The current round is over the Kroger gift card program. Under that program,
one may buy a Kroger gift card from any one of dozens of non-profit
organizations. Kroger then donates a small fraction of purchases made with
that gift card to the non-profit organization that the customer designates.
Kroger has no role in selecting the organization that gets the donations.
Customers may select a church, a school or any other non-profit organization
that participates in the program. One of the participants is the Ohio Valley
Environmental Coalition.
This is more than the Friends of Coal and the West Virginia Coal Association
could stand. They announced that they planned to inform all their members
both in West Virginia and in other states of Kroger's perfidy. While not
explicitly urging a boycott of Kroger, the Coal Association announced a plan
to "get the word out" to the people who work in the coal industry and "spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly to put food on the table." Since the
announcement, letters from miners or their families attacking Kroger have
started to pop up. While there is no way of knowing for sure, such campaigns
usually mean there has been some persuading going on at work.
Let's get this straight. Kroger didn't do anything to the Friends of Coal,
the Coal Association or anybody else connected with the coal industry. It
only gave its customers an opportunity to choose to donate to the Ohio
Valley Environmental Coalition. It didn't tell its customers they had to
donate to it or to anybody. It didn't suggest that its employees write
letters to the editor condemning the Coal Association.
While the coal guys characterize anyone who disagrees with them as a
radical, the court system is inherently conservative. It enforces laws
approved Congress. The Clean Water Act was passed during the Nixon
administration by an overwhelming majority of the United States Congress. In
the case of the coal industry, it is being enforced by a federal judge.
Read the full article -
The Charleston Gazette - April 3, 2008
