Black Diamond was founded by Yvonne Chouinard - also founder of Patagonia, sponsor of "Earth First!"
They sell BD at REI - which is about as left as retailers get, though I don't quite get how a member-owned cooperative can have such a liberal conscience unless other-minded people just avoid it in protest and its polar characterization becomes self-fulfilling.
Where BD really ran into trouble is because parent Clarus Corp manufacturers the OC / tear gas used against the anti-police protesters through its Safariland division. That resulted in Safariland divesting the tear gas/crowd control business in June.
To be fair to BD, it was bought out by employees at one point and later bought by Clarus. Clarus Corp. which also owns Sierra Bullets and Safariland were recently bidding on some of the Remington assets. I think it was the Barnes assets IIRC (both BD and Barnes are based in Utah). BD hasn't had anything to do with founder YC for a long time (who left to found Patagonia), but some of my equipment still has the old "C" logo for Chouinard. Furthermore, their equipment is generally top-notch. I haven't bought any of it in 20 years, but I still use their crampons, ice-axe, back-pack, gaiters and more. Their protection equipment (carabiners, nuts, pitons, cams, ropes, etc.) are all top-notch, and their ski gear (backcountry ski's, boots, gloves, bindings, snow shovels, etc.) are also good stuff.
To be as sympathetic as possible, understand that YC was and is basically a rock-climbing/surfing bum. He started hand-forging pitons for climbers in Yosemite in the 60's. That old style of 60's liberalism wasn't as off-putting to me as some of the present activism. It shouldn't be too surprising that Yvonne attracted other radical liberals and the culture around him and the organizations he built polarized that way. As far as I know, he's mostly into surfer activism in his late life, protesting plastic in the oceans and garbage at the beach. The difference is that back then the hippies and bums just wanted to be free/liberated from the man. Nowadays, the liberal agenda seems to have swung to promote the big state enslaving the masses so the liberals can get free/gratis stuff. There's nothing that fits into the liberals big-state socialism agenda that is anti-police except that they need to disrupt a functioning society to replace it with their alternative.
