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Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

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Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if they're entitled or not, they did it, and then Uber did what they did, and people are now evaluating those actions based on the facts and their values. You don't have to agree with every protest. There isn't a universal rule that says all protest is good. But every protest can be judged on its merits, which is what people are doing, not reducing the motivations to "just because they are unhappy".…

My point isn't whether this particular protest is "good" or "bad". Even knowing relatively little about this protest, I think that I would likely agree with the protesters. My issue is that I don't see any reason why Uber should be obligated to stop service just because there is a protest going on. A lot of people in this thread seem to feel that having a protest entitles you to ruin other peoples' day and anyone who…

The history of direct action and protest which disrupts daily life is argument enough: It works. History also shows us that when people ignore injustice and just get on with their day, that allows the injustice to grow and fester. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated while the majority of people who could have stopped it did nothing.

The word entitlement is so charged and vague, what do you mean by it? No one is legally entitled to disrupt peoples' lives, but the reason why people choose to protest and disrupt society until their demands are met is because they believe that society does not deserve to go on undisrupted while it allows some injustice to continue.

Let's be real. If no one protested this ban on muslims, very few peoples' lives would be disrupted. It would be a slight hiccup to just discard these people from society and replace whatever function they played. We are all disposable. That is why people protest, because otherwise injustice would go unpunished.

The abstract reasoning is this: If society is structured in such a way that an injustice can occur and persist with no disruption to society, then people are morally obligated to disrupt society when that injustice occurs in order to remedy it and prevent it in the future.

The justification is empirical: Evidence demonstrates that when most people can go about their day without hindrance while atrocities are being committed, they will gladly get used to and accept those atrocities as a fact of life.

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#112
post #4
post #2

Uber undermining the taxi strike [1] yesterday was pretty visible -- at least in my social circle here in Seattle -- and when Lyft made this announcement we all deleted our Uber accounts. Will that have a material impact on anyone's bottom line? Who knows, but I'd love to see the graphs for new account signups/account deletions. [1] Taxis were not servicing JFK in support of those who were being detained there.

Here's the great & intense statement from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance on their JFK strike: "NYTWA STATEMENT ON MUSLIM BAN: Professional drivers are over 20 times more likely to be murdered on the job than other workers. By sanctioning bigotry with his unconstitutional and inhumane executive order banning Muslim refugees from seven countries, the president is putting professional drivers in more danger than the…

I hate asking about downvotes, but I'm really confused why this comment has been pushed to the bottom. Why?

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#113
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: during the Civil Rights movement, people of all sorts disrupted white people just trying to eat breakfast; just trying to get an education; just trying to get to work. Is that "giving them hate"? Should MLK have made fastidiously sure to go to cordoned off areas where no one would have been inconvenienced in the slightest?

The question asked wasn't whether the Civil Rights protesters shouldn't have inconvenienced people. It's whether a company should force its workers to join a protest.

How many companies donate to super-PACs, the DNC, RNC, etc.?

In this case, the mechanism of political action is constricting the labor supply instead of giving cash to politicians.

It seems crazy for a company to force workers to join a protest, until you think about how they force workers to turn a profit and then donate to politicians that would happily oppress those same workers.

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#114
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel the submission is inappropriate, please flag it and move on.

Thats not likely to get it removed.

Not all, but plenty of political pieces have been flagged over the past 24 hours. I wouldn't be so confident that this wouldn't either. The likelihood goes down if you don't flag it.

Regardless, the guidelines ask us not to comment on whether a submission is appropriate: just act on it.

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#115
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit confused by the backlash at Uber. I saw the tweet saying they were suspending surge pricing to JFK. To me that make trips there less likely since drivers would make less. Wouldn't that be a show of solidarity with the temporarily striking taxi drivers union? I guess my question is, how does suspending surge pricing to JFK suggest Uber supports the executive order?

They could have disabled all pickups at JFK in true solidarity. I don't think disabling surge pricing is a show of solidarity. With Taxis striking, surge pricing would have skyrocketed. This feels more like Uber just wants to preempt an inevitable news story about how surge pricing hit 10x or something during the taxi strike, which would be bad PR. The article did say that Uber is working with its affected drivers to…

Did their workers agree to share that solidarity? Or are you saying they should have forced their workers to join the protest? Were taxi companies prohibiting drivers from picking up passengers?

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#116
post #100
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1M just got them the best PR campaign they could have hoped for.

By pissing off half the country?

Keep in mind that the American election system is such that only 20% of Americans (or 30% of eligible voters) voted for Trump in order to get him into office. So it really does not follow that a move against Trump would anger half the country. Trump famously lost the popular vote as well, and he has one of the lowest approval ratings on entering office of any President in modern history.

Finally, who's more likely to use Lyft? Trump's support base is shockingly hard to truly pin down, but certainly a lot of his base resides in rural areas, not cities -- areas where Lyft (and Uber) may not even operate or, if they do, the volume of rides is far, far lower. My impression, in fact, is that there's almost an inverse correlation between number of heavy Uber/Lyft users and Trump support in the area -- it'd be interesting to see someone actually try to verify/debunk that impression with real data.

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#118
If you're talking about moral basis, why would you support the immigration from these radical muslim countries? Huge percentages of them hold truly un-American, anti-liberal, anti-women, anti-gay beliefs.

Listen to what these muslims say themselves:

13% percent of Syrian refugees support ISIS, another 10% have mixed feelings about it. Source: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies

http://english.dohainstitute.org/file/Get/40ebdf12-8960-4d18...

And if you think they change their beliefs upon immigration, think again:

52% of British muslims think homosexuality should be illegal

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/11/europe/britain-muslims-sur...

40% of UK muslims want Sharia Law in predominantly muslim areas:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510866/Poll-reveals-...

27% of British muslims sympathize with the Charlie Hedbo terrorist act:

https://muslimstatistics.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/bbc-tod...

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#119
post #55

Political shit like this should not be allowed here.

I agree that 99% of the time we should keep it non-political on HN. This isn't a political forum. But certain times where fundamental values get challenged then it's okay to cross the line and stand up to say something. Columbia had a great statement about this: https://twitter.com/nancysitu/status/825727645795155968 But I agree that it should only be done in the right time and place. Far too often people get hysteri…

>But certain times

The sovereign is he who decides the exception.

Re: Lyft donates $1M to the ACLU, condemns Trump’s immigration actions

#120
post #5
post #2

Uber undermining the taxi strike [1] yesterday was pretty visible -- at least in my social circle here in Seattle -- and when Lyft made this announcement we all deleted our Uber accounts. Will that have a material impact on anyone's bottom line? Who knows, but I'd love to see the graphs for new account signups/account deletions. [1] Taxis were not servicing JFK in support of those who were being detained there.

I think there's a pro-Uber case to be made here. Uber suspended surge pricing at a time when many people were trying to get to the protest at the airport, and while the airtrain was shut down which is what connects the subway system to the airport. Furthermore Uber offered to compensate its drivers who are affected by the ban, if they get stuck outside of the country. Edit: Maybe Uber mis-stepped by honoring requests…

"A strikebreaker (sometimes derogatorily called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike."
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