Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged boycott

Rss Feed Group items tagged

lilyrashkind

6 Times the Olympics Were Boycotted - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)
  • The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.
  • ‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The Details: China, North Korea and Indonesia chose to boycott the first Games held in an Asian country after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared it would disqualify athletes who competed in the 1963 Jakarta-held Games of the New Emerging Forces, created as an alternative multinational amateur competition. The boycotting countries sent many of their top athletes to the Jakarta games.
  • The Details: When New Zealand’s national rugby team defied an international sports embargo against South Africa and toured the apartheid nation earlier in the year, 28 African nations—comprising most of the continent—declared a boycott of the Olympics, which was allowing New Zealand to participate. Led by Tanzania, the boycott involved more than 400 athletes. In a separate action, Taiwan withdrew from the Games when Canada refused to let its team compete as the Republic of China. Of Note: The boycott led to hotel and ticket refunds totaling $1 million Canadian dollars. It especially affected several track and field events, where nations such as Kenya and Tanzania were frequent medal winners.
  • Afghani athletes, notably, competed in the Games. Some countries did not forbid athletes from competing as individuals under the Olympic flag, but American athletes attempting to compete faced losing their passports. A group of American athletes sued the U.S. Olympic Committee to participate but lost the case. The boycott resulted in just 80 countries competing in the Olympics, the fewest since 1956.
  • In retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier, 14 nations, led by the Soviet Union and including East Germany, boycotted the Los Angeles-held Olympics. Joined by most of the Eastern Bloc nations, the Soviets said they feared physical attacks and protests on American soil. "Chauvinistic sentiments and anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in this country,” a government statement read.
  • and Joan Benoit, along with Mary Lou Retton, the first American gymnast to win the gold for all-around, became instant stars. And the Games were considered a huge financial success, with almost double the ticket sales of Montreal and earning the title as the most-seen event in TV history.
  • Angered over not being allowed to co-host the Games with South Korea, North Korea refused to attend the 1988 event in neighboring Seoul. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, accepted the IOC's invitation to compete, along with China and Eastern Bloc nations, leaving just Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua joining North Korea in the boycott. “To have the Olympics in Seoul would be like having them at the Guantanamo naval base occupied by the United States," Cuba President Fidel Castro told NBC News at the time. "I wonder that, if Socialist countries refused to go to (the 1984 Olympics in) Los Angeles for security reasons, if really there is more security in Seoul than in Los Angeles.”
  • candals tarnished the Seoul Games, including reports of residents being forced from their homes and homeless people being detained at facilities in preparation for the Games. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson made global headlines when he was stripped of his world-record-setting 100-meter victory after testing positive for steroids, and controversial boxing calls that went against South Korean athletes caused outrage.
  • North and South Korean leaders met following the events, and agreed to send a combined team to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games. However, North Korea announced in April 2021 that it would not participate because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
lucieperloff

How Many Countries Will Follow the U.S. Official Snub of Beijing's Olympics? - The New ... - 0 views

  • New Zealand says it decided months ago that its diplomats wouldn’t be attending.
  • Political leaders of other nations are expected to bow out, whether they announce an explicit reason or not.
  • The White House announcement on Monday that it would send no official delegation prompted anger in Beijing, where Chinese officials on Tuesday once again vowed to retaliate.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Chen Weihua of China Daily, bitingly expressed hope that Mr. Biden would live long enough to see China boycott the Summer Olympics to be held in Los Angeles in 2028.
  • The decision will be especially complicated for European nations, which have sharply criticized China’s abuses of human rights and democracy in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
  • At the same time, many European nations have extensive trade ties with Beijing that they do not want to jeopardize, especially for a measure that is likely only to offend China, not change it.
  • Major sporting events like the Olympics, with their universal audiences, “can be instrumental for spreading positive values and promoting freedom and human rights at global level,”
  • Italy would not join the American boycott, an Italian government official said on Tuesday, while France, Germany and Britain were noncommittal.
  • Only a handful of world leaders attended the Summer Games in Tokyo, which were held after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • “When we have concerns about human rights we let the Chinese know,” Mr. Macron’s office said. “We took sanctions related to Xinjiang last March.”
  • Britain has made no decision on a diplomatic boycott either, but there are calls from within the ruling Conservative Party to do so.
  • The British government’s approach to China has been toughening amid growing tension over Chinese policy in its former colony, Hong Kong, a direct embarrassment to London.
  • The International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement that a boycott was “the right choice both morally and strategically.”
  • Although the American decision had been expected and, administration officials said, conveyed to Beijing in advance of Monday’s announcement, the Communist Party government appeared flustered, as well as angered.
  • Officials in Beijing last week tried to pre-empt any prospect of a diplomatic boycott by saying they would not extend invitations to foreign leaders to attend the Winter Games, leaving that task to national Olympic committees around the world instead.
  • China has very stringent quarantine rules, requiring everyone who enters the country to spend two weeks in isolation, followed by a week or two of daily health monitoring at home or a hotel, with many restrictions on travel and social interactions.
  • Mr. Putin, an avid sportsman and an increasingly close ally of Mr. Xi’s, has not yet given final confirmation of his attendance despite China’s public statement last month that he would attend the opening ceremony, to be held on Feb. 4 in Beijing’s National Stadium, popularly known as the Bird’s Nest.
Javier E

