Sooo, that angry open letter to Chrysler Financial that I posted the other day? I sent it. Barring a few minor changes from the blog version I posted, I slapped the whole thing in an email and sent it. I’m a little surprised that I did that – I do my fair share of bitching to the intertubes but it’s pretty rare for me to bite the bullet and actually attack those evildoers.

But like I said in that post, the world needs righting.

There are a lot of people here in St. Louis that have vowed to boycott Anheuser-Busch products since the InBev buyout. They are protesting the layoffs, the end of the charitable contributions, and the end of the local economic supports that have always defined A-B’s presence in St. Louis. InBev does not love this city and really has no reason to be loyal to St. Louisans like the August Busch family did. None of these things matter to them, but they still matter to St. Louisans and we feel maligned by the company we have supported for four generations – hence the boycott.

“Does A-B know WHY you’re boycotting them?” I asked Tim the other day. I always thought he’d be cremated and his ashes kept in a Budweiser bottle, that’s how much the boy loves his Anheuser-Busch. He was drinking a Hefeweisen from Schlafly, our other hometown brewery.

“Same reason everyone is. The layoffs, the way they’re blowing off everything the company stands for, all that.”

“But if you boycott them, won’t they lose money and lay off more workers in St. Louis?”

“A valid point,” chimed in a friend between sips of Schlafly Pale Ale. “But we WANT their business to suffer because of what they’re doing… so what else can you do but stop giving them your money?”

“I just think maybe if InBev knew – formally, something official – why people are boycotting them, then they’d see what they have to change to get business back. They couldn’t just blame it on the economy or whatever, they’d have proof of an organized boycott against specific things. And not just the big ones by the unions and the bars who won’t serve their products anymore – they should know that even the regular St. Louis people are doing this.”

Tim nodded. “I guess. Maybe.”

“Write a letter,” I commanded.

I don’t know if he will. E and I are still drinking Bud Light – maybe we’re not so principled about the charitable contributions and stuff, but we do want to keep the jobs in St. Louis and InBev has already proven that they will cut jobs without mercy when they come up five dollars short on anything. But if it gets bad enough that I too choose to boycott them, the newly-empowered me will definitely write a letter. They should know why we’re mad. We can’t let them make up their own reasons and ignore the real ones that their consumers want fixed.

So I’m on a bit of a letter-writing kick. I did the one for Chrysler and one the other day about CPSIA, inspired by Jamie’s post on Oh! How Lovely! Shops. The CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Inspection Act) is a well-intentioned but poorly-constructed bit of legislature that has the potential to destroy the market for handmade and secondhand goods for children, from Etsy shops to the Salvation Army. Click on the link above to read Jamie’s post and learn more. It took me only a few minutes to write a letter to my congressman.

Chrysler Financial emailed me a form letter in response to my customer service rant. Maybe they didn’t even read it; maybe they laughed, printed it, and hung it on the fridge in the employee lunchroom. Actually, I’d kind of like it if they did do that. It would mean that someone paid a small bit of attention, even if it was only long enough to scrawl “bitch” across it in red Sharpie.

I could have done that letter a bit more professionally and with a little less mimicry and sarcasm, I suppose. I was very polite in my CPSIA letter and will try not to write my letters in a fit of pique anymore. But I will write them.

Change will never come unless we let those in power know what we want and why.