The NAACP sent a letter Thursday to the National Players’ Leagues, urging professional athletes in free agency to avoid Texas over new laws it says hurt marginalized communities.
The letter sent to every professional sports players’ association in the country, said recent legislation Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed, ranging from abortion to voting rights to banning COVID-19 mask mandates, has hurt women, children and people of color.
“As we watch an incomprehensible assault on basic human rights unfold in Texas, we are simultaneously witnessing a threat to constitutional guarantees for women, children, and marginalized communities,” the letter signed by NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and NAACP Texas State Conference President Gary Bledsoe stated.
“Over the past few months, legislators in Texas have passed archaic policies, disguised as laws, that directly violate privacy rights and a woman’s freedom to choose, restrict access to free and fair elections for Black and brown voters, and increase the risk of contracting coronavirus.”
“Texas lawmakers have destroyed the state’s moral compass by passing these laws,” they added. “In return, we are asking that you seek employment with sports teams located in states that will protect, honor and serve your families with integrity. … We are now pleading with you — if you are a free agent and are considering employment in Texas, look elsewhere.”
Amid people of color disproportionately being infected, hospitalized or dying from the COVID-19 pandemic nationwide, they emphasized the Texas ban on school mask mandates and vulnerability of children who cannot yet receive the vaccine.
“If you are Black, avoid Texas,” their letter stated. “If you want to lower your chances of dying from coronavirus, avoid Texas.”
An NAACP statement on the letter also referred to Abbott signing into law in May an anti-abortion bill enforced by members of the public as a move that “empowered vigilantes with the authority of law to restrict women’s freedom to make choices about their bodies.”
The Supreme Court declined to block the controversial law that bans abortions after six weeks into pregnancy last month in a 5-4 vote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent the “Texas Legislature has deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”
Also, last month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered to help employees in Texas relocate due to the new abortion law.
Abbott told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that more businesses were moving to the state due to its social policies.
“People vote with their feet and this is not slowing down businesses coming to the state of Texas at all,” Abbott told CNBC, adding that people are leaving the liberal state of California in part because of its social policies.
The NAACP also referred in the letter to Abbott signing a bill into law last month that adds new restrictions to early voting and new identification requirements, which critics say will disproportionately impact voters of color.
Most recently, Abbott signed into law on Monday new congressional maps, which the NAACP’s letter Thursday said would “dilute the voices of people of color.”
“People of color have driven 95% of the Texas population growth,” according to recently released data from the 2020 census, which the NAACP cited in the letter.
“Yet, new voting legislation and political maps put these communities at risk of not being able to participate in their democracy,” the NAACP letter stated. “These laws are intended to suppress our constitutional right to vote.”
The redistricting plans also prompted several Latino voters and voting civil rights groups to sue Texas, saying the new maps “unlawfully dilute the voting strength of Latinos.”
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“As we watch an incomprehensible assault on basic human rights unfold in Texas, we are simultaneously witnessing a threat to constitutional guarantees for women, children, and marginalized communities,” the letter signed by NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and NAACP Texas State Conference President Gary Bledsoe stated.
Show me
How’s about texas, KICKS THE NAACP OUT OF texas!!!
“The letter sent to every professional sports players’ association in the country, said recent legislation Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed, ranging from abortion to voting rights to banning COVID-19 mask mandates, has hurt women, children and people of color.”
HUH???
Control over abortions, has hurt black children??
How does preventing the killing babies hurt children??
Voter ID, has hurt people of color??
Are people of color to stupid to get an ID??
Banning COVID-19 mask mandates??
You can still wear a mask, but the government can’t dictate that you do.
It is obvious that the NAACP has colluded with the traitorous, dishonest, unethical, socialist Democrat Party.
YES, You are right with every thing you said about the Treasonous and Traitorous and I add New Fraudulent and Criminal Regime In Washington, DC (District Of Monumental Corruption) and Sadly within far to many States!!!! We The People Must Find More Governors such as Gov. Abbott and Gov. DeSandis in Florida !!!!
