** BOYCOTT KFC! **

We’re gathering at the African Festival of the Arts this Labor Day Weekend in Chicago to protest KFC because of the way it has handled its “Kentucky Grilled Chicken” promotion.  Please join us in Washington Park as we prepare our boycott of KFC September 4-7!

• YUM Brands, KFC’s parent company, made over $1.5 billion in profit last year on $11.3 billion in sales. (Source: Forbes.com)
• KFC issued over 10.2 million coupons for its free “Kentucky Grilled Chicken” giveaway, but honored fewer than half of them.  5.7 million coupons were not honored. (Source: KFC itself in the lawsuit Doering v. KFC Corp., Case No. 1:09-cv-4166 (N.D. Ill.))
• KFC’s promotion was disproportionately aimed at African-Americans, as its restaurants are concentrated in poor and African-American neighborhoods. (Source: http://minority-health.pitt.edu/archive/00000469/01/Fast_Food,_Race-Ethnicity,and_Income.pdf). As a result, KFC’s actions likely disproportionately affected African-Americans.
• KFC issues ads featuring African Americans dancing around and clucking like chickens for their “finger-lickin’ chicken.”  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdJqtG0Mrs0).  The ad agency that brought you the Oprah Chicken Giveaway Fiasco and the racist ad above (DraftFCB Chicago) also used the song “Sweet Home Alabama” – a song defending the Confederacy and Alabama’s racist history – to promote KFC, as reported by Business Week.  (http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2005/02/kfcs_sweet_home.html).
• KFC looks at this fiasco as a great thing; its President Roger Eaton said that “The critical thing for us was to get people to eat the chicken, whatever it took,” and brags that sales are up since the fiasco, calling it “transformational” and bragging that “clearly, we’re bringing in a lot of new customers.” (Source:  KFC president Roger Eaton, interview with Bruce Schreiner, Associated Press, May 26, 2009)