ON STARBUCKS AND “RACISM:”

  1. Now Starbucks is saying this was all contrary to their policy and, presumably, anyone who wants to sit in their shops and not order anything and use the bathrooms has the right to do so as long as they like.
  2. Starbucks, in other words, has just announced its stores are not stores primarily, but are now privately-funded shelters and bathroom facilities for the homeless. You don’t have to spend a slim dime in the store to sit as long as you please and use the bathrooms.
  3. That’ll be great for Starbucks’ business. Their yuppie douchebag clientele love the homeless in the abstract, but we’ll see how much they appreciate their coffee shops being jammed with them, close-up-like, occupying most tables and chairs.
  4. I don’t even want to defend Starbucks; I want them to have the full taste of Social Justice Warrior progressivism. If this is the company’s ideology, then they should live that ideology to the full.

Read the whole thing.

Live by Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, die by it as well.  I don’t think Starbucks realizes what they’ve let themselves in for after years of leftwing virtue signaling. As Noah Rothman writes at Commentary in a post titled “Eating Their Own,” Starbucks’ management brought much of the ongoing fury on themselves via their own virtue signaling and speaking in SJW pieties:

Rosalind Brewer, Starbucks COO and a young African-American woman, called the incident a “teachable moment for all of us” and recommended “unconscious-bias” training for every Starbucks staffer. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson joined ABC’s “Good Morning America” to personally apologize to the men involved in this incident when protesters interrupted his appearance. “A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black,” they chanted. You can’t blame these demonstrators for noticing that the terms of engagement had broadened significantly.

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It is easy to see why this kind of activism is more satisfying than, say, going on about Chick-Fil-A’s Christian values. Despite a six-year-long liberal campaign dedicated to educating the public on the deliciousness of its products, the benefits and time off afforded its employees, and franchising opportunities in underserved urban markets, this chain just keeps on expanding. Imagine that. Routinely rebuffed assaults on a fortified position are exhausting. They are nowhere near as rewarding as a direct attack on a receptive target that yields a quick and gratifying victory. That explains why social justice activists are increasingly focused on exacting concessions from like minds: young adult novelists, liberal filmmakers, Hollywood executives, painters, restauranteurs, university professors and administrators, socially conscious corporations, and the left-of-center politicians who have folded these activists into their core constituencies.

These intramural feuds are transforming the progressive movement from within, but it’s not clear that the social-justice movement has secured anything other than the illusion of efficacy.

By appeasing the mob, Starbucks’ management have walked into a box canyon. Get woke, go broke? It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens next.