This week, Starbucks announced they’d be creating a refugee program to hire 10,000 new employees. In most cases a huge company that can expand that much and hire so many new workers (in the U.S.!) would have been celebrated. But because those new employees were going to be refugees fleeing from war, the announcement was met with knee jerk (emphasis on jerk) reactions from ultra-conservatives. #BoycottStarbucks was born almost immediately calling for Starbucks to hire 10,000 U.S. military veterans instead.
https://twitter.com/SouthLoneStar/status/826512175741149184
A noble idea even if it is rooted in racism, jingoism, xenophobia, fear, Skittles. In fact, it’s so noble that Starbucks already did it! The company set out in November of 2013 to start hiring veteran’s and military spouses as the US military involvement overseas declined rapidly. As of now, they’ve hired 8,800 veterans and spouses and are on track to hire 10,000 well before their intended 2018 goal.
A collective of military veterans released a letter through Starbuck’s Armed Forces Network in which they asserted that the brand is a staunch supporter of US veterans and their families. (A statement which is backed up by measurable facts.)
The letter lauds CEO Howard Schultz’s hands on work with veterans and goes on to point out that using veterans as a straw man against refugees is flat out wrong.
We respect honest debate and the freedom of expression. Many of us served to protect that very right. Some of our brothers and sisters died protecting it. But to those who would suggest Starbucks is not committed to hiring veterans, we are here to say: check your facts, Starbucks is already there.
Whether the words of actual US military veterans will have an impact on Trump’s acolytes is hard to say — while writing this paragraph there were 30 new tweets calling to boycott Starbucks. For real. And given the Trump movement’s dismissal of military veterans, it’s not a stretch to guess they won’t care.
https://twitter.com/MAGAUSA1/status/827544576416100352
If you want to go down a very racist rabbit hole, you can scroll through the boycott twitter thread. But maybe don’t.
(Via Starbucks)
