Obviously, Jeffrey is taking his cue from the Martin Luther King Jr. playbook. MLK Jr. saw clear connections between civil rights efforts and economic issues, and he used boycotts to demonstrate the power and relevance of the black community. The 1955 Birmingham bus boycott is the most striking example. What was profound and strategically wise about MLK's approach was this: His tactics simultaneously dramatized the injustice at hand while putting direct pressure on the bad guys to make reforms.
Jeffrey is smart to look for an economic pressure point, but he's chosen the wrong one. If he wants to extract concessions from the city (his demands include creating an independent civilian review board for the police and enacting a city ordinance against racial profiling), he needs to put pressure on the city--not a yuppie coffee shop.
Well, how about hitting the city where it's vulnerable? Jeffrey should call on Central Area residents to temporarily withhold their Seattle City Light payments. (The cash-strapped utility has had to jack rates approximately 40 percent in the last seven months.) Just one billing cycle without the revenues from residents in the Central Area would cost the city $140,000. Then Jeffrey should dare the city: "Go ahead, turn out the lights in Seattle's historically black neighborhood!"
Strategically speaking, not only will boycotting Seattle City Light send a direct message to the city, but it will put pressure on two important city council members. The vice chair of the energy and technology committee (the committee that oversees Seattle City Light) is Jim Compton. Conveniently, Compton is also the chair of the Public Safety Committee--the city body that oversees the police. Compton is in a position to make demands on the police. Meanwhile, Compton needs to make up some points with the black community, because his racial profiling task force has been sharply criticized by civil rights activists.
Even better, the chair of the energy and technology committee is Heidi Wills. This works for the Seattle City Light boycott in two ways. First, Wills is an absolutely manic workhorse about shoring up the energy-crisis mess. If things are getting screwed up at her pet project--Seattle City Light--she'll turn around and demand that Compton and Schell do something about the boycott. Second, Wills lost some cred in the black community when she failed to provide the swing vote to reform the impound ordinance. In the spotlight again, Wills is likely to support the black community, using her position as energy chair to pressure the city to respond.
Rev. Jeffrey wasn't ready to endorse the City Light boycott idea. "That would be an escalation of where we are right now," he said.
