Several Olympic snowboarders continue to proudly use their status as Olympians as a platform for political activism, with their main goal to urge President Donald Trump to perpetuate the 2015 Paris global warming climate change agreement. Though, one has also financed protesters such as those of the “Women’s March,” which occurred the day after Trump took the oath of office in February.
In January, a group of snowboarders started a Twitter campaign they called “Protect Our Winters” (POW), which urged fans to support global warming policies. The campaign, which they say reached 11 million people and fostered 24,000 uses of its hashtag also took aim at Donald Trump, who is known to be a major Twitter user.
“There was really no direct line to him through like the White House switchboard,” POW executive director Chris Steinkamp told USA Today. “Then we realized, my god, he’s on Twitter all the time, and nobody’s really used that medium in reverse. He’s very famous about trying to let us know what’s going on, but we’ve never really messaged to him.”
Steinkamp added that donations to POW grew up to 75 percent during the Twitter campaign.
Sochi bronze medalist Alex Deibold admitted that he and other snowboarders are “buckling down” with their attention to political causes.
“I wouldn’t say that I see a renewed focus, but what I do see is almost sort of like buckling down,” Deibold said. “I think that we realize that the work we’re doing now is more important than ever because we’re fighting such an uphill battle.”
But global warming isn’t the only cause the Olympians are pushing. Donna Carpenter, CEO of Burton and a member of POW’s board of directors, also came to the aid of a group of 30 Burton employees by funding their participation in the anti-Trump “Women’s March.”
“We’re the rebellious adolescents of the ski industry,” she exclaimed. “We look at things a little bit differently and a little irreverently. We question authority and we always have.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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