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Why I Ain't About to Boycott Whole Foods

I, for one, am not going to boycott Whole Foods. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
By 

Founder of elephantjournal.com

Founder of elephantjournal.com
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For years, John Mackey, the libertarian founder of Whole Foods (who I've met and talked with a few times) has--luckily for Whole Foods's PR squad--kept his right-of-the-right views more or less under the radar.

Then, a week or so back, he posted a slam of universal healthcare coverage in the Wall Street Journal (a venerable paper that's right-of-center-in-a-mostly-good-way, as opposed to the shrill Fox or leftist MSNBC, both of which treat politics like sports instead of stuff that actually matters). John Mackey's article, which read right out of the Republican playbook, began with a quote of no less than Margaret Thatcher -- never exactly a friend to the People.

Enter Sh*t Storm

Now, suddenly,
everyone and their mother
has called for a boycott of Mr. Mackey's Whole Foods. There's a Facebook group with thousands of members. There's been so much negative traffic and "I will
boycott Whole Foods
" messages on Twitter, Whole Foods hasn't even
tried
to put out the
fires
as they have with past controversies (such as his taken-out-of-context comment, only last week, that
Whole Foods
"sells lots of junk"; or his infamous commenting on his own blog and
anonymous tirades against Wild Oats, which he was trying to buy out, and later did
). There's been so many complaints from Whole Foods largely green-minded customers--the very ones who've made John rich (one of his homes is in Boulder, just two blocks from where I write this)--that yesterday they temporarily shut down the
comments forum page
on
Whole Foods
(not very democratic of 'em, hey?)
But I, for one, am not going to
boycott Whole Foods
. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why?
  1. Whole Foods is a vast organization, with thousands of staff, many if not most of whom disagree with John's idealistic, superior Libertarian views. We live in a democracy, with a lowercase "D." We don't have to hate those we disagree with--we just have to beat them at the polls, and in the halls of Congress.
  2. John doesn't own Whole Foods. It's public.
  3. Whole Foods, thanks to his leadership, has shown the way for thousands of green-minded companies. He and WFM have shown Wall Street that green can make green. For that, I am grateful--there is a reservoir of gratitude that will not be easily overcome by his anti-union views, by Whole Foods never having supported elephant over seven years even as I see them advertise in countless less-than-green publications and forums.
So we can agree to disagree, for now. Of course, if we
fail to pass healthcare reform
because we just can't give a care to fix
an inefficient stystem that's also painfully unfair and bad for America's economy
, I'll be mad as hell and I'll look for somewhere to place the blame, and I'll look for
somewhere else to spend my hard-earned conscious consumer dollars.

In the meantime, I got Obama's back. Do you, Whole Foods nation? If Mackey's ill-advised screed motivates us to get off the couch and get active, 40 million uninsured Americans may owe him one.

Bonus, don't make us Mad as Hell, Congress:

Waylon Lewis is the founder of elephantjournal.com

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