To leftists, YES not letting black women abort babies on demand, HAS hurt them.. They now have to take RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN actions.. Heaven forbid.
Just think and they keep saying Black Live Matter while they want to give all the power to murder their race I understand when it is necessary
[email protected]
It is not only their unborn babies that the Black Americans kill.
I.A.W. U.S. Census & 2018 FBI (Table 43a)
Black males make up about 6% of the U.S. population but every year commit ~56% of all the murders and ~54% of all robberies in the U.S… Every year in the U.S. there are ~6,000 African-Americans men, women and children killed and 92% of them were killed by fellow African-Americans.
Where is the outrage from “Black Lives Matter”???
They speak of a moral code, meaning abortion is acceptable as a moral choice? Oh, yes the rights of children, how does that affect the dead ones?
Abortion is America’s Holocaust !!! It Must Be Stopped !!! Maybe the New Radicalized Left Socialist Demoncrat Party are bringing in all these Illegal Immigrants to Replace all the Millions of Aborted Babies ?!?!?! This May Well Swing the Voting over to the Demoncrat Party with Illegal Immigrant Votes !?!?!
ABORTION Is the world’s holocaust.
We have already murdered more children than even Hitler could have envisioned, still he would have been proud and grateful for the vindication of his ideals.
Didn’t he give an AWARD to Margret sanger, PP’s founder!
miss piggy repeated she was doing this “for the children, for the children, for the children”. If she is so dedicated to providing for the children why is she so hell bent on having them aborted or allowing them to die if that is what the mother wants? God has a very very very special place for her kind and it wont be at a podium with a gavel and a big mouth.
“For the children”is the default root password to the Constitution.”
Lucky Texas. How ’bout helping us out in Colorado too?
naacp leading there unwashed masses by the nose and the uneducated.
If justice Sotomayor is concerned about the people of Texas having to take the law into their own hands (because the Biden Administration refuses to), there’s a SIMPLE solution:
ENFORCE THE DAMN (immigration) LAW
And BUILD THE DAMN FENCE!
These days, i prefer a MASSIVE DEEP DITCH, followed by a rampart (ON out side)< THEN A WALL atop that rampart…
The players in the NBA at 74% & the NFL at 70% are disproportionately black. Need to fix that.
Houston is largest city in TX with disproportionate white population at 35% vs black / Latino population at 54%. Not possible for white voters to override black / Latino voters in Houston in federal elections no matter how districts are drawn.
Someone should tell Sotomayor millions of people in TX & entire nation are being unconstitutionally denied employment & the cash they need to live on because Dem Party govt is persecuting / financially prosecuting them for their medical procedure choices.
She & other SC justices should be more concerned about the Dem Party govt totally absurd & unjust proposal to rob US working class citizens to pay $450,000 per person to an unknown number of non-citizen foreign nationals who by law should not have been allowed entry in first place without being vetted & proving their eligibility for asylum.
Foreign nationals self claimed but unproven minor children were placed in US custody for their safety & welfare at great expense to US citizen taxpayers instead of being returned to the child welfare authorities in their home countries.
If this Dem Govt theft of citizen tax & to give to illegal aliens who shouldn’t even be here isn’t unconstitutional &/or illegal, it should be.
Who in their right mind watches sports anymore? The ones with the big pie holes are unamerican, overpaid, ungrateful, devious and believe they are entitled to as much admiration as possible and are just waiting for America to pay to watch them and buy their products. Stopped watching sports when pinocchio took office and haven’t missed seeing any of it. Actually it’s kind of peaceful.
With all the anti-americanism of the NBA, and NFL especially, i am shocked they STILL HAVE MILLIONS of folks willing to not just watch, but still go to games in person..
It strikes me that the NAACP is advocating for black segregate from the Texas mixed community or does the naacp believe Texas is a white state. From this person’s viewpoint the naacp believes that discrimination is the way to keep black athletes from earning the maximum amount they can make by working for the best offer if it came from Texas.
I’m certain that just about anyone would do just fine without any members of the National Association for the Advancement of COLORED PEOPLE.
I’d love to just DO AWAY with the NAACP, totally and utterly!