I was so angry when I read the response from the Manhattan Project Beer Co. yesterday. Like many of you, the last few days I saw the spattering of social media posts from the Pacific community and I expected at some point the company would do the right thing, apologize, and either change the name of the beer or stop selling it.
They did not do that...
I was one of the many (thousands?) of people they blocked on social media, so I saw no way forward communicating with them. But I thought we may have better luck reaching out to their distributors to ask them to take the ill-named beverage off the shelves.
So yesterday I started this petition...
And one day later more than 3,000 of you have signed it. Thank you!! We now need to start letting the beer distributors, particularly Whole Foods @wholefoods and Central Market @centralmarket know that we won't shop there until the beer is off the shelves.
You can tag them on social media (share the petition!), and you can also call them on the telephone. Manhattan Project Beer Co. lists all of their distributors on their website, which is very helpful!
It's worth mentioning the story has received untold amounts of attention on social media, and several news outlets have picked up the story, including USA Today. The Marshallese government has also reached out to both the beer company and the media, and I'm sure many of you have already seen these online.
Thank you for speaking up. I know that this is very out of character for us Pacific Islanders, but I am proud of all of you for your activism.
If you are interested, I'm posting updates on my Twitter account at @TaotaoTasi if you would like to keep connected there. I will also update here if there are any further developments.
I hope that there can still be a positive outcome with all of this, but at a minimum I think the beer company owes everyone an apology and a promise to either change the name of the beer or stop selling it.
Thanks for reading this far down my long message,
Angelo Villagomez (aka Bucky TaotaoTasi)