I'm taking a week off from alarmist cartoons about the fascist wing of the Requblican Party.
And drawing instead about the corporations that fund them.
By now, you cannot but notice how interracial and non-intergenderal couples have begun to appear in television and internet commercials, once the exclusive domain of white heterosexuals. (Although I've always had my suspicions about Mr. Whipple.)
Leaving interracial families aside for the nonce, unless the same-sex couples are pressing you to ask your doctor about anti-retroviral medication, you might blink and miss them. Which is why the guys in today's cartoon are stuck in that split second of time.
Many of these same advertisers wanting to appear (for lack of a better word) woke have, however, been helping fill Republican politicians' campaign coffers for decades, even as the party marches farther and farther into antiLGBTQ and racist territory. Repressive and restrictive laws are proliferating in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Iowa.
Chuck Magro. John May. Donnie King. Cory Harris. Charles Scharf.
These are the CEOs of five of the most powerful corporations operating in Iowa: Corteva. John Deere. Tyson. Wellmark. Wells Fargo.
Where are they? Should we request a wellness check to make sure they’re OK?
These CEOs lead corporate monopolies making billions every year off the bodies and brains of Iowans, including LGBTQ Iowans, yet they’ve been missing in action as Iowa Republicans propose the largest number of anti-LGBTQ bills ever in a single legislative session.
These bills include everything from attempts to ban books (because kids reading about LGBTQ characters is dangerous, while meatpacking plant child labor isn’t) to an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in the state (forget the issue of constitutionality).
The time has come to realize that corporate monopolies are no friend of the LGBTQ community when the going gets tough.
For these corporations, maintaining favor with the Republicans who run the state is more important than standing up for LGBTQ Iowans, including their own workers. They know if they dare defy Iowa Republicans, their ability to maintain the monopoly power they use to deliver their excessive profits will be threatened. ...
Perhaps one can't blame Corporate America for being intimidated by the example Florida has set after Disney Corporation dared to stand up for its LGBTQ employees and customers. Not every corporation has quite as sweet a deal as Disney had up to this year from the states where they operate; but nearly every major corporation has plied legislatures with campaign donations in order to secure special benefits of one kind or another: Tax Incremental Financing districts, property tax waivers, monopoly protection, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and so on and so forth.
And they don't want those bennies taken away after so much investment in those politicians.
If we in the LGBTQ+ community want to know who our real friends are in the business world, that Des Moines Register editorial suggests we look to the folks who can't afford to pay premium prices for friends in the statehouse:
[I]t’s again small-business owners who possess the courage to speak up. Dozens of small businesses like the print shop Raygun, the bookstore Reading in Public, and the brewery Firetrucker Brewery have all taken stands alongside LGBTQ Iowans and against Iowa Republicans’ proposed legislation.
Wouldn’t Iowa’s LGBTQ community be better off with fewer corporate monopolies and more Rayguns, Reading in Publics, and Firetruckers? The answer is yes.
Ask your doctor if small businesses are right for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment