Humor Is Dead - AIG's Poignant Civil Rights Struggle

AIG's Poignant Civil Rights Struggle

6/10/01 - AIG Worldwide, the transnational insurance giant with only $46 billion in revenue last year, touched our hearts with their new television ad campaign. Film clips of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier and scenes of racial unrest, including the hosing of blacks in Alabama, capture the downtrodden and unjust prejudice inflicted on this unfortunate company. Indeed, the commercial sheds light on AIG as the company it is - today's "corporate nigger". Consider these striking parallels:

CEO Maurice Greenberg only made $27 million in 1999	At least 12 million slaves were exported from North Africa to the Americas
Greenberg's stock options are worth only $106 million	Of these, at least 50% died in transit or while being prepared for slavery
AIG's net income rose only 11.5% in 200, to $5.74 billion	4 million Africans died in wars surrounding the slave trade
There was a 3-for-2 stock split in 2000	Race Riots in several North American cities cost thousands of lives, as did horrific lynchings in the South
Greenberg contributed $126,000 to the 2000 presidential campaigns	Blacks in America, lest we forget, were relegated to subservient positions, occupationally and physically, throughout this century

AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg - widely considered to be Corporate America's Jackie Robinson, as evidenced by the struggles he and AIG have faced over the years. "We used Jackie Robinson in the commercial to illustrate our own fight to join the NY Stock Exchange, back when we were traded only on the 'Negro Exchange' in the fifties"

Employees trying to get into the AIG offices for work Monday Morning - a common scene in the sixties.

AIG's first Board of Directors