Pressure Campaigns: How Boycotts and Direct Action Are Challenging Corporate Power

At the 2026 Left Coast Forum, organizers behind the Home Depot, Hilton, Spotify, Citizens Bank, and Hollywood boycott campaigns shared how economic pressure, coalition building, and strategic disruption can force powerful institutions to respond.

• Guest Author

What happens when activists stop asking corporations to do the right thing and start making it expensive for them to do the wrong thing?

That question was at the heart of “Pressure Campaigns: The Power of Boycotts and Direct Action,” a panel at the fourth annual Left Coast Forum, held October 2–4, 2026, at Cal State Los Angeles.

Moderated by MaryLinda Moss, artist, activist, and founding member of NELA Alliance for Democracy, the discussion brought together Miriam Arghandiwal, an organizer with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition and Entertainment Labor for Palestine; Chris Abrahamsen, co-founder of Grassroots Activist International Association and regional director of ICEBreakers; and Robby Kumar, a former investment banker and congressional staffer working with De-ICE Citizens Bank and No Camps California.

Their campaigns target different industries, but share a central premise: Corporations respond to financial incentives, public scrutiny, and the possibility of losing customers, investors, and business relationships.

The panelists described how ordinary people can use those vulnerabilities to challenge institutions with vastly greater financial and political resources.

Home Depot: When the Workplace Becomes an ICE Target

Arghandiwal described the Boycott Home Depot Coalition’s campaign against the retailer over immigration enforcement raids targeting day laborers in its parking lots.

The boycott, initiated by Unión del Barrio, calls on Home Depot to publicly condemn ICE operations, prevent immigration enforcement activities on its properties where legally possible, provide safe hiring areas for day laborers, compensate affected families, and remove surveillance equipment and devices intended to discourage people from gathering.

Arghandiwal said organizers have documented more than 700 people taken into custody in connection with Home Depot locations across Southern California.

But she emphasized that pressure campaigns must protect the very people they are intended to support.

Demonstrations at stores where day laborers gather can inadvertently attract additional law enforcement, putting vulnerable workers at greater risk.

The coalition therefore developed guidelines requiring organizers to consult day laborers before staging protests and, when appropriate, conduct demonstrations at locations or times that minimize those risks.

The campaign has also pursued divestment. Arghandiwal reported that organizers helped secure the withdrawal of $20 million in Illinois investment funds from Home Depot and a smaller divestment commitment in West Hollywood.

These actions illustrate how consumer boycotts can extend into public investment decisions, increasing pressure beyond individual purchasing choices.

Hollywood: Boycotts as Cultural Resistance

Arghandiwal also discussed Entertainment Labor for Palestine, which organizes in support of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Unlike conventional consumer campaigns, Hollywood pressure campaigns often focus on cultural influence, public reputation, and accountability within the entertainment industry.

Organizers have demonstrated at the Academy Awards, protested film premieres, and challenged entertainment companies over their treatment of artists who publicly support Palestinian rights.

Arghandiwal cited protests surrounding Scream 7, following the firing of actress Melissa Barrera over social media statements concerning Gaza.

She described efforts to sustain public attention throughout the film’s promotional campaign, including demonstrations at its premiere.

Entertainment Labor for Palestine also participated in protests surrounding Disney productions, including Captain America: Brave New World and Snow White.

For Arghandiwal, success is not measured exclusively in immediate box-office losses.

Changing what studios, executives, and performers consider reputationally acceptable can influence future decisions even when the financial consequences are difficult to calculate.

Her broader argument was that sustained public resistance can make controversial corporate decisions harder to normalize.

Spotify: Eleven Weeks of Pressure

Chris Abrahamsen offered one of the panel’s clearest examples of a campaign with a specific corporate demand and a reported measurable outcome.

When Spotify began running ICE recruitment advertisements, organizers quickly mobilized demonstrations demanding that the streaming platform stop carrying them.

Abrahamsen described a campaign involving weekly protests outside Spotify offices, extensive outreach to musicians, and highly visible demonstrations using washable simulated blood to symbolize the suffering organizers associated with immigration enforcement.

The coalition also encouraged consumers to switch to competing streaming services.

