Citizens for Corporate Accountability has taken out a full-page advertisement out in the Seattle Times calling on e-commerce giant Amazon to drop its association with the far-left SPLC pressure group.
The Citizens for Corporate Accountability recently took out a full-page advertisement in the Seattle Times calling for e-commerce giant Amazon to cut ties with the SPLC. CCA told Breitbart News in an email:
To date, Citizens for Corporate Accountability has sent over 75,000 emails to Amazon and it’s Board of Directors since beginning this effort about 10 days ago.
The Amazon Smile Charitable Support Program, which has delivered over $100 million to nonprofits, denies access to any organization on the SPLC blacklist. CCA points out that numerous print articles in recent months have established this blacklist deliberately mixes together mainstream conservative nonprofits with small and violent extremist hate groups. In the Seattle Times ad, CCA asks Amazon to make its own decisions about eligibility based on clear public standards with due process for organizations denied access.
The first paragraph of the ad placed in the Seattle Times states: “Amazon promotes its “Smile” program as “a simple and automatic way for you to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop.” That is, unless your favorite nonprofit appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s so-called “hate group list,” in which case it is blacklisted by Amazon. The SPLC and its list are fundamentally flawed. Amazon must abandon them.”
We just turned 70,000 emails Strong! Join conservatives in telling @amazon to stop using corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center blacklists in the @amazonsmile program. Send a message in 10 seconds at https://t.co/rOgJ9a1wJe pic.twitter.com/nddraOmGBr
— Citizens for Corporate Accountability (@CFCATweets) May 19, 2019
In a letter sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the company’s Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs, Jay Carney, in April of this year, CCA requested that the e-commerce giant cease its work with the SPLC. CCA specifically took issue with how the SPLC designates certain organizations as “hate groups” and how this has affected the Amazon Smile program which allows Amazon shoppers to donate money to particular charities.
CCA says that the SPLC ranks hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan alongside mainstream conservative organizations in an unfair manner: “The ‘hate group’ list falsely purports to identify dangerous organizations promoting hate and violence, and Amazon has acceded to the demands of SPLC that Amazon terminate participation of named organizations in the Amazon Smile program. However, this list mixes together racist and violent organizations like the Ku Klux Klan with those that simply espouse mainstream political and social views with which the SPLC and apparently many of its donors disagree. For this reason, the list is permanently compromised, and cannot be relied upon for business decisions by Amazon or any other organization.”
In one case highlighted by Breitbart News in 2018, the Christian legal non-profit Alliance for Defending Freedom was blacklisted from the Amazon Smile program after the SPLC designated it a “hate group.”
Breitbart News will continue to cover this story as it develops.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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