This week, the Washington Redskins have gone through a PR nightmare as 87 different shareholders and investment firms, whose financial involvement totals more than $620 billion in assets, asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to end their business relationships with the Washington Redskins due to the racist nature of the team’s nickname.
Letters from the investors to the three major brands include representation from First Peoples Worldwide, Oneida Nation Trust Enrollment Committee, Trillium Asset Management, LLC Boston Common Asset Management, LLC Boston Trust Walden Mercy Investment Services and First Affirmative Financial Network.
While team owner Dan Snyder has said that he will never change the team’s name, citing franchise tradition, the pressure from all three of those giant companies was enough to make anyone fold. The name is going to change.
That has caused many on social media to start thinking of a different name, while others took to photoshop and actually made it a reality.
Isaac Goldman of Ultimate Effects dropped his mockup of the team called the ‘Washington Warriors’ and included a custom made uniform and helmet.
Flip the pages to see all the photos on the below post.
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“This is a broader movement now that’s happening that Indigenous peoples are part of,” Carla Fredericks, director of First Peoples Worldwide and director of the University of Colorado Law School’s American Indian Law Clinic, told O’Hara. “Indigenous peoples were sort of left out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s in many respects, because our conditions were so dire on reservations and our ability to engage publicly was very limited because of that. With social media now, obviously everything is very different.
“I’m very encouraged by the rising awareness of how every dollar you spend is a vote you cast on your values. And that applies to money you have in investments as well as any brands you support.”
