End of Trump councils latest sign activists flexing their muscles
One corporate executive after another stepped away from President Donald Trump’s councils this week, crediting their conscience, their values and “doing the right thing.”
That’s only part of the story, says Rashad Robinson, the 38-yearold executive director of Color of Change, which orchestrated a public social-media campaign urging executives at PepsiCo Inc., Campbell Soup Co., General Motors Co. and other companies to #quitthecouncil.
After two days and more than 225,000 messages, two business groups advising the president were disbanded.
It was the biggest victory yet for Robinson and the 12-year-old racial-justice group that’s increasing pressure on companies to promote social change.
In the past year, its campaigns persuaded firms to eschew financial support of the Republican National Convention and pull advertising from The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News.
Now, with Trump’s councils dissolved, Robinson is asking the organization’s 1.2 million active members to turn their tweets toward Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and Discover Financial Services, pushing them to more aggressively cut off payments to hate groups.
“Folks are seeing what’s happening, and they have feelings about it,” Robinson said. He expects the group’s budget to hit US$10 million this year, up from US$1 million when he became executive director in 2011. Its biggest funders
include the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy Project.
“We have a long track record of winning and finding the right ways to leverage everyday people’s energy, so I think that helps folks feel comfortable engaging with us,” he said. “It also makes corporations increasingly return our calls.”
There’s a long history of consumers and investors applying pressure on companies to effect social change.
But while the grape boycott in the 1970s or divestment from South Africa under apartheid took years to have an impact, targeted companies and executives today aren’t necessarily waiting to see if protests take a financial toll.