The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. April 5, 2017 Pepsi Ad Criticized & Ridiculed for Coopting Anti-Police Brutality Movement --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Activists with Black Lives Matter and other anti-police brutality groups are criticizing and ridiculing a Pepsi ad that coopts and misrepresents the resistance movement in order to sell soda. In the ad, white 21-year-old reality TV star Kendall Jenner is presented as a hero, after she offers a can of Pepsi to a police officer in the middle of a peace march. The police officer, who is not clad in heavy riot gear as most officers are during protests, accepts the can of soda, appearing to suggest that Pepsi could smooth tensions between police forces and demonstrators, who have spent years protesting police killings of unarmed people, disproportionately people of color. .