For companies and high-profile executives, speaking out in times of national crisis carries risks. But so does staying silent.
In the wake of Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal officers in Minneapolis, a growing number of corporate leaders, employees and Minnesota-based companies are speaking out. Some are condemning the fatal shooting and Donald Trump’s broader immigration enforcement in the state.
But the response has also exposed a familiar tension in corporate America: Powerful executives and public-facing companies often stay quiet until internal and external pressures converge — and until they believe speaking out together matters more than speaking loudly.
“What’s really interesting is that the CEOs do engage when they get to a tipping point, and we’re at one again,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor and author of the book “Trump’s Ten Commandments.”
They’re trying to thread a needle, because they want to have their cake and eat it too. They’re not succeeding. They’re never going to. Either they are on the side of defending society and civilization, or they are trying to destroy society and civilization and profit from it. They think they can find a middle ground when there is no middle ground left anymore. The wealth gap has sprawled open into an impossible and still growing chasm that nobody can stand in anymore. That’s where the middle ground used to be. Now, it’s class war, us against them, and I find it hard to believe they’ll ever do the right thing or pick the right side. So they can keep trying to thread that needle if they want. It will do them no good. Their thread is too thick to fit. They have lost their social license to operate. They are not getting it back. Not from me, anyway.