Amazon.com’s Whole Foods Market doesn’t want to be forced to let workers wear “Black Lives Matter” masks and is pointing to the recent US Supreme Court ruling permitting a business owner to refuse services to same-sex couples to get federal regulators to back off.
National Labor Relations Board prosecutors have accused the grocer of stifling worker rights by banning staff from wearing BLM masks or pins on the job. The company countered in a filing that its own rights are being violated if it’s forced to allow BLM slogans to be worn with Whole Foods uniforms.
Amazon is the most prominent company to use the high court’s June ruling that a Christian web designer was free to refuse to design sites for gay weddings, saying the case “provides a clear roadmap” to throw out the NLRB’s complaint.
The dispute is one of several in which labor board officials are considering what counts as legally-protected, work-related communication and activism on the job.
I agree the larger philosophy behind BLM isn’t a brand, but the slogan “BLM” is a brand.
To me personally, BLM is kind of stupid, the correct slogan we should all be wearing is ACAB, because from everything I have seen, US police are just as happy assaulting and killing anyone who gets in their way, regardless of colour. Cops in the US just want to kill people, it’s an us versus them mentality, and I’d say it’s pretty colour blind, like those 5 Nashville black cops who tortured and killed that black motorist. And I remember seeing the Atlanta BLM protests in 2020, and there were loads of black cops horrifically beating protestors too. It’s honestly not a black problem, it’s a blue vs everyone else problem.
And then some of the absolute worst police killings I’ve seen have been white cops killing white people, such as Daniel Shaver, Ryan Whitaker, and Officer Longman of Utah.
Some cops are definitely racially biased, but it’s hardly Mississippi Burning anymore, even in the South. What is a problem is a general militarisation of police and complete lack of oversight or consequences for their actions.
But make no mistake, any cop would just love to kill you to make his or her day, whether you’re white or black.