It's not about me. The largest student protest since Vietnam is currently happening. The majority of young Americans[0] are pro-Palestine and those numbers have only been growing
I just think it's interesting that a company who's branding is so strongly tied to that demographic is cool with being seen so loudly on the wrong side of this by young people and the left
> majority of young Americans[0] are pro-Palestine...there's stats
A majority of 18 to 29-year old Americans have a favourable view of the Palestinian people, a historic high. That's favourability, not one side or the other, and the phrasing in respect of the people is important.
33% sympathise more with Palestine than Israel and 27% reject Israel's reasons for fighting Hamas (34% believe Hamas' fight is valid).
These numbers are historic enough to not have to twist them.
> To achieve our mission, we are committed to embracing diverse voices and providing equal opportunities because a business can only be as healthy as the community it serves.
It would be great (but unlikely and possibly illegal) to see a company put a list of the voices they don't want to represent on a page like this so we can see if the omission of some initiatives/voices/whatever is intentional or accidental.
You don't need to like Hamas to dislike what's happening to the Palestinian people. Heck, you don't even need to like the Palestinian people themselves to dislike what is being done to them.
I'm just talking about demographics here. The youth support Palestine and stand against genocide. The largest student protests since Vietnam are happening RIGHT NOW.
All I'm saying is you would think a company who's branding is so strongly linked to that younger demographic would care more
Sweetgreen's customers are middle- and high-income white-collar workers. I'm not seeing the overlap with the protesters outside age.
> largest student protests since Vietnam are happening RIGHT NOW
To be clear, you're comparing a protest movement across thousands of campuses and millions of students to one spanning tens and thousands, respectively. (South Africa might be a better example.)
> To be clear, you're comparing a protest movement across thousands of campuses and millions of students to one spanning tens and thousands, respectively.
Duke is walking out. UCLA got attacked by counter protestors. UT Austin's in the news for police brutality against students. There are active encampments in Stanford, ALL of the UCs, Cal Poly, all of the ivy league schools. As of May 11 there was an estimated 2,900 arrests across 57 campuses.
Go to your nearest university and you're sure pressed to at least find stickers or artwork if not an active encampment. Sorry to say, but you're out of touch
Where are you seeing thousands? It's hundreds globally per your source. The Vietnam War protests were thousands in the country, and that's not by counting stickers but mass protests and campus-wide shutdowns.
> As of May 11 there was an estimated 2,900 arrests across 57 campuses
Yes, thousands and tens. That's a big deal. But it's not on the scale of the Vietnam War protests. Which makes sense--we're not drafting our kids to go die in Gaza! (And the economy is doing well.)
In any case, the argument that this is relevant to Sweetgreen's business requires a little more to stand on. Certainly their Q1 results seem to dispute the hypothesis; the problem isn't growth, it's costs.
Only around 2 thousand students were arrested for the Vietnam protests in 1970.
It's important to remember that student protests are always unpopular. Only about 11% of Americans thought the Guard was too rough on student protestors at Kent state when police shot at crowds and killed 4 students. 58% of Americans thought the National Guard should've been more rough
> Only around 2 thousand students were arrested for the Vietnam protests in 1970
12,000 were arrested over a matter of days in 1971 [1].
Again, these protests don't need to be comparable in size to Vietnam's to be legitimate. Focussing on that narrative is a dead end. When it comes to Sweetgreen's business, I've gone from thinking the CEO should stay out of politics to suspecting he may be resonating better with Sweetgreen's actual customers than I initially gave him credit for.
Do a lot of students buy $20 salads in the US? Most of the people I know going to this sort of places are white collar 30+ who are vegan or into the fitness & dietary supplements trend. The rest just go to normal places (which means Mediterranean food here in Spain).
> I'm just talking about demographics here. The youth support Palestine and stand against genocide.
Meh.
The youth of every generation (my own included) supports/supported lots of things with little to no understanding of the things they support/supported.[1]
The only real conclusion you can draw from the youth is that they self-organise into activist groups. The actual cause is often not relevant - they just want to be in-group, not out-group, and to be in-group you have to visibly agree with the group's stance.
Displaying a lack of thought and nuance is a condition of group membership. A lack of thought and nuance, non-coincidentally, is also a large characteristic of youth.
> All I'm saying is you would think a company who's branding is so strongly linked to that younger demographic would care more
I'm not familiar with the company in question, and don't know (nor care) what their publicised political leanings are. I was only commenting on your linking of "liberal" with a far-right demographic.
[1] As in this case, where the "progressive" group is championing the rights of the conservative group. In their minds, they have not yet seen the dissonance between what they say they are (liberal, progressive, left) and who they are championing for (conservative, regressive, right).
