Boycott Coors

	Information & Organizing Page

	Boycott Coors Beer and its other brands: Killians - Keystone - Zima - Blue Moon - Extra Gold

	Make Coors pay for funding racism! Defend Affirmative Action Defend the Victory in Grutter v. Bollinger!

		Download the information on this page as a printable FACTSHEET [Adobe PDF file] [En Español]

		BOYCOTT POSTER [Adobe PDF file]

		BOYCOTT LETTERS Use the following letter as an organizing tool to get your local RADIO STATIONS to stop advertising Coors Outside Michigan ; Inside Michigan [Word documents] Use the following letter as an organizing tool to get your local RETAILERS to stop selling Coors (department stores, convenience stores, gas stations, etc.) Letter to Retailers [Word document]

		Have your organization ENDORSE THE BOYCOTT - Click here -

		Myths and Facts about the Coors Boycott and the Lesbian/ Gay/ Bisexual/ Transgendered Community

The New Civil Rights Movement must continue to mobilize in order to defend our recent affirmative action victory in Grutter v Bollinger. We are approaching the 50 year anniversary of Brown v Board of Education still struggling to realize the promise of integration and real equal opportunity in American life. Our new movement was inaugurated in action on April 1st, 2003 with our 50,000 person -- strong racially integrated, majority high school and college student mobilization on the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard the University of Michigan affirmative action cases. The movement that stepped forward on that day has the opportunity to put an end to the last 30 years of takeaways and place our nation on the road toward progress again.

As part of building our movement, we have called for a national boycott of Coors Beer, Papa Gino's Italian Restaurants and any other corporation or foundation (Bradley Foundation, Olin Foundation, Scaife Foundation) that has contributed to the efforts of right wing forces to reverse the gains of the last civil rights movement.

We are boycotting Coors Beer to stop their funding of Ward Connerly's attack on civil rights. Coors has been a longtime sponsor of the attack on affirmative action and civil rights. They recently gave California Republican businessman Ward Connerly $100,000 for his efforts in California. Connerly has announced he will attempt to put an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative on the Michigan ballot. Because of the weakness of popular support, Connerly will need at least 1-2 million dollars to get his segregationist initiative on the ballot. We are determined to deny him the big money he needs. He is attempting to nullify our U.S. Supreme Court victory in Grutter v Bollinger through ballot initiatives state by state. By making an example of Coors, we can convince Connerly's other potential donors that informational pickets and publicity identifying them as a business that supports racism and segregation is not profitable.

Coors has seen its role typically as providing seed money for major attacks on civil rights like Proposition 209 and the University of Michigan cases. Once Coors has weighed in with enough money for the attack to get off the ground, other potential right wing funders are more likely to contribute. Making clear to Coors that racism is bad business can therefore play a very important role in reversing the whole period of right wing and racist attacks on affirmative action and integration.

Our boycott of Coors has a real chance of success because Coors has been important in funding many reactionary attacks. Over the years there have been many boycotts and protests of Coors. Some of these have been successful, some not. Sometimes when past protests have hurt Coors, Coors has cynically put up money to buy off the protests. The new civil rights movement will never be bought off by Coors.

Our boycott of Coors for its funding of the attack on affirmative action can succeed for two main reasons. The first is the strength of the new civil rights movement in defending affirmative action. The second is that the beer market is very competitive and Coors is very vulnerable to a strategy that would lose Coors significant sales in the market. In particular areas, including on campuses, and in black and Latino communities, Coors cannot afford to write off those markets. We can make Coors pay a heavy price for its decisive role in financing racism.

Coors family funding of the attack
on affirmative action and integration:

Coors money has played an important role in the attack on affirmative action from the very beginning. Millions of dollars in profits from Coors beer has consistently and generously flowed to the people and organizations that initiated and continue to advance the attack on affirmative action programs and K-12 integration programs.

