councilor.org
| Source | Dave Anderson |
| Date | 15/10/10/19:22 |
| www.boulderweekly.com
Public messaging vs. internal practices By Dave Anderson In advertisements, Coors reaches out to women, Latinos and gays while the family behind the beer company gives millions of dollars to anti-choice and anti-immigrant organizations. That's the conclusion of a lengthy investigative article by Zoe Greenberg and Brie Shea for RH Reality Check, an on-line daily publication about sexual and reproductive health and justice issues. The company started out as a small, regional brewery. Today the firm is very successful. Coors Light is the second most popular beer in the U.S. In 2005, Coors merged with Molson (a Canadian brewer) and in 2007 entered into a joint venture with SABMiller (a British-South African multinational brewing and beverage company headquartered in London). Greenberg and Shea found that the "Coors family foundations have contributed at least $12.5 million to conservative organizations in the past six years alone, making the Coors one of the most formidable right-wing donor families on the national stage today." At the same time, the Coors companies contribute thousands of dollars to Latino and black community groups and have introduced gender-inclusive workplace policies. Coors extended benefits to same-sex couples long before equal marriage was legal. The companies’ public messaging and internal practices seem to clash with the family members’ politics and the companies claim to be separate from the family. However, Greenberg and Shea cite public records revealing that"Coors family members — including those who control the family’s charitable foundations — retain substantial ownership and control of the for-profit companies that carry their name." Greenberg and Shea say the family is a major funder of the right-wing culture wars. A prime example is their funding of the fight against the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit. Between 2009 and 2014, the Coors family foundations contributed $380,000 to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the nonprofit law firm behind many of the challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Becket Fund’s most well-known client is Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts supplies chain that objected on religious grounds to the ACA’s mandate that employee insurance plans cover contraception. When the case came before the U.S. Supreme Court, the company won. The Becket Fund also represented religiously affiliated nonprofits, such as Wheaton College, in an effort to eliminate insurance coverage for birth control for employees of religious institutions. The Coors family has also contributed thousands of dollars to right-wing women’s groups. In 2014, Jeffrey Coors and John Coors each gave $25,000 to Women Speak Out PAC, the super PAC of the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List. The group’s declared goal is to "reduce and ultimately end abortion." Between 2009 and 2014, the family foundations also gave $190,000 to the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), which The New York Times editorial board characterized as "a right-wing public policy group that provides pseudofeminist support for extreme positions that are in fact dangerous to women." An IWF spokeswoman testified in Congress against gun control after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, claiming that "guns make women safer." The group opposed the Violence Against Women Act, arguing that it has been a source of "waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer resources" and defended Rush Limbaugh when he called a college student a "prostitute" and a "slut" for her support of the ACA birth control benefit. While Coors company marketers brag about its bilingual advertising and scholarships for Latino students, the family has been bankrolling anti-Latino and anti-immigrant groups. Between 2010 and 2011, the Coors’ Castle Rock Foundation contributed $50,000 to the Center for Equal Opportunity, a small rightwing think tank relentlessly opposed to bilingual education. Between 2009 to 2014, the Coors family foundations also gave $800,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which has become increasingly hostile to immigrant rights. In 2013, Heritage fired a senior policy analyst after journalists discovered that he had written a dissertation arguing that Hispanic immigrants had IQs that were "substantially lower than that of the white native population." None of this is too surprising to anyone familiar with the family’s history. In 1966, Joseph Coors was elected to the University of Colorado Board of Regents. He wanted to defund Black and Chicano Studies, ban the radical Students for a Democratic Society from campus and make faculty members sign a loyalty oath promising they wouldn't criticize the government. He wasn't too successful. But starting in the 1970s, the Coors have had a powerful impact on U.S. politics. In fact, Joe Coors helped establish the aforementioned Heritage Foundation, which would become the nation’s most influential right-wing think tank, providing guidance for the Reagan and both Bush administrations as well as Newt Gingrich’s "Contract for America." Coors associates helped create and support the Christian right, which demonized gays and feminists. Under Reagan, environmental regulations were undermined by Coors associates James Watt (Interior Secretary) and Anne Burford (Environmental Protection Agency chief). In 1977, the brewery workers in Golden went on strike over a companyimposed contract that included cuts in seniority and violations of workers’ human rights. Strikers were particularly angry about having to take polygraph (lie detector) tests where they were questioned about their sex lives, politics and drug use. Jeff Coors, the president of the company then, said that agreeing to union demands was like "inviting the Russians in to take over America." Soon a broad coalition of labor unions, African American groups, Latino organizations, women’s rights associations and gay- and lesbian-rights alliances led a boycott against Coors. The workers lost but the boycott went on for many years and seriously damaged the firm’s sales. The company changed some of its internal practices and has sponsored a lot of minority sporting and cultural events. But the family continues to be a powerful backward-looking rightwing force. This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho