Protesters rallied outside a Starbucks in Seattle to demand the company stops funding the police while chanting “we ain’t shopping at Starbucks no more.
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The anti-police protest occurred at Seattle’s Pike Place Market where the original Starbucks store is located.
Wielding a banner that read ‘abolish police,’ a large crowd of protesters marched down the public market and stopped at several locations before reaching their final destination – The Starbucks store that opened back in 1971.
During the protest, the demonstrators demanded that Starbucks abolishes the funding for the Seattle Police Department.
“We are here because we need to cut off all ties with Starbucks and SPD, period. The importance of the boycott is to make disruptions just like any Black Lives Matter march…” one of the speakers said in an interview with South Seattle Emerald.
“It’s to let them know that we can come with the facts and we can tell them specifically what they’re doing to affect the movement of Black Lives Matter.”
Explaining the link between Starbucks and the city’s police federation, the company’s representative told DailyMail.com that they “provided funding to support the SPD with Implicit Bias training and their 2019 Banquet gala” back in 2019.
“We previously had a partner on the [police department] board who is no longer with Starbucks and as of today we have no one representing Starbucks on the Seattle Police Foundation Board,” the representative told DailyMail.com.
Meanwhile, with ‘wokeness’ in the full drive across the States, Starbucks has joined several big companies in boycotting Facebook by suspending their advertising on the platform in an attempt to encourage the crackdown on hate speech that takes place online.
While the company has been publicly trying to curve hate speech, some in their ranks, too, haven’t been spared criticism for their actions.
Just earlier this month, a Target Starbucks employee was accused of writing ‘ISIS’ in the place of the name of a 19-year-old Muslim girl who was wearing a hijab while ordering a drink.
According to the teenager, Aishah, she had ordered a drink at a Target Starbucks in St. Paul, Minnesota, before receiving a cup with ‘ISIS’ written on it.
“When I first received the drink I was in shock that in this day and age something like this could be written,” she said.
Following the incident, Starbucks passed on the responsibility to Target saying they weren’t responsible for the hiring of staff at Target Starbucks.
Replaced!