Send Kevin Kimrey (Director of Economic & Workforce Development) an email — you can copy and paste the text below, or edit to add your own thoughts.
Send emails to: kevinbkimrey@abtech.edu
Physical letters can be mailed to the address noted below.
** If you are an A-B Tech student or staff/faculty member, it is suggested to send from your institutional email address, so that Kimrey can see you are affiliated with the college **
Kevin Kimrey, Directory of Economic & Workforce Development
A-B Technical Community College
Maple Building, Room 209
340 Victoria Road
Asheville, NC 28801
Dear Mr. Kimrey,
I am writing to express my concerns about A-B Tech’s partnership with Pratt & Whitney, which is actively aiding the Israeli government in the commission of genocide in Gaza, and to urge you to dissolve A-B Tech’s partnership with the company.
I believe that A-B Tech’s partnerships should reflect our community’s values—which we must all agree do not support ethnic cleansing.
When the college publicly announced its partnership with P&W, many people in the community spoke out with concerns about the company’s foreign military contracts, including those with the Israeli government. It has been widely known for decades that Israel operates an apartheid regime in violation of international law; yet, this is a company with whom A-B Tech saw fit to partner.
Now that Israel has escalated from maintaining an illegal occupation to committing genocide in Gaza, A-B Tech’s partnership with P&W has gone from dubious to unconscionable. That the college would continue to pursue a partnership with P&W while it is materially contributing to the destruction of the Palestinian people is simply unthinkable.
Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza has taken over 33,000 lives in just six months, with ten of thousands more buried under the rubble and severely injured. Entire families have been wiped out in an instant; 90% of Gaza’s schools and 84% of its hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. The evidence of Israel’s genocide has been documented exhaustively and affirmed even by the United Nations. How is it possible that six months into this genocide, A-B Tech has not dropped its relationship with one of the companies responsible for enabling this mass slaughter?
It’s true that P&W is a job-creator in our region. But no employer–no matter how big–has a free pass to aid genocide, and A-B Tech certainly does not have to reward them for it.
We are asking you, as the Director of Economic and Workforce Development, to advocate for the termination of A-B Tech’s partnership with P&W. Specifically, this means dissolving the customized training program for P&W and canceling plans for construction of the proposed $10 million training facility adjacent to P&W’s factory in South Asheville.
As we are often reminded, A-B Tech’s mission is Respect, Integrity, Support and Equity. Let’s rise to this occasion to make those values mean something at a time when the stakes could not be higher.
Respectfully,
Name, position (student and program or staff/faculty position)