Tag Archives: sft

December 30, 2009 · 10:10 am

Chase Community Giving Update

In a previous post, I urged you to vote for Students for a Free Tibet in the Chase Community Giving campaign on facebook.

When the official tally was released, it was obvious that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

(… Actually, there IS something rotten in the state of Denmark. Anyways…)

Students for a Free Tibet, among other leading-at-the-time-Chase-closed-the-vote-visibility charities, did NOT make the final cut of 100 charities (nor did any charity Tibet-related place).

But a quick run-down of the charities that did place in the top 100 will tell you that by golly gosh, people (mostly Americans) really care about the Chinese!

Some of the top 100 charities included:

Let me say here that I know nothing about most of these charities, and am in no way making a judgment call on the kind of work they do. I am fairly confident that most, if not all, of the organizations that won do good work. I just find it odd that such a big (okay 12.5%) slice of the pie went to Chinese charities.

Initially, I was a bit skeptical when it came to the idea that Chase Community Giving wasn’t exactly playing fair. But things started snowballing, and soon many people on facebook were asking for Chase Community Giving to be more transparent–and to start by publishing the number of votes the charities in the top 100 received.

It’s a simple request that Chase has refused. Why? Probably because Chase knows people were keeping track of the votes, and even though Chase disabled the viewing of the votes in the last day or so “to build excitement” (NYT), if some of the winners in the top 100 received less votes than some of the other charities that did not place, it would effectively blow Chase’s cover.

… Not that they didn’t prepare themselves for that possibility, by adding, in fine print, “Any organization determined to be ineligible at any time will be disqualified. Sponsor retains the right at its sole discretion to determine eligibility and reserves the right to disqualify any Charity for any reason whatsoever” (Chase Community Giving Official Rules).

Anger with Chase stems from many different angles: why was SFT disqualified? Was it disqualified or did it not get enough votes? Why isn’t Chase being transparent? Was there a way Chase knew what organizations were in the running, and if so, why didn’t they inform those organizations that they were deemed “ineligible” before the last minute?

In addition, Chase claims that their goal was to help “small and local charities.” In their rules they define this as “501(c)(3) charities with an operating budget of $10 million or less” (FAQ) which, apparently, includes such charities as:

Now, these are all great charities but I would hardly call them “small” and/or “local” even if they do operate on less than $10 million. (This is just a side comment I wanted to make. I feel as though opening up the list to every charity is a great thing, but if Chase really wanted to focus on “small and local” charities, they should have researched their eligibility cap a little more.)

The New York Times noticed the scandal, but Chase still seems to be quiet on the matter.

In the meantime (which might be a while; the second round of the Chase Community Giving campaign doesn’t start until January 15th), read about The Chase Boycott and read Tendor’s letter to Chase Community Giving.

Message from SFT HeadQuarters/Four Dead in Tibet

In other related-but-more-important news, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) has confirmed that four Tibetans have been executed in Tibet for their involvement in the spring 2008 riots.

“The PRC government currently sentences more people to death each year than any other nation in the world. TCHRD condemns the executions of four Tibetans and urges PRC government to show restraint and to grant its citizens fair trials and to abide by the basic human rights of all of its peoples, regardless of their ethnicity.

TCHRD remains unconditionally opposed to the use of the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the fundamental right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It should also be noted that the death penalty has never shown to have a special deterrent effect nor should state use it to justify the wrong done by the defendant. For instance in the case of two Tibetans (Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak) the state media earlier reported that both “have to be executed to assuage the people’s anger.” Such eyeball for eyeball approach is in no way a justification of giving death sentence. The execution of four Tibetans are further proof of China’s unwillingness to abide by the United Nations Global Moratorium on the Death Penalty, adopted in 2007, which establishes a suspension on executions with the view to abolish the death penalty.”

China Owns Us and All We Think Is “Red and Yellow Look Good Together”

I would like to echo the sentiments of Carroll Bogert, the Associate Director of the Human Rights Watch, which can be found here.

Distasteful? Yeah. I’m dismayed that they didn’t bother checking with the tenants of the building before doing something in such a sensitive case.

This isn’t the first time the Empire State Building has been lit up surrounding events of a sensitive nature. In September, on the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, the ESB glowed green. This was the same week as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York. According to stylecaster.com (the first link that came up in a google search), “Protesters of the Iranian President’s visit asked the city to make the lights on the Empire State Building green as a show of support” but this was officially denied. However, the lights atop the tower still glowed an Oz-green.

Most people who saw the lights last night in honor of Communist China’s 60th birthday probably had no idea what they were lit up for. Red and yellow, ooh pretty. But the other images flashed up on the building in protest are clear.

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