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.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    81 year ago

    Oh yeah, there will be a bigger reactionary backlash, and that backlash will cause even more “normal unaffiliated” people to realize what’s at stake. I don’t mean to sound accelerationist or apocalyptic, but everything has a breaking point and pronounced change only comes through conflict.

    I think we’re seeing a little bit of it through the abortion bans. People are genuinely pissed off about that.

    We just have to hope there will be enough people who won’t tolerate reactionaries. I can’t say what will happen, but you’re right, it might get very ugly soon. But at the same time we can’t say we’re already defeated

    • wild_dog [they/them]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      7
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The abortion ban is why I disagree with your take. Liberals said if abortion gets banned they were gonna riot and stayed out in the streets for exactly 2 or 3 days. Liberals have trained a lot of people to think we can vote our way out of anything. They don’t even really support things like abortion related mutual aid bc stuff like that is seen as lesser importance than defeating Trump (or whoever the next Republican is.)

      I don’t think we are defeated but winning isn’t gonna come from us reacting to terrible things happening, it’s gonna come from more proactive organizing before shit hits the fan.

        • silent_water [she/her]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          31 year ago

          there’s a balance. arming up and prepping without organizations is pointless - the paramilitaries will crush a lone homesteader. community defense requires a whole community.

        • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -11 year ago

          If you harbor 5 fugitives, you have something to fear from the government. If you harbor 500 fugitives, the government has something to fear from you.

          What I’m saying is, when the time comes, I hope you’ll have way more than 2 cows.

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      61 year ago

      I’m not saying we are or will be vanquished. I am saying that the balance of guns and land is not in our favor (although the balance of distribution infrastructure is slightly in favor of the libs).

      Liberals will largely stand by if fascism takes over, especially in this country. One of the best hopes we have is that the military would crack down on a coup, and the balance of representation in the military is very much not in our favor. The other best hope is balkanization or at least devolution, where state and local governments become more relevant than the federal government and this allows us to thrive in pockets.