Contact:
Michele Setteducato, 732-614-3818, michele.setteducato@gmail.com
CJ Frogozo, 310-570-2622, christine.frogozo@gmail.com
New York, NY—According to the New York Times, Coca-Cola, a long-time sponsor of the Republican National Convention has declined to match the $660,000 it provided to the 2012 Republican convention, donating only $75,000 back in December to this year’s gathering. The company, which has poured billions of dollars into branding itself as a diverse and inclusive company, found itself embroiled in a very public campaign led by ColorOfChange in partnership with a diverse coalition of netroots, Latino, Jewish, Muslim and women’s rights organizations.
Statement from Rashad Robinson, executive director, ColorOfChange:
We have said from the beginning that this isn’t about left or right, but about right and wrong. Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric, has inflamed a national atmosphere already hostile to Latino, Muslim, and Black communities as well as women and people with disabilities. He has inspired violent attacks on peaceful protesters and journalists and all the while has continued to be given a free pass by much of mainstream media and corporate sponsors. This is not “business as usual” and corporations should not continue to treat it as such.
We are glad that Coca-Cola is choosing to do the right thing, by rethinking what will surely be a international platform for more hate and intolerance. We demand that Coca-Cola and other current sponsors stop the promotion of their products and airing of commercials during the convention, that they agree that they will not make in-kind donations and that they withdraw any initial pledges.
Like Coca-Cola, other companies have a history-making choice in front of them right now. Our questions to them are: are you willing to attach your branding to someone so belligerent that they have threatened riots at the convention? Someone whose campaign manager has no qualms about physically attacking journalists and who has offered to pay the legal fees of anyone who attacks peaceful protesters? The choice should be obvious and it’s disappointing this even has to be debated. We will continue to publicly pressure any company who takes our money by day and still pledges to sponsor hateful, violent rhetoric and policies at night.
Additional Information:
In February, ColorOfChange and a group of advocates sent letters to Coca-Cola Company, Google, Adobe Systems Inc., Xerox Corporation, AT&T Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc. calling on them to cancel their sponsorships of the Republican National Convention if current Republican front-runner Donald Trump is slated to be the nominee. Since then ColorOfChange has collected 124,000 signatures on their campaign.
The campaign has collected 360,000+ total signatures from CREDO, UltraViolet, Care2, SumOfUs and MoveOn.