The two black men who were wrongly arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks in April have reached a settlement with the city, the mayor’s office announced on Wednesday.
They’ll only get a single dollar each, but the two 23-year-olds – Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson – will leave their mark in another way. They agreed to drop their claims if the city set up a $200,000 fund, tied into a non-profit organization, that will help young entrepreneurs in the city.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement, “I am pleased to have resolved the potential claims against the city in this productive manner.”
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson thanked Nelson and Robinson in a statement for their “willingness to reconcile.” The company made an undisclosed settlement with the men that’s got to be much larger than $1 a piece.
Starbucks is also closing more than 8,000 stores in the U.S. for the afternoon on May 29th to train its nearly 175,000 employees in “racial-bias education.” (NBC News)
Fasho Thoughts:
- It’s nice that something productive is coming out of what was an awful incident.
- The men were arrested for doing nothing more than waiting for a business meeting at the Starbucks.
- At least no one was physically hurt in this debacle.
- After this happened, I was going to stop going to Starbucks, but then I realized there weren’t a lot of other convenient places to get my coffee.
- You can’t even buy a cup of coffee with the money they got from the city in that settlement.
Source: CS / CS
