Starbucks caved to “homophobe-admiring activists” by demoting the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, from leading anti-bias training sessions, Jewish progressive group Zioness claimed Tuesday.
Starbucks originally tapped ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to help lead the training sessions after two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia, Pa., Starbucks. Other groups including the NAACP were also asked to help lead the training sessions, which will occur May 29.
Starbucks demoted Greenblatt from leading the sessions after Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour called for a boycott of Starbucks over the ADL leader’s inclusion. The Jewish group confirmed to Politico on Monday they will no longer have a role in drafting the curriculum for Starbucks’ anti-bias sessions.
Greenblatt had previously criticized Mallory and Sarsour in February for supporting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious racist and anti-Semite.
“What a painful irony that, in their attempt to combat racial stereotyping, Starbucks has given in to purveyors of other hatreds,” Zioness said in a statement released on Tuesday. “Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour have no authority lecturing anyone — especially one of America’s largest and most influential corporations — on bigotry.”
“Their longstanding adoration of Louis Farrakhan (who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an unabashed anti-Semite and who preaches hate against the LGBTQ community) should disqualify them from directing any national discourse on discrimination,” the Zioness statement continued.
“As inclusive progressives committed to civil rights and social justice for all people, we are alarmed that the decision-making of a corporate and community leader like Starbucks could be influenced by homophobe-admiring activists who traffic in the worst kinds of anti-Semitic imagery.”
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