Legal Commentary

Memo To Jan Brewer: Boycotts Work, Ask Rosa Parks

By Big Tent Democrat

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is panicked that the outrageous law she signed, AZ SB 1070, has made her state a pariah. In response, she pens an absurd column for ESPN that ignores history and insults the very "out of state interests" she is hoping will not boycott Arizona:

Urging Major League Baseball to take away next year's All-Star Game from Phoenix is the wrong play. In Arizona, both proponents and opponents of Senate Bill 1070 have stated that economic boycotts are an inappropriate and misguided response to an issue that is clearly worthy of proper public debate and discourse. Put simply, history shows that boycotts backfire and harm innocent people. Boycotts are just more politics and manipulation by out-of-state interests.

(Emphasis supplied.) Boycotts do not work? Really? Remember Rosa Parks and the Montgomery boycott of 1955? South Africa? Or, wait for it, the NFL refusing to hold a Super Bowl IN ARIZONA after it repealed MLK Day? All of those boycotts worked. More . . .

But the truly ironic part was Brewer's attack on "out of state interests." If you do not want "out of state interests" involved, then why in Gawd's name do you care if they choose to not go to your state? Because that is what moving the All Star Game would entail - "out of state interests" not coming to Arizona.

Arizona has chosen to make itself a pariah. If it wants to avoid being a pariah, it should repeal the law that has made it a pariah. If Arizona does not care what "out of state interests" think, then it can stick with the law that has made it a pariah and suffer the consequences. Those consequences should, and will imo, include losing the 2011 All Star Game.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 06, 2010 (boomark / email).