This might only make sense in the US where we have only two serious political parties: Republicans and Democrats
Generally, the symbol of the Republicans is red elephant, the symbol of the Democrats is a blue donkey, but you can imagine other simple icons that represent your local political parties in whatever country you may be in.
In the US, it is possible for corporations to make large cash donations to these parties. Often they give to both parties, deliberately to cause confusion, but they tend to give more to one party than they do to the other. Some people compile lists showing which companies are "Red" or "Blue."
I propose a guerrilla boycotting/buying campaign.
First: print small stickers with the logos of the party you do not like. Next affix these very small stickers near the door knob of the local branches of such corporations in your area. Now you and those who pay attention to your web site (which offers templates for printing stickers and a mapping application to make the work go faster) will know as they enter an establishment of it is red or blue.
It would be even better if the stickers could show a number (1-10) indicating the relative strength of support.
Better yet, to avoid the potential arrest that could result from stickers, and the potential for meddling by rouge sticker users. Create a PDA application with a simple look-up function.
Or perhaps banks could offer a service where they analyze your purchase for the month in your bank statement and indicate the degree of redness or blueness of your purchases. This would give people feedback on how well their boycotting/and selective buying was working. Or this could be an application that you download, and then feed the raw data form your electronic bank statement.
If corporations are going to buy in to our political system maybe we can fight back with smart capitalism.
I doubt many people would bother, but those who did could feel good about it at least.-- futurebird, Jan 26 2008 neat idea - in theory. boner.-- erlehmann, Jan 26 2008 Why do you think that only // rouge sticker users // have the potential for meddling? Wouldn't the azure sticker users meddle, too?-- lurch, Jan 26 2008 I'd like to take this one step further and have it mandated by government that every business premises which (in the previous ten years) has made such a donation display a large and detailed sticker prominently outside their premises, a link to a detailed notice on their website, and a party logo on their stationary.
It would put to shame many of those businesses who donate money to further their own interests to the disadvantage of the general population (and certainly that is the purpose of most donations).-- vincevincevince, Jan 26 2008 //two serious political parties\\ made me laugh.-- zeno, Jan 26 2008 "Generally, the symbol of the Republicans is red elephant, the symbol of the Democrats is a blue donkey..." That's artificial and only since the last round of elections or so. One of the national channels (probably CNN) happened to use those colors to differentiate which party was winning which state, then began referring to them as "red states" and "blue states".
I like the idea, though.-- phoenix, Jan 26 2008 random, halfbakery