Boycott
Protesters of Arizona's new immigration law try to focus boycotts Krissah Thompson Washington Post, April 30, 2010
Remember Public Enemy's "By the Time I Get to Arizona?" It was released in 1991, when the state was at the center of another racial debate. The song -- part social commentary, part threat -- captured the collective will behind an effective boycott of Arizona in the early 1990s that groups opposed to the state's harsh new immigration law would like to repeat.
That boycott began in 1987 when then-Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded a newly created holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., just a week before its inaugural celebration. But it was not until 1992 that the state's voters -- after rejecting a ballot measure to create the holiday two years earlier -- approved it and joined the every other state in recognizing the day.
In those five intervening years, Arizona was the subject of a series of convention and sports boycotts.
What made the boycott for the King holiday work was the broad support it received from a wide range of groups, and its focus on big-money industries. The final push came from the NFL Player's Association, which urged the league's owners to pull the 1993 Super Bowl from the state when it failed to approve the holiday. In that five-year period, Arizona lost more than 100 conventions and hundreds of millions of dollars, according to news reports.
The calls this week for new boycotts of Arizona, which has given the police broad power to stop people on suspicion of being in the state illegally, so far have been disparate and unorganized.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome has directed city employees to avoid business travel to the state, and city officials are contemplating ending all contracts with Arizona-based companies. The Mexican state of Sonora canceled a cross-border meeting that was to be held in Phoenix in June. A group of independent truckers from California have launched a five-day boycott of the state and refused to transport goods in or out. The National Black Caucus of State Legislators and the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators said Thursday that they are pulling out of a conference they had planned to hold in Scottsdale.
"We want to send a message," San Francisco Supervisor David Campos told supporters at a rally there Monday. "There are consequences when you target a whole people."