We have had a policy at Kiona to be apolitical. I do not think it's worth the backlash it might generate to take one side or another, one candidate over another. There are differences of political opinion amongst our own family/ownership.
But what's going on in our country isn't about politics. It's about basic human decency. It's not just George Floyd. It's not just Breonna Taylor. It's not just Emmett Till. While America's Original Sin may have been abolished with the 13th Amendment, the stain of systemic inequality still marks these United States; capital "R" for Racism is our Scarlett Letter.
Kiona is a business owned by white people in an overwhelmingly white industry. Our situation is the definition of privilege. We can do better. I can do better.
Our business can do more than "feel bad." We have a platform, even if we're not doing "great" right now with COVID shutdowns. But this isn't about us.
That's why we will donate $1 from every bottle of Lemberger that we sell through the tasting room (curbside/in-person) for the remainder of 2020 to the NAACP.
This is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy's speech after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. It rings as true today as it did more than 50 years ago:
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black."
America belongs to all Americans. Until everyone feels that way, we have work to do.
- JJ
