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Past Campaigns

Tell AmazonSmile: Stop Outsourcing Your Dirty Work to a Problematic Organization

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Amazon has a program called AmazonSmile that lets shoppers direct .5% of their purchases to charity. While this is generally admirable, the way Amazon decides which charities can participate is extremely problematic. We hope you’ll join us in calling on program director Sachin Shah to fix it!  Besides basic qualifications like being an IRS–registered non-profit in good standing, AmazonSmile has one condition for inclusion: the organization must not be on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate map.”  The Arbiter of Hate The SPLC has an admirable history of fighting unambiguously bigoted groups like the KKK, and they are the only well-established group that even offers a blacklist of “hateful” organizations. However, they are also a poor choice as the sole non-government arbiter of who is and isn’t too problematic for Amazon due to serious outstanding questions about the organization’s ideological biases and moral authority.   The SPLC has a habit of looking through an  ideological lens  that leads it to be harsher on those on the other side of the political spectrum. In 2017, charity database GuideStar adopted and then quickly abandoned the SPLC’s hate classification,  saying they themselves  were driven by their  “commitment to objectivity” and that they had received many reasonable concerns about the SPLC’s list.   Recent reports  from  SPLC  employees about sexist and racist treatment within the organization caused a serious shakeup at the top, including the ousting of co-founder Morris Dees. As this unfolded, SPLC staffers have raised flags that they were still broadly concerned with “widespread pattern of racial and gender discrimination by the center’s current leadership, stretching back many years.”   The SPLC  also has a troubling history of leveraging lawsuits that net thousands for their clients to raise millions for itself. The organization has stashed some of those millions in Cayman Islands bank accounts – curious behavior for a “poverty” non-profit. Former SPLC employee Bob Moser  relayed an anecdote in The New Yorker that staffers used to parody a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote etched an SPLC wall from “Until justice rolls down like waters” into “Until justice rolls down like dollars.”   Questionable Choices Furthermore, by relying on the SPLC,  AmazonSmile lets organizations through that don’t register on the SPLC’s list but have a history of questionable actions. Some have already complained about right-wing sting group Project Veritas’s inclusion in the program. Two groups commemorating the Black Panther Party are included. And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), famous for dousing people in fake blood and creating a  video game where players beat up researchers, can also receive donations.    Time For Change Amazon is a private company and can choose to donate as it pleases, but the use of the SPLC by AmazonSmile poisons the good intentions behind the program and contributes to our nation’s bitterness by signaling to your customers that charity should be informed by the opinion of a singular institution of highly questionable standing.   Join us in calling on AmazonSmile Director Sachin Shah and his team to stop relying on the SPLC, establish their own criteria, and apply it evenly without ideological bias! 

Press Releases

NTC to AmazonSmile: Stop Outsourcing Your Dirty Work to a Problematic Organization 

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The New Tolerance Campaign is mobilizing its members to tell AmazonSmile to stop relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to determine who can and cannot participate in the program.   AmazonSmile gives its shoppers the option to direct .5% of every purchase to the charity of their choice. Any 501c3 non-profit can participate with one exception: those who have been designated hate groups by the SPLC. From the website:    Organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible to participate. Amazon relies on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which registered charities fall into these groups.  The SPLC has an admirable history of fighting truly bigoted groups like the KKK, and they are the only well-established group that even offers a blacklist of “hateful” organizations. However, they are also a poor choice as the sole non-government arbiter of who is and isn’t too problematic for Amazon due to serious outstanding questions about the organization’s more recent moral authority.   The SPLC has a habit of looking through an ideological lens that leads it to be harsher on those on the other side of the spectrum. In 2017, charity database GuideStar adopted and then quickly abandoned the SPLC’s hate classification, saying they themselves were driven by their “commitment to objectivity” and that they had received many reasonable concerns about the SPLC’s list.   More recent reports from SPLC employees about sexist and racist treatment within the organization caused a serious shakeup at the top, contributing to the resignation of SPLC President Richard Cohen and, before him, the firing of co-founder Morris Dees. In response to these actions, SPLC staffers raised flags that they were still broadly concerned with the “widespread pattern of racial and gender discrimination by the center’s current leadership, stretching back many years.”   The SPLC also has a troubling history of leveraging lawsuits that net tens of thousands it secures for their clients to raise tens of millions for itself. They’ve stashed some of their millions in Cayman Islands bank accounts – curious behavior for a “poverty” non-profit. Former SPLC employee Bob Moser relayed an anecdote in The New Yorker that he and his former colleagues used to translate a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote etched an SPLC wall from “Until justice rolls down like waters” into “Until justice rolls down like dollars.”   By relying on the SPLC, AmazonSmile lets organizations through that don’t register on the SPLC’s list but have a history of questionable actions. Some have already complained about right-wing sting group Project Veritas’s inclusion in the program. Two groups commemorating the Black Panther Party are included. And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), famous for dousing people in fake blood and creating a video game where players beat up scientists, can also receive donations.    Facilitating charity is a fundamentally good thing, but it is problematic that the group Amazon chose to do the screening of charities for them has a troubling record of failing to be objective and morally consistent themselves. NTC is calling on Amazon to stop relying on the SPLC, establish their own criteria, and apply it evenly.    About the New Tolerance Campaign:  NTC promotes “unbiased tolerance” by encouraging organizations, businesses, schools, and government agencies to maintain clear standards of acceptable conduct.  ###