When Did the Left Forget How to Boycott? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The confusion about these boycotts reveals something much larger than an infirm grasp of how the strategy works, and larger, even, than the pain and fear they produced in transgender people and their allies
  • The Bud Light and Target boycotts have been the most successful American-consumer boycotts in a quarter century. They made two large companies sustain serious material losses. That isn’t cause for more ennui or alienation. It’s a beacon: It can be done. And it should be done
  • We haven’t left these young people much. Many of them are so terrified about global warming that they believe that bringing a child into this world would be wrong. The retreat from religion has perhaps unburdened many of them from unfounded claims—but what has replaced it? What provides a community of shared belief, social outreach, the sense of living for some larger purpose? Nothing
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • What is the reliable path into the middle class, one that requires only a willingness to work hard? It’s gone. Corporate America sent it away.
  • It’s part of something that is so pervasive among Americans, and especially young Americans, that one hardly notices it anymore: the feeling of being powerless against huge forces that they understand to exist far beyond their control, including the questionable—or outright evil—actions of giant corporations.
  • I said that one of the reasons that union membership had dried up is that OSHA had made workplaces safer. But as this article was closing, a 16-year-old boy was killed while working at the Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant in rural Mississippi. According to The New York Times, Duvan Tomas Perez died “after becoming ensnared in a machine he was cleaning.”
  • And do you know what the company had to say about his death? It was, of course, a “tragedy,” but it wasn’t the company’s fault: “It appears, at this point in the investigation, that this individual’s age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork.”
  • Do you know what I say to that?Strike.Boycott.Shut it down.
anonymous

This beloved grocery chain is the latest company to face Trump-related boycotts - The W... - 0 views

  • s This beloved grocery chain is the latest company to face Trump-related boycotts
  • A number of big-name brands, from Uber to Under Armour, Nordstrom to Neiman Marcus, have been the subject of politically charged boycotts in recent weeks.
  • Now another company is finding itself in the crosshairs of consumers hoping to avoid Trump products as they take issue with the president’s policies and divisive rhetoric:  Wegmans.
Javier E

With Gaza War, Movement to Boycott Israel Gains Momentum in Europe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “We entered this war in Gaza with the perception that the Israeli government is not interested in reaching peace with the Palestinians,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli analyst at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a private university. “Now, after the casualties and the destruction, I’m very worried about the impact this could have on Israel. It could make it very easy for the BDS campaign to isolate Israel and call for more boycotts.”
  • In an agreement last December on scientific exchanges and funding, known as Horizon 2020, Brussels insisted, despite fierce opposition from the Israeli government, on keeping Israeli institutions in the West Bank, like Ariel University, out of the deal. Since European funding is so important to Israeli academic institutions, the Israeli government gave in
  • To that end, the European Union has demanded that all products produced by Israelis beyond the 1967 lines be labeled differently, and they are excluded from the duty-free trade agreement the bloc has with Israel proper. Goods from settlements are imported, but under different labels and tariffs. “There is no question of a boycott,”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “Our relationship with Israel is close and one of the best we have in the region, but only with Israel in its 1967 lines unless there is a peace agreement,” said a senior European Union official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “We are clear, however, that what came under Israeli control in 1967 is not a part of Israel, so the settlements are illegal under international law and not helpful in the peace process.”
  • The European Union has gone considerably further than the United States, declaring that Israeli settlements over the Green Line are “illegal” under international law; the United States simply calls them “illegitimate” and “obstacles to peace.”
  • Some countries, like Britain, have gone further. Britain issued voluntary labeling guidelines in December 2009 “to enable consumers to make a more fully informed decision concerning the products they buy,” according to the UK Trade and Investment agency, because “we understand the concerns of people who do not wish to purchase goods exported from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
  • More troubling to Israel, in December the agency warned companies and citizens to be “aware of the potential reputational implications” of investments in settlement areas. “We do not encourage or offer support to such activities,” it said.
  •  
    "boyc"
Javier E

The Triumph of Obama's Long Game - 1 views

  • We have gone from rightly defending the minority to wrongly problematizing the majority. It should surprise no one that, at some point, the majority will find all of this, as Josh Barro recently explained, “annoying.”
  • I say this as someone happily in the minority — and who believes strongly in the right to subvert or adapt traditional gender roles.
  • But you can’t subvert something that you simultaneously argue doesn’t exist.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • the core contradiction of ideological transgenderism. By severing the link between sex and gender completely, it abolishes the core natural framework without which the transgender experience makes no sense at all.
  • It’s also a subtle, if unintentional, attack on homosexuality. Most homosexuals are strongly attached to their own gender and attracted to traditional, natural expressions of it. That’s what makes us gay, for heaven’s sake. And that’s one reason the entire notion of a common “LGBT” identity is so misleading. How can a single identity comprise both the abolition of gender and at the same time its celebration?
  • Exceptions, in other words, need a rule to exist. Abolish gender’s roots in biology and sex — and you abolish gay people and transgender people as well.
  • You can’t assault the core identity of most people’s lives and then expect them to vote for you. As a Trump supporter in Colorado just told a reporter from The New Yorker: “I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life. The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.”
  • Transgender people exist and should be treated with absolutely the same human respect, decency, and civil equality as anyone else. But they don’t disprove traditional notions of gender as such — which have existed in all times, places, and cultures in human history and prehistory, and are rooted deeply in evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy.
  • Intersex people exist and, in my view, should not be genitally altered or “fixed” without their adult consent. But they do not somehow negate the overwhelming majority who have no such gender or sexual ambiguity.
  • the entire society does not need to be overhauled in order to make gay or trans experience central to it. Inclusion, yes. Revolution, no.
  • The added problem with this war on nature is the backlash it inevitably incurs. There’s a reason so many working-class men find it hard to vote for Democrats any more. And there’s a reason why a majority of white women last year voted for a man who boasted of sexual assault if the alternative was a triumph for contemporary left-feminism.
  • Yes, there’s a range of gender expression among those of the same sex. But it’s still tethered among most to the forces of chromosomes and hormones that make us irreducibly male and female. Nature can be interpreted; it can even be played with; but it cannot be abolished. After all, how can you be “queer” if there is no such thing as “normal”?
  • it would actually impose civil and criminal penalties on American citizens for backing or joining any international boycott of Israel because of its settlement activities. There are even penalties for simply inquiring about such a boycott. And they’re not messing around. The minimum civil penalty would be $250,000 and the maximum criminal penalty $1 million and 20 years in prison. Up to 20 years in prison for opposing the policies of a foreign government and doing something about it!
  • One of the features you most associate with creeping authoritarianism is the criminalization of certain political positions. Is anything more anathema to a liberal democracy? If Trump were to suggest it, can you imagine the reaction?
  • And yet it’s apparently fine with a hefty plurality of the Senate and House. I’m referring to the remarkable bill introduced into the Congress earlier this year — with 237 sponsors and co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate — which the ACLU and the Intercept have just brought to light. It’s a remarkably bipartisan effort, backed by Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz, among many solid Trump-resisting Democrats and hard-line Republicans.
  • I’m not in favor of boycotting Israel when we don’t boycott, say, Saudi Arabia. But seriously: making it illegal?
  • Every now and again, you just have to sit back and admire the extraordinary skills of the Greater Israel lobby. You’ve never heard of this bill, and I hadn’t either. But that is partly the point. AIPAC doesn’t want the attention — writers who notice this attempted assault on a free society will be tarred as anti-Semites (go ahead, it wouldn’t be the first time) and politicians who resist it will see their careers suddenly stalled.
  • pointing out this special interest’s distortion of democracy is not the equivalent of bigotry. It’s simply a defense of our democratic way of life.
  • Speaking of ideology versus reality, there is, it seems to me, a parallel on the left. That is the current attempt to deny the profound natural differences between men and women, and to assert, with a straight and usually angry face, that gender is in no way rooted in sex, and that sex is in no way rooted in biology.
  • This unscientific product of misandrist feminism and confused transgenderism is striding through the culture, and close to no one in the elite is prepared to resist it.
  • Worse, we have constant admonitions against those who actually conform, as most human beings always have, to the general gender rule.
  • And so we have the establishment of gender-neutral birth certificates in Canada; and, in England, that lovely old phrase, “Ladies and Gentlemen,” is being removed from announcements on the Tube
  • We have dozens of new pronouns in colleges (for all those genders that have suddenly sprung into existence), and biological males competing in all-female high-school athletic teams (guess who wins at track).
carolinehayter

Democrats Plan To Boycott Senate Committee Vote On Barrett Nomination : NPR - 0 views

  • Senate Democrats say they plan to boycott Thursday's scheduled vote on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
  • "Throughout the hearings last week, committee Democrats demonstrated the damage a Justice Barrett would do – to health care, reproductive freedoms, the ability to vote, and other core rights that Americans cherish," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement announcing their boycott.
  • "We will not grant this process any further legitimacy by participating in a committee markup of this nomination just twelve days before the culmination of an election that is already underway."
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Graham called the Democratic decision to boycott the vote "a choice they are making. I believe it does a disservice to Judge Barrett who deserves a vote, up or down."
  • "I will move forward," he said Wednesday evening. "She deserves a vote."
  • Graham rejected the Democratic assertion that at least two minority members were needed to proceed with the nomination.
  • "The nomination process took a dark turn in 2013 when the Democrats changed the rules of the Senate for District and Circuit court nominees requiring a simple majority vote. My Democratic colleagues chose to engage in a partisan filibuster of Justice [Neil] Gorsuch for the first time in U.S. history requiring the changing of the rules regarding Supreme Court nominations."
  • "We're not giving the quorum they need to provide it. The rules require it."
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he is planning a full Senate vote on the nomination on Monday.
  • The maneuver would ensure that Barrett could be sworn in before the Nov. 3 election and that she could participate in election questions that are already pending before the Supreme Court.
  • President Trump has said he wanted Barrett confirmed before the election so she could be there to rule on cases that might arise in the aftermath of the election. Barrett, for her part, refused at her confirmation hearings to say whether she would recuse herself in light of Trump's statements. But it is unlikely that she would do so. Nothing in the judicial ethics rules would appear to require such a recusal unless it presents the appearance of impropriety.
  • Questions of recusal are ultimately decided by each justice for himself or herself, and at the Supreme Court, recusal can sometimes result in a tie vote. Should that happen, the lower court decision in the case stands.
  • the progressive wing of the party is leaning on the Democratic Senate leadership to do more to call attention to what is widely viewed on the Democratic side of the aisle as an "outrageous" power play to get Barrett confirmed in record time for a nominee in modern times.
  • Barrett's confirmation hearings began just 16 days after her nomination. In contrast, the average time between nomination and hearings for each of the current justices on the Supreme Court was 56 days.
  • The result of the rushed confirmation process has been little time to explore Barrett's record, both on and off the bench. Indeed, this week The Associated Press published a long investigative piece disclosing that "Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents." But the article was published too late for senators to ask questions of Barrett at her confirmation hearings.
kennyn-77

United States Will Not Send Government Officials to Beijing Olympics - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The Biden administration will not send any American government officials to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, making official a diplomatic boycott to pressure China for human rights abuses.
  • Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that while American athletes would be able to compete in the Winter Games in Beijing, there would be no delegation of American officials.She said the boycott was a response to human rights abuses in Xinjiang.“This is just an indication that it cannot be business as usual,” Ms. Psaki said. “That does not mean that is the end of the concerns we will raise about human rights abuses.”
  • “This boycott is a necessary step to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to human rights in the face of the Chinese government’s unconscionable abuses,” Mr. Menendez said, adding that he hoped other nations would join the United States.
draneka

Trump-Lewis row: Democrat inauguration boycott grows - BBC News - 0 views

  • The number of Democratic members of Congress saying they will boycott Donald Trump's inauguration on Friday has increased to 26.
  • Mr Trump lashed out at Mr Lewis on Twitter on Friday after Mr Lewis said he was not a "legitimate president".
  • Mr Lewis was a prominent member of America's civil rights movement and is a hero to many Americans. He was among those beaten by police during the infamous Selma-Montgomery voting rights march of 1965.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The president-elect's insults, made just days ahead of Martin Luther King Day, were the final straw for a number of Democrats who will break with tradition by missing the inauguration ceremony on Frida
  • "When you insult Rep. John Lewis, you insult America," said Yvette Clarke, one of five representatives for New York who will boycott the event. There are 535 members of Congress, across both houses.
  • California representative Ted Lieu said: "For me, the personal decision not to attend Inauguration is quite simple: Do I stand with Donald Trump, or do I stand with John Lewis? I am standing with John Lewis."
  • "I could not look my wife, my daughters, or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended, as if everything that the candidate said about the women, the Latinos, the blacks, the Muslims, or any of those other things he said in those speeches and tweets, and that all of that is okay or erased from our collective memory," Mr Gutierrez told the House.
  • Mr Lewis' announcement of his own boycott in an interview with NBC News, in which he said that Mr Trump was an illegitimate president, prompted the outburst from the president-elect.
  • "You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong," he told NBC News.
Emilio Ergueta

French Telecom Executive's Remarks on Israel Incite Furor - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel instantly created a national furor on Thursday after the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could.
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the French government to repudiate the “miserable statement.”
  • The Orange chief executive, Stéphane Richard, said on Wednesday that were it not for the potential legal and financial penalties, he would leave the Israeli market “tomorrow morning.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The movement has been increasingly in the spotlight since last week’s failed Palestinian bid to oust Israel from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.
  • ritain’s National Union of Students voted on Tuesday to align itself with the goals of the boycott movement, following a series of similar symbolic moves on American campuses, although the umbrella organization of British universities said it was strongly opposed to any academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
  • Mr. Netanyahu lashed out against the boycott movement on Sunday, denying that it had anything to do with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and saying that it rather had to do with Israel’s very existence, likening it to age-old anti-Semitic “libels.
  • he Orange episode is “only the beginning,” he said, “the tip of the iceberg if these policies continue.”
  •  
    Orange executive suggests that he wants to pull out of Israel. Article highlights the reactions.
cartergramiak

Opinion | Republicans Have Declared War on Coca-Cola and Baseball - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Are you a Republican voter irked by the state of American politics? If so, party leaders have some exciting marching orders for you: Dump your Diet Coke and shut off that episode of “NCIS” — or whatever ViacomCBS show you may be watching. Cash in your Delta plane tickets, close your Citibank account, flush your Merck meds and tell your kids not to ship you anything via UPS. And, oh, yeah, no patronizing Major League Baseball until further notice. Not the Yankees. Not the Dodgers. Not even the poor Pirates.
  • Ordinarily, Republicans enjoy a snuggly relationship with corporate America, which appreciates the party’s tax-slashing, antiregulatory inclinations. But the G.O.P.’s latest crusade hasn’t been so much pro-business as antidemocratic: pushing hundreds of measures in dozens of states that are expected to make voting more burdensome, especially for poor and minority communities.
  • This manipulation of the electoral system has sparked a fierce backlash. Activists, including some of Georgia’s faith leaders, have moved to organize boycotts against locally based companies they say did too little to oppose the bill. They also have called on companies to stop donating to lawmakers who backed it.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has proclaimed corporations’ meddling “stupid” and released this ominous statement: “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order. Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box.”
  • On Friday, Major League Baseball turned up the heat, announcing that it is was pulling July’s All-Star Game and the M.L.B. draft out of the state.
  • As you’d imagine, the late-night comedians are having a field day with this mess. “Republicans say they’re going to boycott baseball,” riffed Jimmy Fallon on Monday. “They’re already boycotting the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. Soon their only sports will be golf and Jarts.”
saberal

