Tia Mowry, a former Disney actress known for has been silent on Israel's genocide in Palestine for 2+ years while serving as a Starbucks ambassador — a Zionist-linked chain boycotted for backing apartheid and firing pro-Palestine unionists.
Tia Mowry's silence on the ongoing genocide in Palestine and her Starbucks ambassadorship normalizes and corporately sanitises CEO Schultz's Zionist funding as well as Starbucks' union-busting nature.
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Tia Mowry, an American actress best known for her role in the 1990s sitcom Sister, Sister, has maintained silence on Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza — where conservative death toll estimates remain frozen at 40,000-78,000, though the true number of Palestinian lives lost is well into the hundreds of thousands due to Israel’s obstruction, targeted killings of journalists, and relentless bombardment.
Despite her silence, Tia Mowry has also continued to serve as a paid ambassador for Starbucks, a corporation deeply entangled in Zionist settler-colonialism and the subjugation of Palestinians.
Since October 2023, Mowry has issued no public statements on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the blockade enforcing collective punishment, or the International Court of Justice's rulings on plausible genocide and apartheid.
Instead, she has actively promoted Starbucks through sponsored content, including Instagram posts for seasonal drinks like the 2024 Pumpkin Spice Latte, captioned "#StarbucksPartner — fall vibes with my fave!" This endorsement continues despite BDS calls to boycott the chain for its role in sustaining Israel's ethnostate.
Starbucks' complicity stems from its CEO Howard Schultz's overt Zionism: he has funneled over $30 million to Israeli institutions, including the Hebrew University on stolen Palestinian land, and co-founded Birthright Israel to indoctrinate Jewish youth into settler-colonial narratives.
In a 2014 shareholder meeting, Schultz equated Palestinian BDS activism with "anti-Semitism," inverting victimhood to delegitimize resistance against 76 years of Nakba — forced expulsions, land theft, and ethnic cleansing — with the company operating 150+ outlets in occupied Palestine, artwashing apartheid as cultural normalcy while Palestinians endure genocide.
Compounding this, Starbucks has waged a vicious anti-union campaign, firing dozens of pro-Palestine organizers (e.g., in Buffalo, NY, and Seattle) for supporting Gaza ceasefires and Palestinian rights.
Workers United reports over 100 unfair labor practices charges since 2021, including surveillance and retaliation against strikes that explicitly linked labor justice to ending genocide.
By aligning with Starbucks, Mowry indirectly bolsters this suppression, manufacturing consent for Zionist violence and erasing Palestinian voices, even as Jewish anti-Zionists and global allies demand corporate accountability.
Starbucks Boycott:
While boycotting Starbucks is warranted based on its unethical track record and it’s former CEO’s ties to Israeli cyber-surveillance firms, it should not be conflated with or represented as an official BDS campaign targeting companies complicit in occupied Palestinian territories.
Starbucks is not officially on the BDS boycott list for companies directly involved in oppressing Palestinians and so should not be targeted with the same intensity — doing so risks minimizing the focused work of Palestinian solidarity movements.
The reasoning behind the Starbucks boycott instead stems from its union-busting tactics and unethical business practices; namely sending cease-and-desist letters and filing lawsuits against pro-Palestinian voices within its workers' union.
While reprehensible, their silencing of protestors was an attempt to clamp down on union activism rather than a pro-Israel stance; in actuality, Starbucks has largely maintained a neutral corporate position on the Palestinian issue itself.
That being said, there are many legitimate ethical concerns with Starbucks worthy of boycott for reasons. These include issues around supply chain management, workers' rights, human rights violations, tax avoidance, environmental impacts, enabling factory farming practices and the investments of former CEO, Howard Schutlz.
Former CEO Howard Schultz's investments in Israeli cyber-surveillance firms like Wiz are also hugely problematic, especially as he has the 6th largest share of Starbucks with 21,795,538 shares (1.93%) valued at $1,991,894,218 as of 18/04/2024 — meaning he is directly benefiting monetarily from Starbucks. With this in mind, the act of visibly consuming Starbucks products has also taken on new symbolic meanings for some Zionist entities and individuals in the current political climate. As efforts to boycott companies complicit in Palestinian oppression gain momentum, publicly committing to consumerism has become a way for certain groups to overtly signal their rejection of such boycotts.
By ostentatiously patronizing Starbucks, certain individuals are attempting to declare their opposition to the non-violent economic pressure tactics employed by the Palestinian solidarity campaigns. This brandishing of Starbucks effectively co-opts the brand into a display of anti-Palestinian ideology, despite the company's official neutrality on the issue.
As such, the simple act of buying a Starbucks drink has been politicized as a statement against Palestinian rights by those who oppose the boycott efforts targeting the Israeli occupation.
Silence = Complicity:
For those who have passionately spoken out against other instances of genocide and massacres, yet fall silent when it comes to the suffering endured by Palestinians, their silence becomes a glaring indictment of the value placed on Palestinian lives and perpetuates a dangerous narrative that suggests Palestinian suffering is somehow less worthy of outrage, less deserving of empathy and less human than that of others.
By choosing silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, those with influential platforms inadvertently contribute to the erasure of Palestinian voices and experiences. They perpetuate a narrative of invisibility that allows the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unabated, shielded from the spotlight of global scrutiny.
Their silence sends a chilling message of complicity to the world – one that suggests Palestinian lives are expendable, their struggles inconsequential and their humanity negotiable. It emboldens perpetrators of violence and oppression, granting them impunity under the guise of indifference.
To remain silent in the face of Palestinian suffering is to betray the very essence of activism – the relentless pursuit of justice for all, without exception or equivocation. It’s a betrayal not only of the Palestinian people but of the universal principles of human dignity and equality and instead is a tacit endorsement of the dehumanization and marginalization of an entire population.
True activism demands consistency and integrity, an unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power and standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, regardless of geography or politics.
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