Blog

Do You Seriously Want Me To Be Tolerant of Nazis?

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This question has been asked on New Tolerance Campaign’s social media posts repeatedly as we’ve introduced ourselves over the past month. And it’s a good one.   Tolerance is a two-way street. NTC encourages people to be tolerant of others regardless of their beliefs, but of course, there are limits. What people choose to tolerate may be ambiguous from time-to-time, but when it comes to dealing with those whose ideology is based on destroying, harming or marginalizing other groups, like Nazis, we need not be tolerant. To draw from the logic of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, we know beliefs that should not be tolerated when we see them. Racism, sexism, ethnic supremacy and religious discrimination come to mind.  To be clear, tolerance does not mean agreement. Rather, it means treating others with the respect we want to receive ourselves.  Short of espousing utter intolerance, people deserve basic respect. Most importantly, the most toxic response to disagreement that NTC wants to address is today’s labeling and cancel culture:  “You support X politician, you’re a bigot.”  “That person believes in X, they’re anti-American.”   “You don’t support X policy, you hate poor people.”  The problem with this approach is that it lacks any attempt at understanding the person, and it assumes that we’re right when we attack. Everyone gets things wrong. The reality is that we’re all complex beings and can hold a variety of beliefs, and many are open to being persuaded to change their minds.   If we rush to judgment, we not only risk getting it wrong, but we turn the other person off from seeing things our way. The result is more division that drives worse outcomes. We all want the benefit of the doubt that we’re fundamentally good people, or at least the chance to prove it. If people are not given the opportunity, if we rush to ostracize them from society, we encourage further bigotry and risk becoming bigots ourselves. 

Press Releases

New Initiative Calls on American Universities and Foundations to Stop Investments in Uyghur Oppression

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The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) is a new initiative focused on upholding consistent standards of tolerance in mainstream society. Its next public pressure campaign aims to force Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University and the Rockefeller Foundation to address the possibility that their financial investments are supporting the Chinese government’s oppression of the country’s Uyghur Muslims and other minorities. These institutions must give a straight answer: are they profiting from these atrocities?   The compelling possibility that they are profiting from the atrocities was reported by Buzzfeed on May 30th, 2019 in an article titled “US Universities And Retirees Are Funding The Technology Behind China’s Surveillance State.” Each of these four institutions was identified as being affiliated with investments in two Chinese technology companies whose products are integral to the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. All four refused to comment for the article about whether their money was invested in the two companies. They have also ignored NTC’s request for comment.  Reporting on the Chinese government’s cruel treatment of their Uyghur population and others has been prolific since 2018. It is thoroughly proven now that over 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been forced into concentration-style camps where they are put through “re-education” treatment to “indoctrinate” them with Communist beliefs and Communist Party allegiance. Most startlingly, legitimate reports have surfaced showing evidence that the harvesting of organs of “hundreds of thousands of victims” has occurred in these camps.   These activities directly contradict the values displayed publicly and proudly by Duke, MIT, Princeton and Rockefeller:   Duke’s mission statement includes empowering students “to help those who suffer.”   MIT’s mission statement is “to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world.”   Princeton’s informal motto is “In service of humanity.”   The Rockefeller Foundation “promotes the well-being of humanity throughout the world.”   As leading American institutions self-charged with educating millions of young adults and advancing human society around the world, they are setting a terrible example by refusing to address the very real possibility that they are profiting off truly appalling actions by the Chinese government. NTC is demanding that they either ensure their money is not invested in ways that advance this despicably intolerant behavior, or admit that profits matter more than values and remove those values from their mission statements and mottos.   About the New Tolerance Campaign: NTC promotes “unbiased tolerance” by encouraging organizations, businesses, schools, and government agencies to maintain clear standards of acceptable conduct. Find out more at www.newtolerance.org.     ###

