send your Minister of Education a quick email saying so!

Tulsa Massacre

The Red Summer