In less than two weeks, this country has been turned upside down. Global abortion funding stripped, citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries banned from our shores and two pipelines we thought we had defeated revived. This isn’t our America -- and it’s time to fight back.
Uber seems fine with it, though. As long as it can still make money. Uber was named to Trump’s Strategic and policy forum and has vowed to “work with the Trump administration.” But the worst was yet to come.
Saturday night, after Trump’s executive order refugee ban, New York’s taxicabs refused to pick up passengers from JFK airport in a stirring show of resistance to Trump. Uber blasted out ads saying that it would continue working through the strike -- defying the picket line and effectively supporting the ban. #DeleteUber started trending as Americans across the country deleted the Uber app in fury.
Tell Uber there is no collaborating with tyrants. Demand it refuses to work with Donald Trump.
Lyft, Uber’s chief rival in ride sharing, denounced the ban publicly and then donated $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who was desperately trying to gather resources to free the Muslim foreign nationals detained at airports across the country. The ACLU eventually won a stay from a federal judge that forced border agents to release the detainees -- virtually all of whom held legal visas or green cards they had spent months or years applying for.
After all this pressure, Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick finally criticized Trump’s executive order and said Uber would open up a fund for any of its drivers affected by the ban. This after just one day of pushback. Imagine what we could accomplish if we all stood up and told Uber we won't allow it to make money off a Trump White House while migrants, women, LGBTQ people and the climate pay the price.
Uber: No profiting off of hate. Refuse to collaborate with the Trump administration.
More information
Washington Post. 29 January 2017.
CNN. 25 January 2017.