City Councilor and congressional candidate Ayanna Pressley offered her support for Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone’s boycott of the Boston Beer Company, after the maker of Sam Adams praised President Trump’s tax cuts.
Curtatone, a Democrat, wrote that he “will never drink Sam Adam’s beer again!” in a tweet Sunday, “We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump’s white nationalist agenda accountable!” he wrote.
Pressley told WGBH News she stands with Curtatone.
“I completely understand where Joe Curtatone is coming from, and that is his right to express his resistance in that way,” she said. “Boycotting is a very powerful and effective tool, as evidenced by the civil rights movement and many other movements.”
“This is a democracy, we have our values and we get to tactically advance and actualize those values and preserve them, however is most comfortable for us,” Pressley said during an interview with Boston Public Radio Friday. “So, you know, I support it.”
“I wouldn’t be sitting here being seen as a whole person, even having the opportunity to vote or to run for office or the right to choose if there had not been organizing and mobilizing and resistance, and specific to the civil rights movement, boycotting,” Pressley continued.
Boston Beer Company, which brews Sam Adams, will receive a tax cut aimed at helping American breweries compete with the foreign beer market.
Curtatone publicly called for a boycott of the company after CEO Jim Koch met with President Trump and praised the cuts.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told the Boston Herald he does not support the boycott. Pressley declined to say if she would participate.
“If I’m being fully transparent here, I actually don’t drink beer, I’m much more a Scotch girl,” she said. “Macallan 18, double barrel glass.”
To hear the full interview, click on the audio player above.
