To: Jeff Bezos, CEO and Founder
AMAZON: Strike the Flags of Slavery
A search on Amazon for Nazi or swastika license plates shows nearly zero items for sale, as it should be for these awful artifacts. But Amazon's website proudly display—and profits from—the Confederate flag, showing nearly 30,000 versions of the symbol of the slave-owning, traitorous Confederacy. This flag is now directly linked to the murders of nine Black Americans inside their own church, and countless others since the Civil War. It's time to take down this toxic symbol of racism and slavery. Amazon, strike the flag of hate.
Why is this important?
Philadelphia, like so many large U.S. cities, suffers from racial division in its schools, its housing and its job market. The last thing Philadelphians or Americans–of any color–need is the dreaded Confederate battle flag, awful symbol of a time when whites treated blacks as property. And outside Philadelphia, in our suburbs and rural Pennsylvania countryside, the Confederate flag is flown, not as a sign of some mythical heritage, but as a message: Blacks Beware. This is wrong. Amazon can make a powerful stand against hate if they refuse to help market and profit from goods that broadcast racist messages.