Send a postcard to the Åhléns Lucia child. Let's turn hate into love and solidarity

We have a chance to turn a story of hate into a story of love. You may have already heard about the Åhléns advert featuring a non-white boy playing Lucia. The department store received so many racist, hateful messages that the boy’s family requested that the advert be pulled.

This story is motivated by hate, pure and simple. The real St. Lucia is from the Mediterranean, likely Greek and definitely not white. The figure of Lucia should represent all of Sweden, and that includes the boy and his family.

The outpouring of support for the boy online has already been huge. We’re asking our Swedish supporters to go the extra distance: Send him and his family a postcard saying your Sweden includes everyone. It will just take a moment but it has the chance of changing hate to love just in time for the holidays.

Will you join us in sending a note of love and support to Åhléns’s Lucia and his family?

This small act of solidarity is about more than just hurt feelings. The forces of racism and xenophobia are increasingly on the rise in Europe and across the world. There’s even some evidence that the hateful messages sent towards this boy were part of an orchestrated white supremacist campaign. If we can show the Åhléns actor and his family that love outweighs hate, we’ll also be showing the racists that their hate is not welcome in Sweden.

SumOfUs stands up against racism everywhere around the globe. Right now we’re in a desperate fight to keep U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s favourite news org, Breitbart, from fast-tracking their global expansion in time to influence the elections in France and Germany. Already over 200 corporations have pulled their ads from Breitbart and the list is growing by the day. Let's make sure that kind of hate finds no fertile ground in Sweden.

With your help, we can show Sweden that the politics of racism and division are not welcome here.

Support Åhléns’s Lucia and send him a postcard this holidays that says love always beats hate.

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