Past Campaigns

Send the message: Stop Funding Oppression in China

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An explosive Buzzfeed report has revealed that leading American institutions like Duke, MIT, Princeton, and the Rockefeller Foundation are possibly linked to surveillance companies enabling the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on Muslim and other minorities.  Buzzfeed’s reporting uncovered that these institutions’ endowments invest in firms that back Chinese technology companies Sensetime and Megvii, whose facial recognition technology has enabled the Chinese regime’s ongoing crackdown on Muslim minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims under surveillance have been forced into dystopian “re-education camps” where their religious and cultural identity is systematically attacked. The reports about what goes on in these camps keep getting more and more horrific. Organs are harvested from detainees while spouses back home are sometimes forced to share living quarters and even beds with male Chinese officials. Meanwhile, mosques are also destroyed, and Arabic script is banned in public. Other minorities are caught up in this, too.  Mainstream American institutions should not be enabling such intolerance. Unfortunately, Duke, MIT, Princeton, and Rockefeller refused comment to Buzzfeed or NTC on their investments in Chinese surveillance. All four have mission statements claiming to foster freedom, tolerance, and understanding across the globe. These principles should permeate every aspect of their operations, including their finances.  Tell these leading American organizations to stop enabling intolerance. Encourage them to put their core values ahead of their bottom-line, and in the process, send an important message to the Chinese regime that their systematic crackdown on minorities will not be met with silence. 

Past Campaigns

Tell Duke to make its investments align with its values

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An explosive Buzzfeed report has revealed that a number of leading American institutions including Duke University may be linked to surveillance companies enabling the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on Muslim minorities.  Buzzfeed’s reporting uncovered that these institutions’ endowments invest with firms that back Chinese technology companies Sensetime and Megvii, whose facial recognition technology has enabled China’s regime to surveil citizens and tourists alike.  Duke should not be enabling such intolerance. Duke’s mission statement even includes empowering students “to help those who suffer.” It’s hard to imagine suffering much worse than what the Uyghur Muslims in China are experiencing. Unfortunately, Duke refused to comment to Buzzfeed or NTC on their potential investments in Chinese surveillance.   China uses this technology as part of an ongoing crackdown on Muslim minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims under surveillance have been forced into dystopian “re-education camps” where their religious and cultural identity is systematically attacked. The reports about what goes on in these camps keep getting more and more horrific. Organs are harvested from detainees while spouses back home are sometimes forced to share living quarters and even beds with male Chinese officials. Meanwhile, mosques are also destroyed, and Arabic script is banned in public. Other minorities are caught up in this, too.   Help ensure that Duke isn’t enabling intolerance. If you’re a student, alumnus or have some other personal connection, make sure to edit the message text to note that. Encourage Duke to put their core values ahead of their endowment bottom-line, and in the process, send an important message to the Chinese regime that their systematic crackdown on Muslim citizens will not be met with silence.  You can also contact other university presidents here.

Blog

Netflix Must Decide: Are They Activists or Entertainers?

