On the important French Fry Question

LeoCasey at aol.com LeoCasey at aol.com
Sun Jan 21 12:39:51 PST 2001


This "moral purity" of consumption which rejects eating McDonalds fries, is straight out of college town, "politically correct" culture. While I don't take the kids to McDonalds all that often, it is because it is just not that healthy a species of food; in a rush, I have no problems with it.

There is, to my mind, one -- and one only -- criteria for "boycotting" a particular product. That is: is there an effective, organized mass boycott which could result in some really change in corporate policy for the better? One boycotted non-union grapes or lettuce to the end of having corporate agriculture recognize and negotiate with a union for the farmworkers who picked the produce. And so on.

Anything else is a modern day monastic moralism, in which one separates oneself from the corrupt world, rather than seeks to transform it.

Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010121/1fe7e470/attachment.htm>



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