No Strength Of Conviction

If you're going to boycott someplace (say, California for passing Prop 8, or Arizona for passing SB 1070), then do so. You look like a wuss if you just say you're going to boycott, then don't--kind of like the Baldwin who said he'd move to London if President Bush were reelected in 2004, then didn't.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday granted itself an exemption to the city’s boycott of Arizona to keep a red light photo enforcement program operating. The program generates about $3.6 million in annual ticket revenue for the city. The day before, Oakland voted to approve a $1 million contract with a multinational advertising company with corporate offices in Phoenix.

San Jose, which has several contracts with Arizona companies cited potential economic harm in stopping short of a full boycott, voting instead for an official denunciation of SB 1070. The Arizona law allows police officers to question anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, and makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally...

Kyser notes that a Los Angeles Police Department plan to send officers to Arizona for special terrorism training "was canceled due to the boycott,” but other actions have gone under the radar.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power awarded a contract for electric vehicle charging stations to a company in Arizona, Kyser says, “but nobody caught that"...

Others have gone scrambling to parse legal definitions – such as the difference between “corporate offices” and “corporate headquarters” – to rationalize which companies are subject to the intent of the boycott.