	Coors profits funded the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), the law firm notorious for the attack on the University of Michigan's affirmative action programs in the two cases Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger. CIR filed the two U of M cases after successfully striking down affirmative action in the 1996 Hopwood v Texas case. Hopwood was the first anti-affirmative action lawsuit brought in higher education since the 1978 Bakke case, and ushered in the recent decade-long assault on affirmative action in higher education. In 1997, CIR defended California's segregationist Proposition 209 against legal challenges. Prop 209 was Ward Connerly's first anti-affirmative action ballot initiative and caused a sharp drop in underrepresented minority students at the University of California flagship schools, making clear to the nation the unacceptable cost of ending affirmative action.
	William Coors' racism was publicly exposed in a statement he made to black and Mexican-American businessmen in 1984. He told the group that if they thought it was "unfair" that their "ancestors were dragged here in chains against their will…I would urge those of you who feel that way to go back to where your ancestors came from, and you will find out that probably the greatest favor that anybody ever did you was to drag your ancestors over here in chains, and I mean it." Later in the speech, Coors elaborated on what he saw wrong in Africa: "They lack the intellectual capacity to succeed, and it's taking them down the tubes. You take a country like Rhodesia, where the economy was absolutely booming under white management. Now, black management is in Zimbabwe, and the economy is a disaster, in spite of the fact that there is probably ten times the motivation on the part of the citizens of that country to make it succeed. Lack of intellectual capacity--that has got to be there."
	In December 2001, Joseph Coors gave Ward Connerly $100,000 for his so-called "Racial Privacy Act" (Prop 54), the California ballot initiative that aims to make it illegal for any state institution to collect racial or ethnic data, making it impossible to expose patterns of discrimination. In January 2002 Joseph Coors, along with John Moores (owner of the San Diego Padres) and Peter Preuss (Republican University of California Regent) co-hosted the kick-off event for Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative election campaign. By throwing his political weight and money behind Connerly's effort as well as lending his name, Joseph Coors has made clear he is not just a passive supporter of Connerly's attack on civil rights.
	The Coors family gave money to pro-South African apartheid groups.
	When Joseph Coors established the Heritage Foundation in 1974, he chose Roger Pearson, an outspoken anti-Semite and pro-Nazi, as co- editor of the Heritage Foundation publication "Policy Review." Pearson is the author of a racist book called "Race and Civilization," which uses pseudoscience to falsely assert the biological inferiority of black people. Pearson has also edited or co-edited several racist and neo-Nazi magazines, as well as written and organized for the far right-wing Northern League in northern Italy.
	Paul Weyrich, far right wing strategist and Heritage Foundation co-founder, has many ties to Nazi collaborators and neo-fascist organizations. In the 1970s, Weyrich and Joseph Coors made appointments and set up political contacts on Capitol Hill for Franz Joseph Strauss, then the Bavarian head of state, who helped émigré Nazi collaborators. The Free Congress Foundation, co-founded by Joseph Coors and Weyrich, became active in eastern European politics after the Cold War. Figuring prominently in this effort was Weyrich's right-hand man, Laszlo Pasztor, a former leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross organization in Hungary, which had collaborated with Hitler's Reich. After serving two years in prison for his Arrow Cross activities, Pasztor found his way to the United States, where he was instrumental in establishing the ethnic-outreach arm of the Republican National Committee.
	Coors money was directly behind the first formal challenge to affirmative action with the filing of the August 1990 Colorado contracting case, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v Skinner by the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF). The MSLF was set up by Joseph Coors, who was the first Chairman of the Board of Directors and provided the initial start-up money of $250,000.
	On August 1, 2003 a lawsuit was filed against Berkeley, California's historic voluntary school desegregation plan, the first of its kind in the nation, established in 1968. This suit was filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), another Coors-funded right wing law firm/foundation. The PLF has launched this attack as part of a campaign of lawsuits in California, cynically named "Operation End Bias" in an attempt to use the racist Proposition 209 to re-segregate state and local agencies. They also unsuccessfully attempted to end Seattle, Washington's high school integration plan, losing at the state Supreme Court in June 2003. PLF is also known for weighing in against affirmative action in the two University of Michigan cases at the U.S. Supreme Court level with amicus briefs arguing against the programs.
	During the 1964 Civil Rights Act debate in Congress, William Coors campaigned for the failure of the bill. He called the Coors workforce together on paid company time and urged them to contact their Senators to oppose the passage of the bill, lying and telling them that sixty white employees would lose their jobs to black workers if the bill passed.
	Since 1981, Coors money and ideology has been directing Republican presidents. The Heritage Foundation, founded and funded by Joseph Coors and other far right wing supporters, published "Mandate for Leadership," a set of recommendations to the Reagan administration calling for massive reductions in social programs and big tax cuts for the rich. Within his first year in office, Reagan had implemented two-thirds of the several thousand recommendations. He lauded the Heritage Foundation and cemented its fame and political influence. When Reagan was re-elected in 1984, Heritage published "Mandate for Leadership II," which included recommendations repealing affirmative action policies, reducing the enforcement of voting rights and civil rights laws and lessening legal redress for victims of racist actions. Heritage also wrote policy guidelines for Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.
	Heritage has successfully put forward candidates for policy positions in the government starting with Reagan. The Heritage foundation had substantial input into Gingrich's "Contract with America" and recently successfully installed a distinguished fellow from Heritage into the Bush cabinet -- U.S. Labor Department Secretary Elaine Chao.
	Coors money helped sponsor the landmark public education setback, the Cleveland vouchers case. In June 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of public funds ("school vouchers") to pay for private schools, including religious schools. This effort to weaken public education has been led by the Institute for Justice and annually funded by Coors profits.
	Adolph Coors Sr.'s family friend and lawyer owned Castle Rock, the monumental red-rock knob that overlooked the Coors Brewery property, and lent it to the KKK in the 1920's for cross burnings that could be seen from all over Denver.

References:

The Coors Connection by Russ Bellant, 1988, 1991

Citizen Coors by Dan Baum, 2001

The Assault on Diversity by Lee Cokorinos, 2003

People for the American Way website - http://www.pfaw.org

Corporate Accountability Project website - http://www.corporations.org/coors

"Coors and the LGBT Community" -http://www.nlg.org/committees/lgbt/lgbt_coors_statement.htm

Center for Individual Rights website - http://www.cir-usa.org

Free Congress Foundation website - http://www.freecongress.org

Heritage Foundation website - http://www.heritage.org