Financial activism has long been one of the favourite tools for the left to punish Wrongthink. Not that the right is immune, as recent boycott campaigns have shown, but the left have raised the tactic to a dark and dubious art. By the 1980s, vexatious lawfare, particularly by race-activist groups, had reached such a crescendo that a leading economist characterised it as legal bank robbery.
In the age of the internet and Trump Derangement Syndrome, the left have gone nuclear. Groups like Sleeping [Giants] Bullies use hundreds of sock puppet social media accounts to scare corporations into pulling ad revenue from conservatives. Billionaire technocrats try to wipe right-leaning outlets from the face of the internet and destroy their income streams. Leftists, especially on college campuses, also mobilise mobs of ignorant activists to perpetrate violent hecklers’ vetoes.
A small business run by five generations of the Gibson family in an Ohio town has won an historic legal victory in this culture war.
The Jury in the Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College case has reached a verdict.
According to our reporter in the Courtroom, the jury awarded $11 million.
The background to this story is that Gibson’s Bakery and Market in Oberlin, Ohio, was popular with students at the nearby college, with whom it also had supply contracts. On the day after Trump’s election victory, a black male Oberlin student was apprehended for attempting to steal alcohol from Gibson’s. A scuffle followed, joined in by two black female Oberlin students apparently acting in concert with the shoplifter. All eventually pleaded guilty and stated that the bakery did not racially profile.
But students at Oberlin immediately attacked Gibson’s for “racism”. Large protests outside the business followed, abetted by academics and college administration.
The Oberlin College Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo allegedly participated in handing out the flyers in front of the bakery. The Oberlin College Student Senate also passed a resolution claiming Gibson’s “has a long history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment of students and residents alike.” The college administration allegedly helped spread this student senate resolution.
Students started a boycott of the bakery, initially joined in by the college.
The victory for the Gibson family could have far-reaching consequences in the leftist Cultural Revolution engulfing American campuses.
The verdict sends a strong message that colleges and universities cannot simply wind up and set loose student social justice warriors and then wash their hands of the consequences…This case is bigger than just this case, and reflects Higher Ed disconnect from the lives of most Americans.
Others connected with the case see it as a victory against the Long March through the institutions, which has turned American campuses into left-wing indoctrination camps.
Lee Plakas, who handled much of the month-long trial and who gave the closing argument, said this case “is a national tipping point.”
“What the jury saw is that teaching students and having them learn how to be upstanding members of the community is what colleges are supposed to do, not appease some students who they are afraid of,” Plakas said. “People around the country should learn from this, that you can use the legal system to right the wrongs, even if the one doing the wrong is some huge institution who thinks they can do anything they want.”
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