The act of marching in front of Wall Street banks provides a nice visual image and certainly garners media attention which can be effective in third-world countries attempting to revolt against a dictator or for social issues altered by political pressure. But mere protest will have little impact directly on the corporations which are all driven entirely by profit, not public policy sentiment. No, in order to have impact on "for profit" corporations, only economic pressure, not political pressure will force change. To do this the consumer, who is always isolated as an individual and pitted against other individual consumers in competition for limited supplies of goods and services must band together to form a "market" and thus influence demand in order to force change in our capitalist economy. As Cesar Chavez did during the grape boycott of the 1960's and the U.S. and its allies consistently do to unfriendly regimes like Iran and Cuba, U.S. Consumers need to band together through boycotts and sanctions against those companies and industires in which they want to see change. With social media and communication today, such actions can be easily orchastrated and assembled like never before.
For example:
Consumers can communicate through the internet and smart phone technolgy to band together to boycott all General Electric products for a period of time until that company begins to hire more US. workers or pay a reasonable amount of Federal Taxes. The comapny will say, lower demand means more layoffs but if they understand that the hiring of more employees will mean a lift of the boycott and greater demand for their particular goods, you will see how quickly they hire and potentially even see their profits rise further and perhaps even pay (income) tax.
Consumers could target a particular oil company or companies that are purely focussed on profit at the expense of employment build-ups or safe environmental practices. If it is an industry, rather than one company that needs attention, targeting companies within an indistry can be rotated for several months at a time which would still have significant impact if, and only if, it is done in an organized and large-scale basis. If you want to kill to birds with one stone, consumers can each use one particular credit card in their wallet (even if issued by different banks or credit card companies) to purchase all their gas for the next 3 to 6 months, and then choose not to pay that credit card bill until they are cut off (from that one company). The only negative impact the consumer would face is damage to his or her credit score, and therefore this would not be advisable to a person with only one credit card, but for the vast majority of Americans that have more than one credit card, they can continue to use their other cards and ultimately explain to the credit agencies that their deliquency in payment was due to an organized boycott of the oil and finance companies until we see better practices on their part. If 10 million Americans have several delinquencies for the same time period, all scores will be adjusted accordingly.
Banding together is not only a good strategy for the consumer but it can be a good strategy for the corporations as well. Although Anti-Trust Laws prevent companies from getting together to fix prices or set production levels, they do not prevent companies from agreeing to all hire more employees at a level considtent with their current profits or any reasonable fairness means in order to spur the economy and result in more (earning) consumers overall and greater profit for all as a result.
But these steps can only affect change if carried out consistently and in large groups and if the greatest sacrifice to an individual consumer is potential damage to their credit score or to a corporation is a short-lived downturn in profitability for the long term benefit of our economy and society, I submit that it is a small price compared to what was offered by American Heroes such as Cesar Chavez, Norma Rae, Martin Luther King and corporate philanthpies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I would even argue that such steps are also less difficult for most of us than traveling to Lower Manhattan, DC or SF to Occupy Wall Street with the added benefit of being a far greater agent for change.
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