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The hat was solid gray when I bought it, but now it’s faded and stained, especially on the brim where a sweat line separates light from dark. It smells of pesticides, fish, and gasoline. Yet the Tractor Supply Company (TSC) logo shines red and white, emblazoned with the corporate logo “For life out here” in red letters.
I don’t wear it much in the winter because it’s not suitable for indoor use, but as soon as the thaw begins and I start putting my old aluminum boats back in the water, when I start clearing the brush, when my physical labor signals the turn of the season, this is the hat I wear. Partly because I really want a comfortable hat when I’m working outdoors, but it’s also a symbol for something to me. Spring is here. Time to clean up. Burn. Sew. Repair. Launch. Fish.
The hat has a history. Before that, I wore an old green Red Sox hat when I went out to work or play. But one day, I caught a huge walleye from the bottom of the St. Croix River and it got so covered in fish snot that I made the terrible mistake of trying to wash my hat and it fell apart. The TSC hat took its place. I was wearing it when I caught the biggest walleye of my life in May.
On Thursday, I took off my hat and threw it in the trash after reading something on the internet.
That’s because the company has bowed to a right-wing boycott campaign — which it says is an effort to distance itself from “non-commercial activities” — and announced that it will abandon programs aimed at promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion (presumably in favor of homogeneity, inequality, and exclusion?). In a press release issued Thursday, TSC said it will stop sponsoring events like “pride festivals and voting campaigns” (not voting). for (everyone, just voting) and “let’s roll back our carbon emissions targets and focus on our land and water conservation efforts.” The company also said it would eliminate DEI roles and “retire existing DEI targets while ensuring a respectful environment.”
Predictably, conservatives are celebrating and now it is the liberals who are calling for a boycott.
It’s possible that TSC calculated that it couldn’t please everyone, that most of its customers were White conservatives or sympathetic to that viewpoint – and so to hell with the rest of us. But I was a loyal customer. When my pressure well tank had a pinhole leak, I went straight to the store in Spooner, Wisconsin. I pulled my boat with a 1 7/8-inch ball joint from there, and when I had a flat tire while returning from a lake, I bought an extra-long jack and a trailer tire. I bought marine varnish for the transom there. This holiday weekend (I’m spending the week in the woods) I see products all around me that I bought from a store that loudly tells me it doesn’t see me as a valued customer. Message received.
But the company is wrong on two counts. First, by assuming that the bigots threatening boycotts represent rural America. The farms may be owned by white conservatives, but the people doing the work are people of color — many are Latino, but you’ll find a growing number of Somali and Hmong farmers in Minnesota — (and they’re increasingly organizing to get their own land). John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told the Washington Post that Tractor Supply “sends the wrong message to America.”
Failed Tennessee politician Robby Starbuck is not a farmer; he ran (unsuccessfully) to represent a primarily urban congressional district. I should know that. I grew up in that very area.
Second, combating climate change should not be a partisan issue. While much of the country is struggling with extreme temperatures, that is not the case in our area. While years of drought have made waters warmer and shallower, which is not good for our fish up north, this year the drought has been replaced by cool weather, relentless rain, and terrible flooding. The fish on St. Croix may be happy today, but the river is too dangerous for me to know. Fishing is essential to my happiness, but it is at least a hobby. A drought or a period of sustained rain spells disaster for farmers. It will be a disaster for the companies that serve them, in the real world instead of on right-wing social media.
My hat is long gone. Once a company makes a decision like this, it’s hard to imagine going back. I threw in a bag of cat litter and some frozen fish guts and tossed it on the sidewalk. It was gone. But let this be a lesson to the next company that faces one of these campaigns (and right-wing influencers are already preparing for the next one): You don’t have to comply. Tractor Supply Company could affirm that it supports anyone trying to “live here” while making sure that “life out there” still exists as it tries to pull back from an era of fire and flood.
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