Republicans Set to Advance Barrett Nomination Amid Democratic Boycott - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were prepared on Thursday to advance the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, planning to skirt the panel’s rules and vote to recommend her confirmation as Democrats boycott the session.
  • Democrats, livid over the extraordinarily speedy process, planned to spurn the committee vote altogether. By doing so, they effectively dared Republicans to break their own rules to muscle the nomination through.
  • Democrats were particularly angry that Republicans had reversed themselves since 2016, when they refused to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee nine months before the election that year.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Republicans intended to proceed anyway, even if it meant tossing out Judiciary Committee rules that required members of the minority party to be present to conduct official business.
  • New public polling suggests American voters may increasingly be on the side of Republicans, with opposition to Judge Barrett’s confirmation before the election waning, even among Democrats.
  • The boycott on Thursday was arguably their most drastic step yet, but Democrats have repeatedly turned to dilatory tactics to try to frame the fight, fluster Republicans and show liberals they are doing all they can to push back on Judge Barrett’s nomination.
  • Democrats had briefly discussed boycotting Judge Barrett’s confirmation hearings last week, but they decided against giving up their only chance to publicly and directly question the nominee about her legal philosophy and record. But now, with confirmation all but preordained, they reasoned a boycott would show the party’s progressive base they had fought until the end.
hannahcarter11

Warnock leading Loeffler, other Georgia Senate runoff race deadlocked: poll | TheHill - 0 views

    • hannahcarter11
       
      It's interesting how race factors in here. The disparity in the poll points in the Black vote shows just how pivotal the Black vote is in Georgia.
  • Men gave Perdue a 10-point lead over Ossoff and Loeffler a 9-point lead over Warnock. Women gave Ossoff an 11-point lead over Perdue, as well as a 19-point advantage for Warnock.
  • . If either Republican wins, the GOP will retain control of the Senate.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • However, if both Democratic candidates win, the parties will be evenly split in the upper chamber, allowing Vice President-elect Kamala HarrisKamala HarrisBiden says GOP senators have called to congratulate him Biden says family will avoid business conflicts Biden says China must play by 'international norms' MORE to cast a tie-breaking vote on legislation.
  • Democrat the Rev. Raphael Warnock holds a lead over GOP Sen. Kelly LoefflerKelly LoefflerTop Senate GOP super PAC raises million ahead of Georgia runoffs Republican senators introduce bill to protect government workers from being targeted at home Republicans scramble to counter calls to boycott Georgia runoffs MORE (Ga.) in a poll of one of two Georgia runoff races that will determine the balance of the Senate.
  • Warnock leads Loeffler 52 percent to 45 percent
  • Democrat John Ossoff is narrowly leading Sen. David PerdueDavid PerdueRepublican senators introduce bill to protect government workers from being targeted at home Republicans scramble to counter calls to boycott Georgia runoffs Georgia Republicans push for photo ID for future absentee voting MORE (R-Ga.) 50 percent to the Republican’s 48 percent in the state’s other runoff election that will take place in January.
  • White voters in the Peach State gave Perdue a 43-point lead and Loeffler a 37-point lead, according to the poll.
  • Among Black voters, Ossoff led in his runoff race with an 87-point advantage and Warnock with an 83-point advantage.  
julia rhodes

In West Bank Settlements, Israeli Jobs Are Double-Edged Sword - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The personal conflict that thousands of Palestinians face working for Israeli companies in the occupied West Bank is particularly stark for Hassan Jalaita, who for 18 years has repaired Israeli Army jeeps at the Zarfati garage here.
  • “I feel like I’m not a human being — we are serving the occupation,” said Mr. Jalaita, 47, a father of five, two of them university students. “I am forced to work here because I have a house, I have a family. Tomorrow, if there is another place to work, if there is work in Palestine, I will do it.”
  • Israeli industries operating in settlements that most of the world considers illegal and a prime obstacle to peace have become a focus of global attention in recent weeks, amid growing momentum for a boycott movement targeting Israeli businesses and institutions
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Underlying the dispute is a complicated economic and political landscape of factories and farms that at once entrench the Israeli occupation and help feed the Palestinian families that oppose it. About 25,000 Palestinians work legally for Israelis in the West Bank, many in construction, building the settlements they hope will soon be dismantled.
  • . They have about 1,000 plants — sophisticated aluminum and food manufacturers as well as tiny textile and furniture workshops — that pump roughly $300 million into the Palestinian economy through salaries and, at the same time, take up vast acreage in what Palestinians see as their future state.Palestinian officials and boycott advocates say that these settlement businesses exploit a vulnerable work force, and that Israel’s occupation is largely responsible for the moribund Palestinian economy that makes its own jobs appealing. Israeli leaders and factory owners, though, say the companies do more to help than hurt Palestinians, and provide rare opportunities for coexistence between the two peoples.
  • Diana Buttu, a lawyer who has been studying West Bank work conditions, and other boycott supporters acknowledged that the settlement industry provided important economic opportunities for Palestinians even as it challenged their national aspirations.
  • Palestinian minimum wage was $410 a month, compared with Israel’s $1,217, and most Palestinian workers lacked pensions, vacation days and disability insurance — factors she and others say are the fault of the Palestinian Authority as well as Israel.
  • The Palestinian Authority began boycotting settlement products in late 2009, but stopped short of punishing people who helped produce them. Mohammed Mustafa, the Palestinian deputy prime minister for economic affairs, called the industrial parks part of an exploitative pattern of “business colonization” that has blocked the authority from building a viable economy.
  • “If we have our land, if we have our resources, if we have independence, if we have control of our economy, then we will give them opportunities,” Mr. Mustafa said. “Yes, they are paying them more, but who wants to be working in a settlement? This is, in a way, even worse than not giving them a job.”
  • The Palestinian Authority cannot inspect these workplaces, and the Israeli Ministry of Economy has jurisdiction over only minimum-wage violations (a spokeswoman said it opened 10 investigations last year).
qkirkpatrick

Israel brands Palestinian-led boycott movement a 'strategic threat' | World news | The ... - 0 views

  • Israel and key international supporters have sharply ratcheted up their campaign against the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, with senior Israeli officials declaring it a strategic threat.
  • The moves came as the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) voted on Tuesday to formally ally itself with the aims of BDS. Following the vote, Hebrew media reported that Israeli MPs were due to hold a special session in the Knesset to discuss the issue.
  • Israeli critics point to the call for a right to return and the opposition of some leaders of the movement to a two-state solution – which they describe as a mistake – as evidence that BDS is antisemitic.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The issue appears to have been given added impetus since Palestinian efforts to have Israel suspended from the scandal-ridden world football organisation Fifa failed on Friday
  • “The success of BDS,” Yemini wrote earlier this week, “is particularly impressive because it is a movement that uses the language of rights, but deals in practice with denying Israel’s right to exist. The result is a major deception.”
sgardner35

French Firm Latest Target of Palestinian-Led Movement to Boycott Israel - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While many Israelis were enraged by comments from the chief executive of the French telecommunications company Orange, who told journalists in Egypt that he would like to cut ties to an Israeli cellphone service provider that operates in the occupied West Bank, pro-Palestinian activists working to isolate Israel argued that the statement was insufficient.
  • As a result, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have accused B.D.S. activists in Europe and the United States of attempting to “delegitimize” Israel and suggested that the movement is a cover for anti-Semitism.
  • Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet and activist, who is a strong supporter of B.D.S., said hundreds of artists and others had canceled appearances in Israel or had declined invitations to go in recent years. Many did so in response to B.D.S. requests, he said, reflecting what he called a broadening appeal of the campaign.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “It’s not simply that the cultural boycott is growing but people are more publicly supportive of it,” he said.
  • While Orange does not directly operate in Israel or the West Bank, an Israeli company, Partner Communications, operates a cellphone service with the brand name Orange Israel under a licensing agreement, so the activists argue that the French company profits from the occupation.
  • Images of Israeli soldiers clustered around Orange trucks near the front line during the fighting last year in Gaza, where they could reportedly charge their phones and get extra batteries, were shared on social networks last week by B.D.S. activists in Egypt.
Javier E

