Boycotts hurt more than the high-profile offenders

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/02/2020 (2072 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALLEGATIONS of sexual misconduct by Jean Vanier and Peter Nygard will prompt some people to show their revulsion by taking action against the empires built by the two men.

They may protest with their wallets. As consumers with a conscience, they make a habit of evaluating the many companies and groups vying for their dollars. They support organizations that are fair and just. They don’t support sexual predators.

After allegations that Nygard ran a sex-trafficking ring, some people will be tempted to boycott Nygard and buy other brands of clothing.

After reports Vanier sexually abused at least six women, some people will be inclined to halt their support for the Vanier-founded L’Arche network of homes where people with and without intellectual disabilities live together.

But such impetuous reactions, although understandable, could hurt the wrong people.

Before I suggest why we shouldn’t boycott Nygard clothing and why we shouldn’t stop supporting L’Arche, I want to stress Nygard and Vanier don’t warrant the same level of admiration in my books. One of them is among my heroes, and it’s not the one who posted vanity billboards of himself around Winnipeg.

Nygard, by all appearances, is a megalomaniac whose headquarters on Inkster Boulevard displays a self-congratulatory decal that states he is “a founder, visionary, coach, architect, leader, designer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, mogul, champion, mentor, strategist, advocate, father, brother, intellectual, challenger, son, innovator, builder, generous, logistical, genius.”

Contrast that apparent self-adoration with the insight of Vanier, who once said: “I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”

The retail reaction to Nygard’s charges has already started, with one firm, the Arkansas-based luxury department-store chain Dillard’s, announcing Tuesday it will stop selling Nygard products. Nygard-produced clothing is currently sold in chains including Costco and Walmart, and such stores are highly sensitive to consumer wishes.

But before people protest, they might ask: who gets hurt if we all stop buying Nygard clothing?

It wouldn’t hurt Nygard. He’s largely out of reach of the fortunes of his former company, from which he resigned as chairman this week. Also, at 78 years old, and with a net worth of $900 million, he’s beyond the point where his personal finances are endangered if some consumers stop buying his company’s dresses.

He’s likely more concerned about whether his self-mythologized rise from a shack in Deloraine, Manitoba, to worldwide fashion playboy will end with a jail sentence and a sex-offender label.

The people who would be hurt by a boycott of Nygard products would be the firm’s 12,000 employees, including the ones who design, produce, ship and sell the clothing at about 200 stores throughout North America.

To be clear, the vast majority of Nygard’s employees were not invited aboard one of Nygard’s private jets to vacation at his estate in the Bahamas. Many Nygard employees work for modest wages and are supporting families. They will lose their jobs if Nygard’s sex scandal tarnishes the brand to the point that people stop buying.

Like Nygard, Vanier is also out of reach of public protest. He died in 2019, long before L’Arche International reported last week the results of an independent inquiry that he had “manipulative sexual relationships” with women who worked with him. None of the victims had intellectual disabilities.

The revelations disturbed many of us who had high regard for Vanier as a humanitarian and wise spiritual leader, but it’s important to separate L’Arche from the man who founded L’Arche.

Inside L’Arche homes, residents who are developmentally disabled live as equal partners with their assistants. What makes L’Arche so remarkable is that it’s not a shelter staffed by workers who leave when their shifts are finished. It’s about everyone in the homes living together full time, on an equal footing. They work together, laugh together and eat together.

The experience of the 153 L’Arche communities on five continents — in Winnipeg, L’Arche has six houses and two apartments — is that the able-bodied assistants benefit considerably from living in community with their unusual housemates. The assistants repeatedly say they were profoundly changed by the relationships, discovering joy, unconditional love and fresh eyes to see the beauty of each person, including those on the margins of society.

As Vanier put it in Becoming Human, the best-selling of 30 books he wrote, “Being open and vulnerable to them in order to receive the life that they can offer; it is to become their friends. If we start to include the disadvantaged in our lives and enter into heartfelt relationships with them, they will change things in us… They will then start to affect our human organizations, revealing new ways of being and walking together.”

It’s hoped that, despite Vanier’s fall from grace, Winnipeggers will continue their financial and volunteer support of the laudable L’Arche way of life.

Even better, meet some real-life L’Arche residents by dropping by for a meal at the L’Arche Tova Cafe, 119 Regent Ave. W., in Transcona.

Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board.

carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca