Goodyear spokesperson.
Posted on 08/20/2020 11:43:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
Upon hearing the news Goodyear deems "Blue Lives Matter" messaging unacceptable, police officers have this to say: "Stop buying Goodyear tires."
Goodyear Tires has long been held up as the ideal for police tires, which is why many were shocked when a photo allegedly from Goodyear’s sensitivity training was posted online. The leaked photo said “Black Lives Matter” attire was permitted, but “Blue Lives Matter” would be met with zero tolerance.
While Goodyear denied that the photo came from their corporate office, they admitted that their policy bans any political paraphernalia “that fall outside the scope of racial justice and equity issues.” The policy seems to align perfectly with the allegedly fake photo.
According to @goodyear tires, a MAGA shirt is a zero tolerance hate symbol. But Black Lives Matter is allowed. pic.twitter.com/1kWRqSDFQa
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 18, 2020
In regards to this ludicrous and anti-cop stance from a major provider of tires for police cars, several officers and union representatives spoke to The Federalist about their thoughts on Goodyear and the broader relationship between the public and the police.
There was a general consensus that companies ought not limit the speech of their employees by determining which opinions are “acceptable” to express. Detective Greg Wilking from Salt Lake City, Utah, said he doesn’t think the company policy helps anyone. “Being anti-someone and pro-something else and putting everyone else down in their beliefs or encouraging their speech, I don’t think it’s helpful in any direction,” he said.
Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Officers (NAPA), a major police union said, “From our point of view, it’s just disgusting. It would be wrong for any employer to try to dictate their employees’ thoughts or feelings or political views, but in this case, I think they’re on the wrong side of it.”
This trend of companies distancing themselves from the police and supporting leftist causes is not exclusive to Goodyear. The list of companies releasing woke statements is seemingly endless. Lieutenant John Lamon of Sparta, New Jersey, noted Goodyear’s policy as a continuation of the national trend, stating, “It seems like a lot of these corporations now have swung the direction of, ‘we’re going to make sure that we don’t offend anyone.’ It’s something that, as with anything, we’re going to have to deal with. Sometimes you don’t like stuff that occurs, but all you can do is try to work with it.”
Dennis Slocumb, International Political Director and Vice President Emeritus of The International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), a major police union, has used Goodyear’s statements to determine the company’s values. He said, “Goodyear is a profit-making corporation and that’s the decision that they made. We support the First Amendment, of course, but that’s fine for them. They have a choice of who they’re going to support. Our members, and those who support our members, have a choice of where we buy our tires.”
To police officers, a rejection of “Blue Lives Matter” is not merely a political stance, but a callous statement of disregard for their lives. “To see today, a company that has made millions of dollars off police officers publicly declare that they don’t care about their lives, their very lives, that it’s unacceptable for an employee to support their beliefs is just disgusting,” Johnson said. “At the same time, the company says it’s OK for their employees to support a group that calls for the murder of police officers. It’s just disgusting.”
Andrew Smith, the chief of police in Green Bay, Wisconsin, put the anti-Blue Lives Matter sentiments in perspective, remembering the police that have died in the line of duty and how the slogan refers to lives that have been lost.
“There’s been lots of talk about the Goodyear and Black Lives Matter business. I refer people to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which reports all of the officers that have been killed. We lost 159 officers from the United States in line of duty deaths this year so far. That’s more than last year, and I guarantee you that every one of those blue lives mattered,” he said.
Police deaths in the line of duty are up 64 percent from last year. Further, the number of lives lost so far in 2020 already exceeds the total deaths of last year.
Many expressed that Blue Lives Matter is not to the exclusion of other lives, just an expression of support for the dangerous job that is policing. Smith said the Goodyear issue “speaks volumes about where we are as a country.”
“When wearing something as simple as ‘Blue Lives Matter,’ which doesn’t exclude other lives – and many of the blue lives killed this year happened to be black officers – I’m having a hard time understanding how that could be offensive to somebody” he said.
Lamon said, “They’ve taken that stance of ‘Blue Lives Matter upsets people.’ I think it’s ridiculous. In my opinion, all lives matter. It shouldn’t just be one group. Everyone’s life matters, whether it’s a Blue life or Black life or Hispanic life or Asian life.”
Some of the dismay comes from the frequent use of Goodyear tires on police cars, and the positive association they previously elicited. Johnson said, “The thing that’s worst of all is that Goodyear, for decades, has made a tremendous profit by selling their products, their tires in particular, to police departments and to manufacturers like Ford, who built police vehicles. For a long time, Goodyear tires was what you wanted to have on your police car.”
Smith noted that, while his police car was using Firestone, “I’ve got Goodyear tires on our personal car right now, I just looked to see. I’m really surprised that the company would come out with an anti-Blue Lives Matter training.”
This branding of Goodyear is not accidental on the company’s part. On the section of their website which specifically sells tires for police vehicles, they refer to themselves as the “recognized leader for police pursuit tires.” To then turn around and ban employees from workplace advocacy supporting a sizable customer base, while allowing demonstrated support for an openly anti-police group, feels like a betrayal to many officers.
The frustrations with Goodyear and the anti-cop crowd are tempered somewhat by stories of positive community interactions. “I think a large majority of the American public supports their police,” Johnson said. Chief Andrew Smith of the Green Bay told a heartwarming story of his near inability to go out in public without being stopped by several people intending to wish him well and express their support for the police. Andy Erbaugh of Tyler, Texas likewise expressed positivity, saying, “We’ll continue to do our jobs. The people in our town love us, we love them, and we’ll continue protecting them.”
Likewise, there was a perception that more widespread public support would return to the police. Lamon discussed how the unfeasibility of many proposals from the anti-cop crowd will likely bring people back to reason.
“I think that the pendulum swung one way, but it will swing back the opposite way when people see that we actually do perform a service that they need,” Lamon said. “When you get these people that say, ‘defund the police,’ well then, who’s going to take care of the people that need help? It’s ridiculous. People make comments, and then people rally behind it.”
In regards to decisions on how to proceed, the opinions were mixed. Both the IUPA and NAPO made this suggestion for anyone who supports the police: stop buying Goodyear tires.
“The feedback I have heard, and I will admit that most of the people with whom I interact are quite of the same mind I am, that they would no more buy Goodyear tires,” Slocumb said. “It’s not like you don’t have a choice. We would support anyone who supports the police not buying Goodyear.”
Johnson stated, “Our group would encourage not just individual officers and their families and their friends and their neighbors to avoid Goodyear products, but police departments, manufacturers, and the companies which service police vehicles. Stay away from Goodyear.”
Some, however, are not quite ready to end their longstanding relationship with the company just yet, and want to give Goodyear an opportunity to amend their hardline stance. Unready to write them off just yet, Smith said he wants “to see what Goodyear’s response is when they learn how people across the country feel about the [anti-cop] training.”
> So, Goodyear is run 100% by the HR Department. <
It’s not just an HR thing. All major organizations are now run by cowards. Here’s just one example. A high school near me had an Indian wearing a full headdress as the school symbol. It was a very noble representation.
Well, one person complained about that. Just one person! And she wasn’t even a Native American. She was just a liberal busybody.
All hell broke loose. The school’s symbol was immediately changed. New letterheads were ordered, and new school shirts were ordered. And the big Indian picture on the gym wall was painted over.
That one liberal busybody should have been told to just shut up and go away. But everyone in administration was too cowardly to do that. They all folded.
“...where they proceed to lead the CEO around by the nose.”
They lead the CEO around by threat of sexual and racial discrimination lawsuits.
(Firing white guys, though, is risk-free.)
Goodyear spokesperson.
Goodyear has said that the message “didn’t come from corporate,” but the person at the field training sessions disputes that. Goodyear has not clarified who wrote that despicable slide in the training deck and certainly has not disavowed it.
If Goodyear had not silently/tactfully approved this hatred of our cops, the person/department would have been fired.
I know Goodyear is a private company, but it reminds me;
I grew up hearing about and believing in other nationally known organizations, only to realize that organization had now changed forever.
FBI, IRS, CIA. I’m sure the majority of work done by these three is good work, but I now realize they have been used as political weapons by the Obama Administration.
Probably, it wasn’t done only during the Obama years.
I know the CIA has it’s own Black Budget.
You won’t be missing much. I think they make crappy tires anyway.
Before I took the car to Goodyear, I always took it to Fort Campbell to get it serviced and the did a good job. But then AAFES let Firestone take over, and the store they let over was very croocked. So I stopped taking my car there and went instead to the Good year store which was closer to my house.
Dear 911:
We have attached a list of companies, their officers and directors who do not support blue lives or white lives, Hispanic lives, Asian lives. If you receive a call from anyone on the list be sure to place them at the bottom of the respond list. We know they won’t mind, they have made clear what they think of us.
Love
LEOs
>> So, Goodyear is run 100% by the HR Department.
Which company isn’t these days...
Goodyear already caved. A new message from Rich Kramer from 18 minutes ago approving apparel that supports law enforcement.
https://www.facebook.com/GoodyearNorthAmerica/photos/a.1744229989151091/2850579448516134/?type=3
How could you trust their tires? Now that they have made clear they do not support the police how do you know they aren’t sabotaging the product the police depend on. Look elsewhere for tires.
I’m betting that right now Goodyear is hunting down the leaker and he or she will be fired by Tuesday. When that happens the person should be invited to address the Republican convention.
I see this in many large companies I deal with. The “real” managers deal with day-to-day stuff like manufacturing, sales, logistics. HR, and particularly the affirmative action and social policy stuff, is left in the hands of (increasingly) low IQ non-business social-workers types
The fact that Goodyear addressed this issue immediately at least tells me that upper management was probably surprised by what the SJWs in the HR department were doing. Now they are huddling to figure out the quietest way out of this mess.
I don’t see anything wrong with that....fwiw-
Corporate Diversity Officers are the new Kommissar/political officers.
We're coming up on needing new tires for one of our cars. Goodyear was on the radar screen. They just took themselves off.
We have a firm that we work with, in Portland, OR. The line of business is financial services, insurance, employee benefits, etc.
Until about the last 2 months.
Now it seems that it is more important to be WOKE and support the revolution for BLM, Antifa, and all the rest, at whatever cost. Suddenly this messaging has taken precedence over anything to help the customers. It is just disgusting. I believe it is due to having a minority, “woke” CEO for the time being, who has a higher loyalty to his RACE, than to the thousands of customers and salespeople that have collectively meant excellence for the firm.... until lately. Then the board of directors is apparently too scared to NOT seem sympathetic, so they are just looking the other way while this goes on.
Every police department can find all of the tire shops and give them “Extra Patrol” and might find a traffic violation of customers departing with Good Year tires.—Spread that word, Good Year!
J.C Penney and Ford Motor Corporation tried supporting the gay agenda years ago and Penney darn near went bankrupt, and Ford was so financially hurt, they had to retract their support— Penney never did fully recover, and have goen downhill severely since, because at that time, many folks cared enough about things to boycott, en mass, Ford for their pro gay agenda-
Goodyear must wanna go down that same road- Btu this is why we need a unifying Tea Party- so they can organize a massive effort countrywide to boycott and combat ignorant racist anti-cop, anti-American crap that Goodyear has done with their ignorant ‘spit in decent person’s faces’ statement
Can you name the firm?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.