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American companies, especially those that operate internationally, risk experiencing an identity crisis about whether they’re woke activists or simply businesses with the unbiased goal of making money (see our campaign about the NBA’s duplicity in China). Netflix is on the verge of having such an experience now, and it isn’t sure how to handle it.  The video streaming service recently removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s show Patriot Act in Saudi Arabia at the Saudi government’s request. The episode was unflattering to Muhammad Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia where freedom of speech isn’t the right that it is in the United States.  When asked about the decision to remove the content, CEO Reed Hastings had this to say:  Well, we’re not in the news business. We’re not trying to do truth-to-power. We’re trying to entertain. And we can pick fights with governments about newsy topics or we can say—cause the Saudi government allows us to have shows like Sex Education that show a very liberal lifestyle and very provocative and important topics. And so, we can accomplish a lot more by being entertainment and influencing a global conversation about how people live than trying to be another news channel.  That’s a completely valid position for a private, international company. But is Netflix the principled business that Hastings claim it is?  In May of this year, Netflix publicly threatened to discontinue its production work in the state of Georgia (including filming Stranger Things and Ozark) over the state’s highly-restrictive and controversial abortion bill.   When pressed about how the Georgia situation squares with his declaration about not being a truth-to-power organization, Hastings replied, “No one likes foreign interference. In the US, we are a US company so we can be a participant in that. That’s a lot different than us being a participant in say the French election or the British election.”  What? Elections have nothing to do with Saudi Arabia (where elections rarely happen and women were only this decade allowed to participate). It’s actually much simpler: if your concern about the rights of people matters in your business, then it matters every time. If you’re selective, then you have other motivations and to deny that is misleading and wrong. Sounds like Hastings and the Netflix team have a few things to figure out.  The Saudi decision, however, is consistent with previous decisions to acquiesce to foreign government censorship. Netflix has done this both in Turkey and India. So far, then, Netflix hasn’t actually acted in a contradictory way: it has consistently put its business interests over the freedoms, or lack thereof, of citizens of foreign nations. The abortion bill has not gone into effect, and it still has a serious legal battle ahead, so Netflix has time to decide if it will actually follow through on its threat – and then only if the bill actually survives the legal gantlet.  However, the potential hypocrisy is concerning. We encourage Netflix to provide a crystal clear explanation of how bowing to foreign government censorship for the business’ sake is consistent with taking a stand in Georgia. Our suspicion, and we would love to be proven wrong, is that the cost of standing up to foreign government censors is much higher than moving production of a few shows out of Georgia. Netflix, we’d like to know, what’s the formula you have for making these decisions?   If they want to be a business that doesn’t take positions on issues, that’s fine. If they want to be an activist company, that’s fine too. But wishy-washy, seemingly arbitrary enforcement of tolerance is only going to contribute to our already frustrated and polarized society.  New Tolerance will keep on eye how this situation develops and what course Netflix chooses. 

