Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP, speaks at the 46th NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, California, U.S. on February 6, 2015. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo
By Colleen Jenkins
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Friday said it would not hold its convention in North Carolina and urged other organizations to boycott the state in protest of laws adopted by the Republican-led legislature.
The civil rights groups described the move as the first step in an economic boycott that could be expanded in North Carolina and replicated in other states that enact laws limiting voting rights and protections for gay and transgender people.
NAACP leaders asked artists, religious groups, educators and sports leagues to join the effort.
“If we demonstrate the power of the purse, then we will demonstrate the power of democracy,” the NAACP’s president and CEO, Cornell William Brooks, told reporters in Raleigh.
Brooks did not provide a timeline for a wider boycott, but the organization said an internal task force would explore it.
The NAACP said it was calling for the boycott in response to North Carolina laws such as House Bill 2, which bars transgender people from using government-operated bathrooms that match their gender identity and bans cities from setting a minimum wage above the state level.
The organization said state lawmakers need to create fair election districts that do not dilute the black vote and repeal a new measure seen as weakening the executive powers of newly elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
“What has happened in North Carolina makes this state one of the battlegrounds over the soul of America,” said the Rev. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter.
Conventions, corporations and sports leagues including the National Basketball Association already relocated events or halted new jobs planned for North Carolina after lawmakers passed H.B. 2 last March, costing the state more than $560 million, according to the online magazine Facing South.
So far, however, efforts to repeal the measure have failed.
Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican, said Cooper should take a stance against the NAACP’s boycott.
“It’s time for him to show some leadership as North Carolina’s governor, condemn William Barber’s attempt to inflict economic harm on our citizens, and work toward a reasonable compromise that keeps men out of women’s bathrooms,” Berger said in a statement.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Leslie Adler)
There is a way that seems right into a man …then the judgement NAACP is not relevant and not promoting the values that it once stood for
It is plain to see what the NAACP has become ; a far cry from what it use to be . Today it is just another
Organization against God and the Bible . Anyone that claims to be a Reverend ; should know that what the
transgenders are trying to do , is an abomination to God ! .
A True Christian , wouldn’t support such ! . There are 2 classes of people ; male and female . Real men
uses the male bathroom and Real women ; uses the women’s bathroom . This talk about transgender is
of the devil !
We Americans as a whole are not going to cow tow to the demands of a minority to change what is the rightful order of things, just to please a few. IF THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT, THEY SHOULD GO TO COUNSELING!
Why would anyone for the ‘advancement’ of anyone be advocating a step backwards in the discrimination against normal people!? Whoever this is that is advocating this kind of bathroom agenda, better think twice about his daughter or son being molested as a result of someone illegally entering the opposite bathroom of their biological gender! Not their “choice” but their X or Y chromosomes which cannot be changed, no matter how much surgery they perform.