After Years of Supporting BLM, Coca-Cola Quietly Makes a Big Change
From all appearances, Coca-Cola Company may have finally realized Black Lives Matter isn’t just a tautological slogan of uplift, but instead a real group with real aims that don’t necessarily align with Coke’s brand.
And all it took was for BLM to openly support a terrorist organization.
What, they didn’t realize that a revolutionary outfit co-founded by self-described Marxists and with a history of grift and funding social unrest couldn’t be trusted? This was the breaking point?
Evidently so — because, in the wake of some BLM chapters openly endorsing attacks by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attacks on innocent Israelis, Coca-Cola has conveniently scrubbed a mention of money donated to BLM off of its webpage without explanation.
The donation, under the aegis of its Sprite brand, was made in June of 2020. According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, it was mentioned on the company’s website as recently as July of this year.
The donation was part of a campaign for Sprite dubbed “The Give Back” aimed at helping “to serve and support creators and communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and racial inequality.”
Quoth the original media release: “Sprite hopes the Atlanta launch will help springboard “The Give Back” model to other major U.S. cities. ‘We decided to kick things off in our own backyard, which is a beacon of hope that represents a lot of great things for Black people – creative excellence, entrepreneurship, optimism, resilience, opportunity and more,’ said Brian Rogers, brand manager, Sprite. ‘America has loved Black culture but has not always loved Black people. It’s time to turn that story around, starting here in our hometown of Atlanta.’
“Earlier this month, Sprite announced a $500,000 contribution to the Black Lives Matter Global Network in a social post committing action in the fight for racial justice,” it continued.
“On June 28, the brand debuted a new TV commercial during the 2020 BET Awards telecast showcasing Black America’s resilience, excellence and optimism. The 60-second spot titled ‘Dreams Realized’ emphasizes Sprite’s commitment to making young Black creators’ dreams a reality and to inspire the next generation to do more and dream bigger.”
Well, guess what’s missing now? Sen. Ted Cruz noted that the brand made a quiet edit of its webpage sometime in the interim:
CAUGHT RED-HANDED. @CocaCola deletes its support for BLM.
One screenshot is of @CocaCola‘s website before BLM supported Hamas parachuting into a concert to kill Israeli civilians.
The other is from this morning.
Editing your website is not enough. Americans DEMAND an apology. pic.twitter.com/WKRdxVrTu8
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 20, 2023
Yes, that half-million to BLM from Sprite for the “fight for racial justice” has been scrubbed; while Cruz seems to have accessed a different version of the media release, the language was materially similar.
No reason was given for the ghost edit, but I have a rough idea of why it might have come about:
The BLM chapter in Chicago just posted this in support of Hamas. pic.twitter.com/oLA1MwzoVO
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 10, 2023
That’s the image of a paraglider — symbolizing the Hamas paragliders who were able to fly over an Israeli security fence and murder innocent civilians. That’s who the official Black Lives Matter Chicago social media account was expressing support for right after the attacks.
And not just that: “In addition to the paragliders image, BLM Chicago posted a number of cartoons depicting somebody expressing outrage over the attacks on Israel, while another calmly lists off talking points blaming Israel for the situation,” the New York Post reported.
BLM Chicago semi-apologized for the post after it was deleted: “Yesterday we sent out mss [messages] that we aren’t proud of. We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with, the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely.”
However, it wasn’t just them: As Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow with conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation, pointed out in an Oct. 20 piece, two major Black Lives Matter organizations — BLM Grassroots and BLM Los Angeles — expressed solidarity with Hamas after the attacks.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting 75 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.
It’s that important, we just had to say it again…#FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/h1a1oxEMws
— BLM Grassroots (@blmgrassroots) October 16, 2023
As for the national group, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Gonzalez noted it “has in fact gone semi-dormant, so its silence on the slaughter in Israel should not be interpreted as distancing itself from it; BLMGNF hasn’t posted any news on its website since July.”
In May, a leak of the organization’s federal tax return revealed it had lost $8,559,748 in the 2021-22 reporting year after a series of scandals regarding how the money was being spent. (Namely, on spending that looked conspicuously like siphoning off money to those in control of the group or people close to them.)
The returns revealed that over 60 percent of the group’s revenue was spent on management, compared with less than 5 percent during the prior reporting year. It also had lost $11.7 million in assets, leaving it with about $30 million in assets remaining. (Or, another 60 donations from Coca-Cola to boost Sprite’s image — whichever way you want to count it.)
And then there’s the fact that this was an organization that said on its website, until September of 2020, that it wished to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,” according to the Washington Examiner.
But, with all of that publicly known, Coca-Cola was still touting its connections with that group — at least through July.
What changed between July and now, one wonders? Was the image of the paragliders too much? Were Coke execs kept up all night in the fear that a conservative meme-ster who came across the media release might Photoshop the Sprite logo onto the parachute because of Coke’s support for a Hamas-backing organization?
If so, there are doubtless quite a few executives out there who’ll need an extra Unisom or three to get to bed for the next few weeks: “Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Coca-Cola, Sprite, DoorDash, DropBox, Warner Brothers and Microsoft have donated to BLM in the wake of the May 2020 police-involved killing of George Floyd,” the Post reported.
Grift, Marxism, smashing “the Western-prescribed nuclear family requirement,” “fiery but mostly peaceful” demonstrations — all of that was fine with corporate America.
How could they not have expected the group to support terrorist savagery when everything about BLM’s extremism pointed to it?
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