Wisconsin Senator Taylor Urges Boycott of Wisconsin Products Could impact thousands of workers

MacIver News Service | September 14, 2011

[Milwaukee, Wisconsin] Democratic State Senator Lena Taylor (Milwaukee) posted an online plea on Tuesday for a boycott of several consumer products manufactured and distributed within Wisconsin.

“Money talks! Why shouldn’t you buy the following: Dixie Cups, Vanity Fair Paper Products, Mardi Gras Napkins, Brawny and Sparkle Paper Towels, Angel Soft and Quilted Northern Toilet Paper…” Taylor wrote on her facebook page. “Your purchase supports destruction of democracy, two words…Koch Brothers. Join the boycott, send this to all of your Facebook Friends.”

Taylor’s ire is directed at products produced by Georgia Pacific.

According to the company’s website, Georgia-Pacific (GP) employs about 2,300 people in Green Bay. Approximately 1,800 employees work at one of four manufacturing facilities and produce and distribute an array of commercial and retail brands of bath tissue, napkins, towels and other paper products.

The Senator’s boycott campaign could have far-reaching impact. Taylor has more than 7,500 friends on the popular social networking site and many of her online friends piled on with supportive comments to her post.

One wrote: “copy and paste this and keep it in your purse. Also remeber georgia pacific…. Watch some of the off brands, dont buy if they are distributed by georgia pacific. copy and paste this and keep it in your purse. Also remeber georgia pacific…. Watch some of the off brands, dont buy if they are distributed by georgia pacific.”

Another submitted this missive: “Find 800-numbers for customer feedback and give them a call to tell them why you’re unhappy with the company and taking the trouble to identify and avoid their products.”

Georgia Pacific traces their roots to the Fort Howard Paper Company which was founded in Green Bay in 1919 by Austin E. Cofrin.  Since 2005 the company has been owned by Koch Industries.

In March 2010 the environmental activist organization Greenpeace released a report titled “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine” in which they concluded, “Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.”

Throughout this year’s liberal protests in Madison surrounding changes in Wisconsin’s public employee labor law Koch Industries has been a target of left-wing ire. The company employs 50,000 people in the United States and is primarily owned by brothers Charles and David Kochs, well-known philanthropists whose conservative ideology and support of conservative causes and political figures is anathema to the American Left.

Senator Taylor’s targeting of this Wisconsin-based companies is merely the latest example of the Left’s hatred of all things Koch.

“I posted comments regarding products that are associated with companies owned by the Koch Brothers in which I encouraged citizens to vote with their dollars to support or not support those companies,” Taylor wrote on facebook today as a follow-up to her earlier post. “Some would prefer to believe that I would like to see WI companies go out of business. Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to see citizens decide which company should get their dollars: those that financially support the policies and people of the current majority or those that don’t.”

Indeed, not everyone who posted on her facebook site supported the Senator’s boycott.

“Yes! Boycott Wisconsin made products and the people that work for these companies… Lena, do you even take the time to think before you open your mouth & make a statement like this?” read one comment.

Another noted the irony that Taylor’s comments would hurt unionize workers.

“Whats funnier than the fact this Lena Taylor wants you to boycott Georgia Pacific is the fact that she is promoting the loss of WISCONSIN jobs. Does anybody here care about that fact? Or here’s one better. Lena Taylor is promoting the loss of UNION JOBS. As a Union Millwright, I work at GP at least once a year doing maintenance on their machinery. So thank Ms Taylor, for helping me lose income for part of the year. Thanks, you’re really supporting the “little guy” here in Wisconsin.”

Earlier this year, the MacIver News Service reported on Public sector unions and their allies who organized boycotts against Wisconsin businesses that can be associated in anyway with Scott Walker. At the time, we reported the boycotts could impact the jobs of at least 95,000 Wisconsinites.

See our earlier report, here.