Left-wingers are being asked to help telecommunications company CREDO Mobile decide how to distribute a bit of its wealth in July among three of its favorite organizations: the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Zinn Education Project.
According to CREDO, the San Francisco-based company donates about $200,000 each month to three progressive groups:
Every month, CREDO donates a portion of our revenue to three amazing progressive causes. The more people who have CREDO Mobile service or use their CREDO credit card, the more we give. And every month, CREDO activists and customers’ votes determine how much of the total each group receives. This costs nothing additional to our members, but it means everything to the groups we fund. It adds up to some serious change: CREDO customers generated $187,310 in donations just last month.
Since CREDO’s start in 1985, the company states it has donated $78,910,239 to liberal causes. This year, CREDO notes it has donated to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign, Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause, Democracy Now!, Social Security Works, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Black Lives Matter, Mother Jones Investigative Fund, and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Though CREDO Mobile touts its liberal credentials and is known to blast its right-wing competitors, the company has been criticized for reselling its mobile service from Sprint, which has not been friendly to unions.
In its descriptions of the three groups seeking the funding in July, CREDO Mobile states the ACLU “aggressively defends equal rights under the law and our constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties.” The ACLU itself, however, just announced that it can no longer defend the federal religious freedom law, a factor that now puts limits on the freedoms the organization believes are worth defending.
CREDO states abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood “fights fearlessly to protect women’s access to reproductive healthcare and counters right-wing attacks on birth control and abortion access.”
Also vying for funds is the Zinn Education Project, which CREDO states is a provider of “lessons and curricula to teach middle and high school students about the role of working people, women, people of color and social movements in shaping U.S. history.” The Zinn Project supports the use of revisionist historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
The education initiative claims it now has more than 45,000 teachers who have registered at its site to download teaching materials for their classrooms in order to continue the spread of the socialist agenda in American’s public schools.
In March, the Zinn Project featured a post highlighting the work of Alison Kysia, author of “A People’s History of Muslims in the United States: What School Textbooks and the Media Miss.” Kysia teaches a vision of Muslims as an integral part of the fabric of the progressive movement in the United States, with a presence in every social justice struggle along the way.
Over at the Zinn Project, the race is on with the group begging for votes in order to receive up to $100,000.
“Please take a few seconds to vote for the Zinn Education Project right now,” the project asks. “Your vote—and the critical funding it brings us—will go a long way. You can support us without spending a dime.”
“These funds will provide vital support so that the Zinn Education Project can post more lessons and resources for teaching people’s history, reach more teachers who want to teach outside the textbook, and convene teachers using Zinn Education Project lessons,” the organization adds.
Zinn’s efforts appear to be paying off thus far. At time of publication, the Zinn Project was leading with 47 percent of the vote, followed by the ACLU with 28 percent. Planned Parenthood is trailing with 25 percent.
But July has only just begun.
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