Origins

How the Procott Movement Began in Fort Wayne, Indiana

The Movement to Redefine Globalization
In December 1999 in Seattle, WA popular discontent over the antidemocratic nature of corporate-controlled consumer culture took to the streets. The following spring in April 2000 five Fort Wayne community members joined the Mobilization for Global Justice in Washington, DC. We marched with thousands of others in an effort to globalize liberation rather than corporate power

Globalization Study Group
We returned to Fort Wayne deciding to offer a public forum on economic justice and to begin a study/action group on globalization issues. Between September 2000 and January 2002 our study/action group met regularly with the twin goals of educating ourselves about corporate globalization and initiating local activism around solutions.

Procott Sprouts
In January 2002 a small group began meeting to work on the idea of a procott. A procott is a movement to support the production and purchase of earth-friendly and justice-friendly goods and services. One can find lists of products that are often single-issue friendly such as black pages, green lists and ethnic directories. These lists encourage consumers to buy from African-American owned businesses, from environmental-friendly producers and from multicultural sources.

The procott movement seeks to enhance the power of these lists by organizing people to consider our own choices as consumers. This sort of community education can turn a dormant list into a tool of transformation for a great many people as word spreads that such lists are available and as we work collectively to know how best to use them.

A Good Idea Says Utne
A few months later the Utne Reader sponsored a "Good Idea!" contest for the best idea to improve life on planet earth. In July 2002 the Procott team celebrated our award as winners of the Utne contest, using their earnings to start this website and to begin procott outreach in Fort Wayne and beyond. Utne editor Jay Walljasper said, "It was just a plain great idea. It was visionary and it was practical."

Historical Precedents for the Procott Idea

Boycotts
The procott movement takes its name from the term boycott which is defined in Protest, Power and Change: An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action as "a method of non-cooperation in which parties refuse to continue or to enter into economic, social or political relationships with another party in order to influence the behavior of that party...The term boycott was first used in Ireland in 1880 when tenant farmers retaliated against a particularly punitive landholder, ... Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, by refusing to maintain any social or economic relations with him or his family."

In recent American history a well-known example is the Montgomery bus boycott, the year long struggle in 1955-56 joined by 50,000 black citizens. A critical part of the success of this effort was the ongoing organizing of support for the boycotters through church gatherings, carpooling, independent taxi services, etc. Other well known boycotts include the American colonial movement of non-importation of British goods in the 1770s, the UFW boycott of lettuce and grapes in the 1960s and 1980s and the INFACT-sponsored Nestles boycott in the 1970s regarding marketing of infant formula in developing countries.

Selective Buying Campaigns
An early example of this tactic is the American colonies' spinning bees in the 1760s. During these gatherings women would make clothing in order to refrain from purchasing British clothes. Another example would be Gandhi's encouragement of production and purchase of swadeshi goods (those made in India) and especially khadi (cloth spun and woven by hand). This action was a part of a larger non-cooperation campaign that included boycotts of all things British - elections, schools, titles, courts, manufactured goods, etc.

Consciousness Raising Groups
Beginning in the late 1960s the second wave of the women's movement inspired many women to gather together with one another to engage in critical discussion about their place as women in a male dominated society. These groups were a concrete aid to women in making choices to control their lives, from getting free from an abusive husband to challenging sexual harassment at work, from filing a civil suit for equal access to employment to joining a little league team. Such discussion groups helped to sharpen women's ability to understand how male privilege works in their own home, on the streets and in the workplace. It also helped to develop a sense that sisterhood truly is powerful.

Share Our Wealth
A similar, though lesser-known phenomenon occurred in the 1930s in the Share Our Wealth movement pioneered by Huey Long. Long was racist and anti-semitic, factors that no doubt contributed to the defeat of this movement. However he was also an economic populist who managed to persuade over 6 million people to join over 27,000 Share Our Wealth clubs across the United States during the Depression. These groups discussed specific plans to level the extraordinary inequality of wealth through progressive taxation programs. Huey Long's biographer, Henry Christman, wrote of its impact: "The Share Our Wealth movement forced Roosevelt to the left, thereby expanding the scope of the New Deal and hastening its enactment."

Values-Based Investing
This recent movement encourages investors to consider investing in stocks or mutual funds that reflect their values. Investors are invited to screen out companies that are related to the tobacco or arms industries, for instance, and to select companies that work for positive change in their production, staffing and service. They also engage in shareholder activism and community investing to influence corporate decision-making. Examples of "socially responsible" mutual funds would be Citizens, Domini and Pax World Funds. According to a 1997 study by the Social Investment Forum, $1.2 trillion in assets - nearly one tenth of all investments - were managed in "socially and environmentally responsible" portfolios.

The power of such economic discernment was shown when the anti-apartheid movement successfully pressured major US companies including Mobil, Goodyear and Nabisco, to stop doing business with the apartheid government of South Africa. This pressure was instrumental in supporting the South African freedom campaign that resulted in Nelson Mandela's release from prison and election as president and the subsequent dismantling of apartheid. Many consumers do not have savings to invest due to the increasing disparity of wealth in our country. Nevertheless, even small savings can be invested in many of these social funds, allowing our dollars to support our values both as consumers and as money-savers. A procott movement could make these choices known and used.

Nonviolent Grassroots Activism
For the procott movement these examples demonstrate the importance of grassroots efforts of consciousness raising and organizing around common concerns. We as consumers have a vested interest in taking charge of our lives every bit as much as women did in the sixties and seventies and the poor and working people did during the depression. Our history as nonviolent activists for change can be a tool for transformation if we are willing to come together to study and to apply the lessons of our predecessors to today's challenges. In this way we create a movement.

Sources
*Brill, Hal, Jack Brill and Cliff Feigenbaum, Investing With Your Values: Making Money and Making a Difference, Princeton: Bloomburg, 1999.
*Christman, Henry M, ed, Kingfish to America: Share our Wealth. Selected Papers of Huey P. Long, New York: Schocken, 1985.
*Powers, Roger & William Vogele, eds, Protest, Power and Change: An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action, New York: Garland, 1997