Students Protest Intro Humanities Course at Reed - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Of the 25 demands issued by RAR that day, the largest section was devoted to reforming Humanities 110.
  • outrage has been increasingly common in the course, Humanities 110, over the past 13 months. On September 26, 2016, the newly formed RAR organized a boycott of all classes in response to a Facebook post from the actor Isaiah Washington
  • A required year-long course for freshmen, Hum 110 consists of lectures that everyone attends and small break-out classes “where students learn how to discuss, debate, and defend their readings.” It’s the heart of the academic experience at Reed, which ranks second for future Ph.D.s in the humanities and fourth in all subjects.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • As Professor Peter Steinberger details in a 2011 piece for Reed magazine, “What Hum 110 Is All About,” the course is intended to train students whose “primary goal” is “to engage in original, open-ended, critical inquiry.”
  • But for RAR, Hum 110 is all about oppression. “We believe that the first lesson that freshmen should learn about Hum 110 is that it perpetuates white supremacy—by centering ‘whiteness’ as the only required class at Reed,” according to a RAR statement delivered to all new freshmen
  • The texts that make up the Hum 110 syllabus—from the ancient Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt regions—are “Eurocentric,” “Caucasoid,” and thus “oppressive,” RAR leaders have stated. Hum 110 “feels like a cruel test for students of color,” one leader remarked on public radio. “It traumatized my peers.”
  • Reed is home to the most liberal student body of any college, according to The Princeton Review. It’s also ranked the second most-studious—a rigor inculcated in Hum 110.
  • A major crisis for Reed College started when RAR put those core qualities—social justice and academic study—on a collision course.
  • Beginning on boycott day, RAR protested every single Hum lecture that school year.
  • A Hum protest is visually striking: Up to several dozen RAR supporters position themselves alongside the professor and quietly hold signs reading “We demand space for students of color,” “We cannot be erased,” “Fuck Hum 110,” “Stop silencing black and brown voices; the rest of society is already standing on their necks,” and so on. The signs are often accompanied by photos of black Americans killed by police.
  • One of the first Hum professors to request that RAR not occupy the classroom was Lucía Martínez Valdivia, who said her preexisting PTSD would make it difficult to face protesters. In an open letter, RAR offered sympathy to Martínez Valdivia but then accused her of being anti-black, discriminating against those with disabilities, and engaging in gaslighting—without specifying those charges. When someone asked for specifics, a RAR leader replied, “Asking for people to display their trauma so that you feel sufficiently satisfied is a form of violence.”
  • But another RAR member did offer a specific via Facebook: “The​ ​appropriation​ ​of​ ​AAVE [African American Vernacular English]​ ​on​ ​her​ ​shirt​ ​during​ ​lecture:​ ​‘Poetry​ ​is​ ​lit’ ​is​ ​a​ ​form​ ​of​ ​anti-blackness.”
  • During Martínez Valdivia’s lecture on Sappho, protesters sat together in the seats wearing all black; they confronted her after class, with at least one of them yelling at the professor about her past trauma, bringing her to tears. “I am intimidated by these students,” Martínez Valdivia later wrote, noting she is “scared to teach courses on race, gender, or sexuality, or even texts that bring these issues up in any way—and I am a gay mixed-race woman.” Such fear, she revealed in an op-ed for The Washington Post, prompted some of her colleagues— “including people of color, immigrants, and those without tenure”—to avoid lecturing altogether.
  • what about the majority of students not in RAR? I spoke with a few dozen of them to get an understanding of what campus was like last year, and a clear pattern emerged: intimidation, stigma, and silence when it came to discussing Hum 110, or racial politics in general.
  • Raphael, the founder of the Political Dissidents Club, warned incoming students over Facebook that “Reed’s culture can be stifling/suffocating and narrow minded.”
  • The most popular public forum at Reed is Facebook, where social tribes coalesce and where the most emotive and partisan views get the most attention. “Facebook conversations at Reed bring out the extreme aspects of political discourse on campus,” said Yuta, a sophomore who recently co-founded a student group, The Thinkery, “dedicated to critical and open discussion.”
  • In mid-April, when students were studying for finals, a RAR leader grew frustrated that more supporters weren’t showing up to protest Hum 110. In a post viewable only to Reed students, the leader let loose: To all the white & able(mentally/physically) who don’t come to sit-ins(ever, anymore, rarely): all i got is shade for you. [... If] you ain’t with me, then I will accept that you are against me. There’s 6 hums left, I best be seein all u phony ass white allies show-up. […] How you gonna be makin all ur white supremacy messes & not help clean-up your own community by coming and sitting for a frickin hour & still claim that you ain’t a laughin at a lynchin kinda white.
  • Nonwhite students weren’t spared; a group of them agreed to “like” Patrick’s comment in a show of support. A RAR member demanded those “non-black pocs [people of color]” explain themselves, calling them “anti-black pos [pieces of shit].”
  • As tensions continued to mount, one student decided to create an online forum to debate Hum 110. Laura, a U.S. Army veteran who served twice in Afghanistan, named the Facebook page “Reed Discusses Hum 110.” But it seemed like people didn’t want to engage publicly:
  • Another student wrote to Laura in a private message, “I'm coming into this as a ‘POC’ but I disagree with everything [RAR has been] saying for a long time [and] it feels as if it isn't safe for anyone to express anything that goes against what they're saying.”
  • Laura could relate—her father “immigrated from Syria and was brown”—so she stood in front of Hum 110 just before class to distribute an anonymous survey to gauge opinions about the protests, an implicit rebuke to RAR. Laura, who lives in the neighboring city of Beaverton, said she saw this move as risky. “I would’ve rethought what I did had I lived on campus,” she said.
  • If Facebook is no place to debate Hum 110, what about the printed page? Not so much: During the entire 2016–17 school year, not a single op-ed or even a quote critical of RAR’s methods—let alone goals—was published in the student newspaper, according to a review of archived issues. The only thing that comes close?
  • The student magazine, The Grail, did publish a fair amount of dissent over RAR—but almost all anonymously
  • This school year, students are ditching anonymity and standing up to RAR in public—and almost all of them are freshmen of color
  • The pushback from freshmen first came over Facebook. “To interrupt a lecture in a classroom setting is in serious violation of academic freedom and is just unthoughtful and wrong,” wrote a student from China named Sicheng, who distributed a letter of dissent against RAR. Another student, Isabel, ridiculed the group for its “unsolicited emotional theater.
  • I met the student who shot the video. A sophomore from India, he serves as a mentor for international students. (He asked not to be identified by name.) “A lot of them told me how disappointed they were—that they traveled such a long distance to come to this school, and worked so hard to get to this school, and their first lecture was canceled,” he said. He also recalled the mood last year for many students of color like himself: “There was very much a standard opinion you had to have [about RAR], otherwise people would look at you funny, and some people would say stuff to you—a lot of people were called ‘race traitors.
  • Another student from India, Jagannath, responded to the canceled lecture by organizing a freshmen-only meeting on the quad. “For us to rise out of this culture of private concerns, hatred, and fear, we need to find a way to think, speak, and act together,” he wrote in a mass email. Jagannath told me that upperclassmen warned him he was “very crazy” to hold a public meeting, but it was a huge success; about 150 freshmen showed up, and by all accounts, their debate over Hum 110 was civil and constructive. In the absence of Facebook and protest signs, the freshmen were taking back their class.
  • In the intervening year, the Reed administration had met many of RAR’s demands, including new hires in the Office of Inclusive Community, fast-tracking the reevaluation of the Hum 110 syllabus that traditionally happens every 10 years, and arranging a long series of “6 by 6 meetings”—six RAR students and six Hum professors—to solicit ideas for that syllabus. (Those meetings ended when RAR members stopped coming; they complained of being “forced to sit in hours of fruitless meetings listening to full-grown adults cry about Aristotle.”)
  • the more accommodation that’s been made, the more disruptive the protests have become—and the more heightened the rhetoric. “Black lives matter” was the common chant at last year’s boycott. This year’s? “No cops, no KKK, no racist U.S.A.” RAR increasingly claims those cops will be unleashed on them—or, in their words, Hum professors are “entertaining threatening violence on our bodies.”
  • Rollo later told me that RAR “had a beautiful opportunity to address police violence” but squandered it with extreme rhetoric. “Identity politics is divisive,” he insisted. As far as Hum 110, “I like to do my own interpreting,” and he resents RAR “playing the race card on ancient Egyptian culture.
  • Reed is just one college—and a small one at that. But the freshman revolt against RAR could be a blueprint for other campuses. If the “most liberal student body” in the country can reject divisive racial rhetoric and come together to debate a diversity of views, others could follow.
knudsenlu

