Amazon Arrogantly Ignores ALEC Boycott While Funding Voter Suppression

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 01:44 pm

ColorofChange has called on Amazon.com to join 13 other companies in dumping ALEC, but so far the Internet giant has ignored the boycott and continued to fund voter suppression.

According to ColorofChange,

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By funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Amazon is supporting an effort to disenfranchise African Americans, Latinos, students, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. We wrote Amazon to let them know that more than 85,000 ColorOfChange members have asked that they disassociate themselves from ALEC. We made sure Amazon knew that through their membership in ALEC, they supported racially-discriminatory voter ID laws that have the potential to disenfranchise over 5 million people in the upcoming elections.

After hearing that information, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Kraft Foods decided to end their relationship with ALEC. But despite numerous emails and telephone calls, we can’t get Amazon’s management to get back in touch with us. It appears they believe that if they ignore us we’ll simply go away.

Amazon is making the same mistake that Procter & Gamble made. P & G thought that they could ignore the boycott. They even went as far as to publicly support ALEC when the boycott started, but less than three weeks later P & G reversed their position and announced they would no longer be involved with ALEC. Amazon has chosen a different path. They like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox News before them believe that they are too big to be effectively boycotted.

Amazon.com has traditionally spent more money on technology than marketing, but all of that money spent on their website will mean nothing once customers realize that every purchase they make goes towards disenfranchising voters. Amazon just doesn’t get it. No company or individual is too big to be boycotted. Maybe Amazon is going to try to parse their way out of this and claim that they don’t support ALEC’s political activities, but the fact remains that any company who financially supports ALEC is funding an extremist right wing agenda that is an assault on our basic democratic rights.

Americans know who ALEC is now. They know what ALEC represents, and what Amazon needs to understand is that no amount of free two day shipping is going to make up the funding of voter suppression activities. The Internet retail giant needs to show America that they don’t support voter suppression by announcing immediately that they are dumping ALEC.

If they won’t listen on their own, then they need to be made to listen.

You can make your voice heard by clicking here.



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