Starbucks is my favorite brand of coffee, but I won’t be buying it anymore.
I just learned that Starbucks supports the Washington Policy Center, a rightwing policy group in Washington State that supports right-to-work (for less) laws, opposes a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and supports charters and vouchers. Bear in mind that the Supreme Court of Washington State ruled that charter schools are not public schools and not entitled to public funding. The Washington Policy Center supports school privatization.
Its last event featured Nigel Farage, the British politician who led the movement for Britain to secede from the European Union, or Brexit.
WPC has invited Betsy DeVos as its keynote speaker at its annual dinner on October 13 in Bellevue. Her views on school privatization are the same as those of the Washington Policy Center.
Melissa Westbrook, community activist, contacted Starbucks for their response. The statement she received by Email confirmed that Starbucks sponsors the Washington Policy Center but had nothing to do with the choice of speaker. This is an irrelevant answer. Why is Starbucks supporting a rightwing policy center at all? Next year the speaker might be Scott Walker or Charles Koch.
Express your disappointment with this hashtag: #whyStarbucks. Or sign this petition.
Corporations that bill themselves as “progressive” should not support rightwing policy centers that promote school privatization.
Starbucks is free to support any cause it chooses, and I am free not to buy their coffee anymore.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just posted on Facebook and Twitter. My suggestion is patronize independent coffee shops and boycott Starbucks!
they have usually supported liberal causes.
Reba, that’s the image. Look at the Washington Policy Center website. Not progressive. Reactionary.
Jon Stewart had the CEO on the Daily Show a while back. The company was hyping its program giving college scholarships to its low paid baristas. What could be wrong with scholarships? The two were getting along fine, but then it came out that the scholarships could only be used to attend an online for-profit school. I remember Stewart asked, “Why does it have to be this online school?” He appeared dissatisfied with the answer, perplexed by it. I was. Starbucks is not a progressive company. Their hipster façade, like that of Google, is just marketing.
It’s common practice in ed reform. They’re “reinventing” public schools, yet they completely exclude public schools from their “debates”
It’s an echo chamber. Not a single representative or advocate for public schools will be invited. DeVos won’t face any real questions- instead she’ll compare schools to Uber, or food trucks, or colleges, or some other nonsensical talking point invented by political operatives and they’ll all applaud.
I don’t drink Starbucks anything. Once a company gets huge, that company goes to the DARK side, like Google. SICK America!
VOTE with YOUR $$$$$, as measly as it may seem, it matters.
I have been a Starbucks customer two to three times per week for at least 15 years. I will not buy anything from Starbucks again until they change their right-wing orientation. **** you, Starbucks.
Same here! No more SB (or perhaps it should become BS) for me!
Thanks Diane. We might be hamstrung on some education matters until we vote for NC legislators next year, but we can vote today with our wallets.
The Washington Policy Center is set up to spread the idea that markets solve almost everything. From the website: ” PC’s policy experts regularly speak at meetings for chambers of commerce, Rotary Clubs, trade associations, and other groups throughout Washington. Would you like a WPC policy expert to speak at an event for your community group or civic organization?”
Here are the specific policies for education—choice and charters and no collective bargaining.
Click to access Policy-Guide-for-Washington-State-2016Chapter5.pdf
Damn, another place can’t go. And Facebook is acting like a slob too. Why can’t these idiots smarten up.
They can’t smarten up because they aren’t people. They’re corporations. Humanity is not a variable in the value-added algorithms that substitute for their brains. Profit is the bottom line for all of them, and all of them are therefore evil by degrees. Without proper regulation over the last half a century, megacorporations have been enthroned with unchallenged power. What can we do about it, grow our own coffee beans? It’s not such a bad idea, actually.
When I go out to a coffee shop, a rare event, I search for local independent coffee shops. Just like indie bookstores, most of the indie coffee shops have to stand out in some way.
I prefer cold-pressed coffee and what Starbucks calls cold-pressed is horrible.
Corporations like Starbucks, have every right to influence policy. Free speech applies to them, too. Also, people have the right to boycott companies, whose policies the public finds offensive.
Remember the new Golden Rule: “He who has the gold, makes the rules”
Chas,
Starbucks pretends to be progressive.now we know they are not.
Starbucks doesn’t make any rules for me. They sell coffee and I am the customer.
I always felt something eerie and out-of-kilter about that sort of place.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan & reg jungwirth– YES. I buy all my coffee from in-town bean-roaster [subtitled ‘Coffee with Conscience’] who (a)regularly features Fair-Trade coffees (b)hires local kids [including mine], many of whom are on the Indy music circuit [cuz his nephews are] (c)runs a monthly folk-music old timey coffeehouse in a local church basement w/proceeds to charity.
Starbucks? Buy from local independent small biz when you can. My book club orders thro our local town book store, not amazon. Get veggies in season from local farmers’ markets if available [when I lived in Manhattan, I belonged to a food co-op]. Find farmers’ markets near you at ams.usda.gov. Serious foodies: check out slowfood.com.
Just wanna say– I was raised in a small town, folks had a fam biz; my momma’s mantra (bless her soul) was “support your local stores.” For an uplifting story, see http://www.adirondack.net/whatsnew/2011/12/saranac-lake-department-store/
and google Saranac Lake’s pushback, after successfully keeping Walmart out, “The Community Store at Saranac Lake”.
My last Starbucks coffee until this changes. Was always a frequent customer. No more