An important part of the strategy involved what Abrahamsen called tertiary targets: influential people or organizations capable of pressuring the corporation even when its executives refused to engage directly.

In Spotify’s case, those targets included musicians whose participation was essential to the platform’s business.

After approximately 11 weeks, Spotify stopped running the advertisements.

Abrahamsen attributed the outcome to sustained organizing, although he acknowledged that Spotify did not publicly credit the protests for its decision.

He estimated that the advertising contract was worth approximately $78,000, compared with roughly $2,000 in campaign materials.

For the organizers, the episode demonstrated the potential leverage of a relatively small, coordinated campaign.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6SKYpS7z9s4?enablejsapi=1

Hilton: Making Corporate Contracts Costly

Following the Spotify campaign, Abrahamsen’s organizing network turned its attention to Hilton hotels over accommodations provided to immigration enforcement personnel.

The campaign demands that Hilton refuse room bookings paid for with government purchasing cards associated with ICE or the Department of Homeland Security and disclose the financial extent of those arrangements.

Organizers have staged repeated demonstrations at Hilton properties, including actions inside hotel lobbies.

Unlike Spotify, where customers could easily switch streaming platforms, Hilton presents a more complicated target involving individual properties, hotel management, and government purchasing arrangements.

Abrahamsen argued that demonstrations generate costs beyond the immediate disruption: additional security, staffing, management attention, and the potential loss of customers.

He stressed the importance of choosing campaigns with achievable demands and maintaining pressure until those demands are addressed.

The strategic calculation, as he described it, is whether organizers can make continued corporate participation in a disputed activity more expensive than withdrawing from it.

Citizens Bank: Following the Institutional Money

Robby Kumar brought a different perspective to the discussion.

Drawing on his background in investment banking, he explained why targeting individual customers is only one way to pressure financial institutions.

De-ICE Citizens Bank has challenged Citizens Bank over its financial relationships with private prison corporations GEO Group and CoreCivic.

While activists initially concentrated on convincing individual customers to withdraw deposits and close accounts, Kumar encouraged a focus on municipal governments and other institutional banking customers.

The potential financial impact was substantially greater.

According to Kumar, Jersey City approved withdrawing approximately $265 million from Citizens Bank, while Montclair, New Jersey, moved to withdraw another $91 million.

He also cautioned against prematurely declaring victory.

When Citizens Bank announced that it would discontinue certain lending facilities involving the private prison companies, some organizers considered the campaign successful.

Kumar disagreed with treating that announcement as a complete break.

He argued that changes in the companies’ financing needs, following federal purchases of detention facilities, complicated the significance of the bank’s decision. Citizens Bank had not necessarily ended every financial relationship with the companies.

His lesson was important: A campaign must define success precisely enough to distinguish a substantive corporate change from a public-relations announcement.

Building Coalitions Without Endangering Communities

Throughout the discussion, speakers returned to the importance of organizing across movements.

The campaigns against immigration enforcement, corporate financing, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians frequently intersect through shared institutions, contractors, and financial relationships.

But coalition building requires judgment.

Arghandiwal emphasized that confrontational demonstrations may be inappropriate when they expose day laborers or undocumented communities to additional danger.

Abrahamsen similarly explained that disruptive action groups sometimes need to operate separately from organizations providing direct services to vulnerable immigrants.

Cooperation does not require identical tactics.

Instead, effective coalitions can share research, coordinate messaging, identify financial pressure points, and support one another while respecting the different risks facing their members.

Turning Outrage Into Organized Power

The panel concluded with practical lessons about strategy.

Successful pressure campaigns, the speakers suggested, begin by identifying who makes the decisions, what those decision-makers value, which relationships give others leverage over them, and what specific concessions would constitute a victory.

They also require persistence, creativity, public visibility, and a willingness to adapt.

The discussion demonstrated that economic resistance is not limited to refusing purchases. It can involve persuading municipalities to move millions in public deposits, pressuring artists to challenge streaming platforms, demanding accountability from entertainment companies, or organizing customers around corporate contracts.

The larger lesson of the Left Coast Forum panel was that power does not reside exclusively in corporate boardrooms or government offices.

Consumers, workers, artists, investors, and communities also exercise economic power.

The challenge is to organize that power collectively, strategically, and long enough to make a difference.

The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.