Jeremy and Jessica Courtney’s misconduct at Preemptive Love, documented
From racial insensitivity to misuse of donor funds, this post provides documentation of concerning conduct.
In August 2021, 31 former Preemptive Love staff wrote a letter to the organization’s board of directors, describing the abuse and misconduct we witnessed there. Below is documentation supporting some of the claims made in my original article, as well as a copy of the board letter. Names of current and former staff have been redacted.
Jeremy Courtney’s response to the murder of George Floyd
On a June 2, 2020 staff call — the first team meeting after the police murder of George Floyd, Preemptive Love CEO Jeremy Courtney instructed everyone to meditate on Floyd’s slow, agonizing death: “Think about how long it took for that police officer to strangle that man on the ground.”
Jeremy Courtney on anti-Asian violence
In the following audio, excerpted from a Voxer message to me on March 24, 2021, Preemptive Love CEO Jeremy Courtney falsely claims that anti-Asian violence “is carried out more by Black people and brown people than it is by white people.” He goes on to argue that white people like himself have no responsibility to atone for their white ancestors’ legacy of racism.
Misleading statements about the use of donor money
On a May 6 call, multiple staff raised concerns about cost of the “peacemaker packages” Preemptive Love mailed to several thousand donors, containing expensive, designer-quality shirts. In response, CEO Jeremy Courtney instructed staff to tell concerned donors that a “private donor” was covering the cost.
Several days later, a colleague asked Jeremy how to respond to donors who weren’t satisfied with a general answer. In a response on Slack, Jeremy claimed he personally was covering the cost, posting two GIFs with the text “say my name.”
Several weeks later, donors began raising their own questions about the peacemaker packages. On June 27, Jeremy offered an entirely new explanation for how the kits were funded: “The Board + Courtneys have allocated about $150k to this strategic org repositioning investment.”
In a followup message, Jeremy instructed Preemptive Love’s donor care team to tell donors, “This was not funded by your donation.”
In addition to the conflicting explanations about how the packages were funded, Jeremy Courtney’s statements significantly understated their cost. The claim was that he, his wife Jessica, and the Preemptive Love board had allocated $150,000 to cover the cost. However, as the invoices below indicate, the full (known) cost was significantly higher — at least $208,000.
