Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on Saturday called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol.
Benioff joined a growing chorus of voices calling for the flag’s removal in response to the fatal shooting of nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church earlier this week by an alleged white supremacist. Benioff was responding to former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who on Saturday took to Twitter to call for the Civil War symbol’s removal.
“Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims,” Romney tweeted.
A little while later, Benioff tweeted his agreement with Romney:
I agree @MittRomney: Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove to honor victims.
— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) June 20, 2015
Earlier this year, Benioff — CEO of San Francisco cloud-computing company Salesforce (CRM)— led corporate America in successfully calling for changes to a controversial Indiana law that gave businesses the right to deny service to gay couples.
The Confederate flag has not flown on top of the South Carolina Capitol building since 2000. But it still has a special place on the capitol grounds — in fact, it is the only flag on the capitol grounds not flying at half-mast in the wake of the Charleston shootings, CNN noted. By law, it will take agreement of two-thirds of South Carolina lawmakers to lower or remove the flag, according to CNN.