A team of religious leaders says it will wait to begin boycotting Georgia-based businesses it considers to have shown insufficient opposition to the state’s new Republican-backed voting reforms.
The group decided to delay a boycott, originally scheduled to begin on Wednesday, until after it meets with executives who lead Aflac, AT&T, Home Depot, Southern Company, and UPS, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Hopefully, we won’t have to give the signal,” Bishop Reginald Jackson, who leads the African Methodist Episcopal Sixth Episcopal District of Georgia, said. “We want these companies to speak out publicly against this legislation, to use their lobbying resources to fight voting restrictions in other states, and to publicly support federal legislation to expand voting rights.”
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However, Jackson and the others do have plans to hold a protest this week outside the Augusta National Golf Club during The Masters tournament over golf’s silence on the voting law.
Others have also criticized the Professional Golf Association for not opposing the law, including the National Black Justice Coalition, which called for the PGA to move The Masters out of Georgia.
“The PGA Tour and Masters Tournament have both made commitments to help diversify golf and address racial inequities in this country — and we expect them to not only speak out against Georgia’s new racist voter suppression law — but to also take action,” David J. Johns, the group’s executive director, said in a statement to Golfweek.
The Washington Examiner contacted the AME Sixth District to confirm the boycott delay but did not immediately receive a response.
While some Democrats who oppose the Georgia law, including former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, have said it isn’t time to start boycotting “yet,” other opponents have for weeks called for boycotts and other actions to punish the Peach State over its efforts to change voting laws. Demonstrations challenging companies deemed too passive about the law included a “die-in” at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta.
Jackson was among those who began calling for a boycott against Coca-Cola, saying during a March 25 rally that if “Coca-Cola wants black and brown people to drink their product, then they must speak up when our rights, our lives, and our very democracy as we know it is under attack.”
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey has since derided the law, saying, “Let me be crystal clear and unequivocal: This legislation is unacceptable, it is a step backward, and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity. And this is, frankly, just a step backward.”
CEO Ed Bastian of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines also called the legislation “unacceptable,” and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game and the 2021 draft to Colorado.
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Prominent Republicans have suggested a boycott of their own against those companies criticizing the law. Former President Donald Trump suggested that people “boycott baseball” over its decision to pull the All-Star Game from Georgia, and Republican Sen. Rand Paul floated the idea of Republicans quitting drinking Coke.
“If Coca-Cola wants to only operate in Democrat states and have only Democrats drink them, God love ’em. We’ll see how well they do when half the country quits drinking Coca-Cola,” he said.
