Interesting

[dancerjodi]

Tisana and I were talking about this at Diesel last Thursday - the moral implications (or not?) of Curves:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/06/19/sweating_with_the_enemy/

And Tisana, the organization I was trying to remember from being super vocal at the March last year was Operation Rescue . . .

Related, I never knew about the Dominos owner and his political leanings. Are there any other large companies in this boat (besides Coors, who the article mentions) that you're aware of?

Comments

[jasonsmyr.livejournal.com]

the story starts off with this
if getting fit also means enriching a millionaire who donates to antiabortion groups, why is Curves sweeping across New England with the force of a blizzard? Thousands of Massachusetts women are facing the question of health versus choice. How will they reconcile the personal with the political?

What I ment was.. How many members of Curves know that the company the are 'giving' money to supports a cause that might be against their own personal choice in causes.

And in general.. how many people know about what causes a company they buy stuff from supports?

[tisana.livejournal.com]

True, it's mostly stuff you hear from friends who may be more of an activist than you are.

The right-wing does it too, of course, and I found myself horrified that they'd do that, then realized I was doing the same thing--actively not supporting those whose values I couldn't agree with. Boycott Ford (http://www.boycottford.com/boycottford.asp) exists because they supposedly support the "homosexual agenda"--now, had I not had that passed on to me, I wouldn't have started to respect Ford just a bit more...

[jasonsmyr.livejournal.com]

There is much bigger can-o-worms than just Curves supporting.. wonder if there should be some rules about public posting of corporate donations..

but would that even help.. I mean.. how many of those donations were given in name of Curves.. or just the private citizen that is the owner of the company..

it is frustratrating in general..

[julishka.livejournal.com]

if a company is publicly owned, they are required to have available their corporate tax returns. it is possible to look them up at various and sundry foundation libraries, wrt their corporate giving. i don't know how one goes about requesting them otherwise, as i've not done that (but have browsed through returns at a foundation library before).

annual reports touch on what they give, and other corporate papers have that information. usually, if you call a company and just ask, they'll tell you who/what charities or types of giving they support.

[dionysia.livejournal.com]

I know that the whole Curves controversy was pretty big in what snopes calls the 'inboxer outrage' phenomenon.