Blog

Don’t Let the NBA Drop the Ball on League Values 

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The Jump Ball  “Fight for freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.” This one short, now-deleted tweet from Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey on Oct. 4th kicked off a media firestorm for the NBA. They’ve had several key moments to show their true stance on tolerance in the weeks that followed, but they’ve completely missed the net. They’re still trying to play defense, and that’s part of why it’s the perfect choice for New Tolerance’s first campaign.  The Full Court Press  First a little background. China is a huge source of income for the NBA, and teams regularly make the international trip to cash in on the Chinese fan base. However, China’s communist government is under fire for serious human rights violations. They have been violently quelling peaceful protests in Hong Kong, as Morey’s tweet referenced. More chillingly, the government is detaining, torturing, and even reportedly harvesting organs from innocent Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in internment camps. Google “Uyghurs” if you haven’t heard about this, but prepare to be horrified.  That brings us back to the NBA. China was not happy about Morey’s tweet, and they demanded that the NBA fire him. Instead, the NBA made him delete the tweet. Last season’s Most Valuable Player, Rocket’s James Harden, actually apologized to China. Lebron James issued a strong defense of the league. And the politically outspoken Steve Kerr took the “aw shucks” route. But countless fans nevertheless became, and remain, outraged. The NBA and the players involved in the spat have backtracked in many ways and continue to issue statements, but they are clearly prioritizing their profits over their values.  What’s Fair   Another round of backlash started when fans brought signs that read “Google Uyghurs” and “Free Hong Kong” to games and held them up for the cameras. In both cases, venue staff confiscated the signs, claiming that they violated venue sign policy.  Here’s the thing: while we applaud those fans for raising awareness of important issues, the venues have rules saying that all signs must be relevant to the event and cannot include political messages. As far as well can tell, these policies have been uniformly applied. Therefore, the confiscation of the signs is justifiable.  While there may be some quibbling over the definition of “political” or the exact way the venues handled the confiscations, this is a fairly clear standard that is widely adopted in this line of business, and it makes sense that venues want to keep 100% of the focus on their events.   What’s Foul  In 2016, North Carolina passed a highly controversial bill that made transgender bathroom use illegal, even at private businesses, and added other provisions that many argued were discriminatory against the LGBTQ community. The state government got slammed with bad press, and the NBA piled on, declaring that they would no longer host their 2017 All-Star Game in the state as previously planned. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made a statement claiming that the decision was being guided “by long-standing values of our league” that included “not only diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect for others but also the willingness to listen and consider opposing points of view.” A number of the league’s stars supported the decision.   Agree or disagree with this particular issue, the NBA is a private organization, and they can set their own standards. The problem is that they haven’t been consistent. China is literally imprisoning and torturing people over their religions and ethnicities. You can’t get much worse on “diversity, inclusion, fairness, and respect” than that.  We don’t begrudge any private entity their need to be profitable, but this double standard leaves North Carolinians feeling singled out, victims in China feeling hopelessly ignored, and fans wondering where the league really stands.   It’s critical for American organizations like the NBA that voluntarily act as arbiters of values and standards of tolerance to be clear and consistent in enforcing them because of the impact they have with those decisions on our broader society. That’s why we’re calling on the NBA to do better. For the record, after North Carolina eventually softened its bill, the NBA agreed to host the 2019 All-Star Game in Charlotte. We would hope, and we certainly expect, that the NBA would take a similar approach with regards to China. Doing so would, after all, be consistent with the NBA’s stated values and its actions regarding North Carolina.  Please join us in contacting the NBA and demanding a clear standard! 

Press Releases

New Initiative Launches with Campaign Calling Out NBA Hypocrisy on China

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For Immediate Release The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) is a brand new initiative focused on upholding consistent standards of tolerance in mainstream society. It is launching its first public pressure campaign aimed at forcing the National Basketball Association (NBA) to clarify its standards of tolerance. The NBA must decide: Are they in the business of calling out intolerance or are they just in the business of making money? They can’t have it both ways.  The NBA is living a double standard of its own values, letting down its fans, players, NBA Cares partners and participants, and itself. In defending the league’s decision to pull its All-Star Game from Charlotte in 2016 after the North Carolina government passed a law that the league viewed as discriminatory against the LGBTQ community, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated that the NBA was being guided “by long-standing values of our league” that included “not only diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect for others but also the willingness to listen and consider opposing points of view.”  This decision affirmed the NBA’s practiced standard in the US: Loudly criticize government policy when it fails to align with the league’s values.  Yet today, the NBA is giving a pass to the Chinese government at a time when many of its fans, joined by people around the world, are protesting official Chinese government policy and actions that clearly violate the values claimed by the NBA in the Charlotte decision: The imprisoning of over 1 million ethnic and religious minorities, including the Uyghur Muslims, in “re-education camps” where they are reportedly harvesting their organs, and their attempts to forcibly overturn decades of democracy in Hong Kong and intimidate HongKongers through violence.  Why would the NBA stay mum on China when its government is violating the NBA’s own values? Where is the standard set by the Charlotte decision?  Perhaps this standard only applies to America? The NBA double standard: Human rights matter when they belong to Americans, but not when they belong to Chinese minorities or HongKongers.  As a mainstream institution with a global audience and numerous community engagement programs aimed at children and young adults, the NBA is a major influencer and must be clearer about the values it professes to have. Actions must match words. NTC’s message to the NBA: If you aren’t going to criticize China the way they criticized North Carolina, you should give up social commentary altogether and focus on playing basketball. If this sounds familiar, we’re only echoing the words of Lebron James, James Harden and Steve Kerr who have all said we should focus on the sport rather than the politics.  About the New Tolerance Campaign: NTC  promotes “unbiased tolerance” by encouraging organizations, businesses, schools, and government agencies to maintain clear standards of acceptable conduct. Find out more at www.newtolerance.org.  ###       [Photo credit: Matt Moloney, via Stocksnap]

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