Coronavirus Diaries: The Other Crises
Last week I posted the comments of three breweries about what customers can do to help them weather a terrible winter when coronavirus infections are reaching all-time highs. They offered excellent advice. I also received the following message from Nat West, owner of Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider. Those who follow his Twitter feed know Nat has been a regular participant in the nightly marches for racial justice. His comments tack in a completely different direction, so I’m offering them separately here. Nat has always been outspoken, and here he wonders why businesses don’t look to social and racial justice as important issues to address. His comments are below.
There seems to be a giant disconnect between what the beer/cider industry is capable of doing to raise awareness about these kinds of issues, and what we are actually doing. You can approach it from a social justice perspective, an economic perspective, or hell, even just a clickbait social media/marketing perspective. Any way you look at it, there are more opportunities to make real change—which doesn’t come at the expense of your business. I've been really saddened by the head-in-the-sand attitude that the beer community has had this summer.
What meaningful reforms have we made to address the defining topic of the summer, Black Lives Matter? Here in Portland, we passed a new police oversight system (26-217), but what impact will that have? Should we all just sit back and congratulate ourselves and trust the new system will effect change? Over 50% of all arrests by Portland police are of people experiencing homelessness. How can the new oversight system fix that? Are we really spending tax money to repeatedly arrest the homeless? Adam's Old Town location is out of business in large part because of the vast numbers of people sleeping on the sidewalks. They need to sleep somewhere, but why are we spending $75 million to assist 37,000 people, of which about 4,000 experience chronic homelessness? And homelessness is increasing every year. Sounds like an abject waste of money. Even if you approach it purely from a business point of view, it makes sense to educate and take action. We passed 26-213, the Parks levy, which will cost me about $300 per year, and bring in $48 mil overall. I'm not anti-tax by any means, but I want us all to get good value from our taxes. Why didn't we cut the Portland police budget by the suggested $18 mil, and send that money to the Parks?
So while I appreciate your willingness to help lift us all up a bit, I think most of us aren't worthy of any assistance since we aren't being useful community members. I know that my own outspoken communication and actions have been well-rewarded financially for the business. I've received maybe two hate-filled emails since adopting my new public stance. But I've received many dozens of little messages in our home delivery orders along the lines of, “Thanks for all you do for our community,” or even, “I don't even drink cider but I want to support your business because you're standing up for Black Lives.” I've had the executive brass of New Seasons reach out to me privately saying they're excited about what I've been doing and are pushing for us top-down to their stores. The work I've been doing is like another job, which has been super hard with everything else going on (per Ben’s comments), plus we are finally doing our move to a new cidery, but these fundamental issues cannot be ignored.
There are lots of ways businesses can actively be part of the solution. Not all of us can attend protests and put our bodies on the line against cops. How about some serious diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives such as rewriting hiring practices, advertising openings in non-traditional locations, and prioritizing non-white male hires? How about an ongoing benefaction program to financially support grassroots community groups? How about a follow-up beer to Black is Beautiful with proceeds to the Black Resilience Fund? How about a school supply drive (which disproportionately affects BIPOC) such as the plug-and-play one produced by BeerKulture? You wrote a post in July with a link to this article offering a few great examples of internal change that companies can make. I hope many of us are implementing many of those practices. I realize I’m not seeing inside every brewery. But I’m wondering why more of us aren’t adopting a public stance. Shouldn’t we all be actively courting non-white guy customers? Shouldn’t we all be working to move beyond the exclusive club that the industry has become?
PHOTO: REVEREND NAT’S HARD CIDER