Who Was Recy Taylor? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.
  • If we know that enslaved women were used for their productive and reproductive labor—if they were raped with impunity in the system of slavery—then what happened after Emancipation? Did those practices and the institutions that upheld those practices—the men and their sons and their cousins—end those practices just because of Emancipation?
  • So I started looking for cases, which were hard to find because marginalized people are hard to find in the archives. Their stories are not remembered, they’re not saved, and they’re not considered worthy of being archived so often. Those stories were hard to find, but the black press actually printed a lot of black women’s testimonies about sexual violence at the time.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Newkirk: Having met and spent time with her, what’s your sense of how Recy Taylor fought all this, and how she processed what happened to her? Did she see herself as an activist?McGuire: No. She was not an activist. After she was assaulted, she immediately told what happened. She told her father, her husband, the sheriff, and then she went home. And then the family was terrorized, and her house was firebombed.
  • If someone threatens to kill you in Alabama in 1944, that’s real. There’s no consequences for that. The threat is very real. Her speaking out was just incredibly brave. And when I asked her in 2009 why she spoke out—why did she say anything, wasn’t she scared?—and she looked me right in the eye and said ‘I just didn’t think that I deserved what they did to me.’ I just thought that she had an incredible sense of self-worth and dignity.
  • I was raised to believe, like too many people are today, that Rosa Parks was a tired old lady who tiptoed into history. Because she had an ‘emotional response’ to her exhaustion and it changed the world. But, in 1998 I was working on my master’s thesis, and I listened to an NPR story about Montgomery Bus Boycott veterans. The editor of The Montgomery Advertiser, Joe Azbell, was talking about the boycott and he said that Gertrude Perkins had never been mentioned in history, but she was the most important in the boycott. It took my breath away, and I didn’t know who that was.So I went looking in microfilm for the newspaper, and I found her story. She was a black woman who was kidnapped by the police in Montgomery and raped.
malonema1

Study: 25% of Americans Stopped Buying Because of Politics | CMO Strategy - AdAge - 0 views

  • Study: 25% of Americans Say Politics Drove Them to Boycott Brands
  • Think there's more hoopla about brand boycotts than actual boycotting? Maybe not. A new Ipsos survey found that 25% of Americans said they had stopped using a brand's goods or services in the previous three months because of protests, boycotts or the brand's perceived political leanings.
  • Socially conscientious consumerism has been on the rise for years," said Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations. "Given the combination of that trend and the current politically charged climate, it's not surprising to see that such a significant number of Americans have changed their shopping habits due to politics."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The research firm's senior marketing, corporate strategy and public affairs executives worked together to build a survey looking at 28 brands in the politically charged weeks after President Trump's inauguration.
  • Some 34% of Republicans surveyed reported boycotting Nordstrom, for example, compared to 12% of Democrats. The study captured respondents in February, when the decision by the retailer to drop Ivanka Trump's clothing line was in the headlines.
  • Some 32% of Democrats in the study said they boycotted Uber, compared to 13% of Republicans.
  • Among brands not swept up in political fights, Ipsos found less partisan disparity. Roughly three-quarters of respondents from either party said they bought Coke products.
  • "While it's unrealistic for a brand to think it can speak to the values of all consumers," said Torossian, "the prevalence of partisanship and the risk of alienating certain market segments is something a brand should consider when ideating and executing ads or campaigns."
anonymous

Republican donations surge despite corporate boycott after Capitol riots | Reuters - 0 views

  • Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies announced they would halt political donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential election loss. Two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising.
  • If anything, the biggest backers of Trump’s false election-fraud narrative - such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene - have been rewarded with a flood of grassroots donations, more than offsetting the loss of corporate money. And contributions from both small donors and rich individuals looking to fight the Democratic agenda have poured into the party’s fundraising apparatus.
  • Interviews with Republican operatives, big-money donors and fundraisers revealed little apprehension that corporate outrage over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots would damage the party’s fundraising for the 2022 congressional elections.Dan Eberhart, a major Republican fundraiser, said he had predicted for years that Trump’s support would collapse. He believed the Capitol insurrection would be the tipping point.“The data is the opposite,” Eberhart said. “You are seeing a hardening of support for Trump … I think there will be no shortage of money.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “The Democrats have become our best fundraisers,” said Fred Zeidman, a Republican donor and fundraiser in Houston and chairman of investment bank Gordian Group.
  • Ten corporate PACs examined by Reuters slashed donations in January by more than 90% compared to the same month in 2017, right after the previous presidential election. All ten of the PACs had sworn off donating to the 147 lawmakers.Asked about the corporate boycott, NRCC chairman Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman, told Reuters that Republican House members “don’t answer to PACs. We answer to voters.”
  • Hawley, the Missouri senator, was pilloried by Republicans and Democrats for leading the coalition of Senate objectors. He took in $969,000 in donations in January, according to a Feb. 1 memo posted on his website. That is eight times some $120,000 in donations Hawley raised in the first quarter of 2020, regulatory filings show.
1 - 20 of 82 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page