From Teresa to Tae

Still planning to fly tomorrow... I'm crazy like that.

When I saw my instructor Colleen throw this trick as a dismount almost a month ago, I was excited to give it a try. As I soon learned, this is not an easy trick - there's a lot of precision to it and it's incredibly unforgiving of timing mistakes. Timing is not exactly my strongest suit as a flyer - I tend to anticipate - so this trick took a lot of discipline for me to learn. After 13 tries in practice, I was finally certified to go for a catch and threw it across to Brian "Catching Dreams" Flint on the first try.

For those of you who don't know, Credo Mobile is a wireless carrier that markets itself as a politically progressive alternative to the big four. They recently sent out an e-mail blast to several lists of progressive voters lambasting T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon for donating to the political campaigns of legislators that most progressives despise. A friend of mine forwarded me the e-mail and told me she was thinking of switching.

As an employee - but not a spokesperson, let's be clear - of one of the big four wireless carriers, I'm more aware than most consumers of a few key facts that are germane to the discussion:

1. The wireless business is made up of network operators and MVNOs (acronym for Mobile Virtual Network Operator). Wireless networks take considerable capital to build and operate - billions of dollars a year - such that they only entities with enough resources to do it are large corporations or the Federal Government. 
2. Credo Mobile is an MVNO using the Sprint network. Basically, they wholesale bandwidth from Sprint and then repackage it as their own. 
3. In the 2008 Election Cycle, Political Action Committees from all of the big four wireless carriers gave money to both Democrats and Republicans who support their business interests. See here for T-Mobile PAC's total contributions, here for Sprint's, here for AT&Ts, and here for Verizon's.

So, to sum it up - all wireless operators are in some way tied to corporations that make political contributions to some people you agree with and some  people you don't. The only way you're going to get a wireless carrier that doesn't do that is if it happens to be founded by an extremely risk-tolerant multi-billionaire who agrees with you politically 100% of the time.

What really bothered me about this message was that Credo was implicitly claiming that they have no affiliation whatsoever with any political interest their audience does not support. They mention (in fine print) that their network is powered by Sprint, but they consciously omit any mention of Sprint's campaign contributions.

I'm all for businesses setting up their models & messaging to reinforce their values. But I'm not cool with companies who espouse a particular set of values abusing the trust those purported values confer upon them within a particular community by committing these sorts of hypocritical lies of omission. If you're touting your company as a business with a particular set of ideals, then live up to them and be transparent. Don't misrepresent your affiliation with an entity or practice your target community might abhor in order to entice them into switching brands without thinking critically first.

My forceout sucks here - you can tell I'm being super conservative because I have no safety lines on. Ahh well - that will change in time. :-)

What a great weekend! I got to do a story about my life here in the Emerald City for I Live Here, Seattle and also lost my safety lines at Emerald City Trapeze for the first time.

Many thanks to Annie Smith for letting me participate in her project, and for taking such amazing photos.