Whole Foods boycott grows after store sends employees in Black Lives Matter masks home
Even Cambridge City, Mass., council members are supporting boycott
Protest groups are continuing to gather at a Whole Foods store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after several employees were sent home for refusing to take off their Black Lives Matter face masks in June.
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More than 40 people gathered outside the store to convince shoppers to take their business elsewhere Sunday, the Boston Globe reported. Cambridge City Council members Alanna Mallon and Quinton Zondervan attended Sunday's protest.
"Proud to stand with the employees and my colleagues in service. @WholeFoods @Amazon: your actions speak louder than your hollow words," Zondervan wrote on Twitter in June. "Join us in boycott! They picked the wrong city to mess with."
Amazon, which acquired Whole Foods in 2017, pledged $10 million to social justice groups to end the "inequitable and brutal treatment of Black and African Americans" in the wake of George Floyd's death.
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All Whole Foods employees "must comply with our longstanding company dress code, which prohibits clothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not company-related," a Whole Foods Market spokesperson told FOX Business.
"Team Members with face masks that do not comply with dress code are always offered new face masks," the Whole Foods Market spokesperson said. "Team Members are unable to work until they comply with dress code.”
Whole Foods employee Suverino Frith, 21, said he was one of the workers told to leave in June and called on Whole Foods to be bold on Sunday, the Globe reported.
Over 20 workers at Whole Foods grocery store stage a walkout Tuesday during a protest in Cambridge, Mass., on June 30, 2020. (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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“These are careful people who want to be loud but not too loud,” Frith said, according to the Globe. “They don’t want to alienate anyone. They don’t really want to choose a side; they just want to seem like they are. Only that’s too bad, because we’re choosing a side for them.”