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Today, on the 61st anniversary of the launch of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, now just hours after a major victory was won for the people of Standing Rock, hundreds of thousands of us have joined together to take an organized stand against racial injustice and police brutality in America.

This is the Injustice Boycott.

It’s not a petition. It’s not a Facebook page. It’s not a retweet or a hashtag.

It’s an organized resistance, driven by local people and activists, supported by passionate believers all over the country and around the world. Just as the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for 381 days, we are prepared for this boycott to last as it takes to make change happen. Indeed, we won’t stop until it does. This boycott will not weaken, but will grow in size, strength, reach, and power every single day.

Today we are launching Phase 1 of the Injustice Boycott and it will last until Monday, January 16th, 2017 – which is also known King Day in this country. We chose to launch Phase 1 on the anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and end it on the day our nation celebrates Dr. King to remind us all that our ancestors fought for change and made it happen before and we can do it again.

It’s not enough for us to pick up trash and have cookouts on King Day when our people are catching hell from coast to coast. We have reached a pivotal point in the history of our country, now just weeks away from the inauguration of President-Elect Donald Trump, where our organization must match our outrage.

Today, we are announcing the first three cities of our boycott.

They are Standing Rock, San Francisco, and New York City. We are giving those cities, the businesses and corporations that call those cities home, the states they are in, and the federal government, 43 days, that’s until King Day of 2017, which is on January 16th, to meet the very reasonable and humane demands of local activists in those cities.

The government officials in those cities know full well who the local activists are. The government officials in those cities know full well what the reasonable demands of those local activists are. And today, we are serving notice, that it is time for government officials, businesses, and all interested parties in those cities to actually make change happen over the next 43 days or, on January 17th, 2017 – we will do 4 things.

  1. We will begin a full tourism boycott of those cities. To protect small businesses, we will also announce a comprehensive plan for ways you can support local entrepreneurs to get them through the boycott.
  1. We will begin a comprehensive divestment plan where we ask people to pull their money out of banks, financial institutions, and investment plans which we have determined either directly support racial injustice and police brutality in those cities or have chosen to remain silent in the midst of this national crisis. We will give some of those financial institutions an opportunity to publicly endorse the reasonable reforms of local activists before we publicly announce our divestment plan.
  1. We will announce a targeted national boycott of businesses in those cities that have either directly supported injustice there or have remained painfully silent in the face of it. Willful ignorance is no excuse. We will give those businesses a chance to publicly endorse the reasonable reforms of local activists before we publicly announce a boycott of them.
  1. We will begin creatively disruptive protests in those cities designed to inconvenience and shut down both commerce and government work.

San Francisco and New York City proudly enjoy reputations as progressive, liberal, Democratic havens, but the reality on the ground in these cities for people of color simply do not line with those reputations. One of the primary goals of the Injustice Boycott will be to unashamedly hold “progressive” cities, their elected officials, and the businesses in those cities responsible for the reputations they so enjoy.

San Francisco was not progressive for Alex Nieto, Jessica Williams, or Mario Woods.

New York City was not progressive for Eric Garner, Deborah Danner, or Kalief Browder.

To be clear, I could name of more men, women, boys, and girls who’ve been mowed down by systemic injustice in San Francisco and New York City. The list is painfully long, but justice is woefully and repeatedly missing in action in each and every case.

I have so much more to say, but I’ll close with this thought. Yesterday we learned that the Army Corps of Engineers has paused construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock. That decision should inspire all of us and show us what activism can accomplish. However, we have no idea what a Trump administration might do there or elsewhere. We must take our organizing to a brand new level.

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