Everybody Buy Chobani Yogurt!

     At my house we eat a lot of yogurt.

     That is to say, the Lieutenant Colonel eats a lot of yogurt.

     I don't, not because I dislike yogurt, it's just that yogurt doesn't often fit into my normal daily eating schematic of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, dinner for dinner,

...and Combos and other assorted junk food and drink   between meals (see post from 3/18/2014).

    My main problem with yogurt has always been that it's not yummy enough to be dessert nor serious enough to be a meal.
     However, even though I don't eat much yogurt, as I do the food shopping I do buy a lot of yogurt.     
      Now, though there are probably a dozen brands of yogurt on the supermarket shelf I've always just bought the cheapest brand - either the store brand or whatever's on sale.
      But no longer. 
     

     From now on I'm buying no yogurt but Chobani  yogurt.

      This is likewise fine with Tom, as he wishes from now on to consume no brand of yogurt other than Chobani.   
     Tom and I came to our Chobani agreement this past Tuesday morning after reading an article in the business section of Tuesday's New York Times about Hamdi Ulukaya, the owner of Chobani.

Hamdi Ulukaya

     Hamdi Ulukaya is a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent who arrived in upstate New York in the 1990's.  Several years later he started a business in New Berlin, New York,  selling feta cheese that he made from a family recipe.  A few years after that he bought a defunct yogurt factory and in 2007 he began selling his own brand of yogurt, which he called Chobani, derived from the Turkish word for "shepherd". 
     Mr. Ulukaya decided to hire some workers from a local refugee resettlement center and, according to the Times article,  "Mr. Ulukaya provided transportation for the new hires, and he brought in translators to assist them. He paid the refugee workers salaries above the minimum wage, as he did other workers at the factory."
      When Hamdi Ulukaya opened a second Chobani factory in 2012 in Twin Falls, Idaho, he once again went to a refugee resettlement center to hire workers, wishing to pay back this own opportunity in this country, for, as Mr. Ulukaya has said, "The minute  a refugee has a job, that’s the minute they stop being a refugee,”
       Today Chobani is a billion dollar industry that employs 2,000 workers, 300 of them resettled refugees from The Middle East and Africa.
        Last year, Mr. Ulukaya signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away a majority of his fortune to assist refugees.
        He recently gave away 10 % of his company's shares  to his employees.
        All his employees receive paid parental leave.    
     

     He visited a refugee center in Hamburg, Germany last May,

...and last month he spoke at the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants.  

           Last year Mr. Ulukaya founded the Tent Foundation, whose mission, according to the Times article,  is to help other companies "learn how to effectively integrate  refugees into a work force", and which has resulted in pledges from a number of corporations, including Cisco, IBM and Salesforce, to assist refugees.   
         And Hamdi Ulukaya  is currently the target of a hate campaign.
       Last April a far-right website called WND published a story about him entitled "American Yogurt Tycoon Vows to Choke U.S. With Muslims".  
       Then over the summer Breitbart, the extreme-right news outlet formerly run by Donald Trump's campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon,

Stephen K. Bannon

...began a smear operation against Chobani, publishing misleading articles which spawned a barrage of online internet attacks against Ulukaya and Chobani, including mean Twitter tweets such as: "Be sure you boycott Chobani Yogurt! That Muzzie that owns it is hell bent on filling Idaho with Muslims," and a truly ugly anti-Muslim Boycott Chobani Facebook page -  if you're in the mood to look at something despicable here's the link, but make sure you look at it on an empty stomach:
                https://www.facebook.com/Boycott-Chobani-1305015739514679/
       This hate crusade has included death threats against Ulukaya and Twin Falls Mayor Shawn Barigar, a stauch supporter of Ulukaya and the city's Chobani factory.

         I've always told my children,

...here making some music together back in the day,

...that you can't control what other people do, you can only control what you do.

     As for me, I've stocked up on Chobani.

     And I might even start eating it,

...and reminding myself of the message on the container lid.

References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/for-helping-immigrants-chobanis-founder-draws-threats.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobani

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/chobani-founder-gets-threats-calls-boycott-employing-refugees-n676776

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/02/the-disgusting-breitbart-smear-campaign-against-the-immigrant-owner-of-chobani.html