During her Super Bowl performance, Beyonce’s dancers sported berets, Afros and wore all black, a similar style to that of the Black Panther party.
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It started in Miami, when the president of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), Lt. Javier Ortiz, called on all police officers everywhere to boycott all of her concerts on her forthcoming world tour.
If you’re an National Football League fan, or just a person who watches and keeps up with the news in general, surely by now you’ve heard about the uproar surrounding Beyonce’s Super Bowl 50 halftime performance in which she was a guest of the headlining act, Coldplay. The controversial video for “Formation” follows.
Mullins said the boycott, which he supports, would involve officers refusing to work paid off-duty security for the event, not refusing to perform regular law enforcement duties.
Unions in Miami, Tampa and Nashville, Tennessee, are either calling for officers to boycott her music or urging them not to volunteer to work at her shows.
A statement released by the group, founded in part by Dr. Cornel West in 2011, said, “At a time when people have been rising up against the genocidal tide of police terror and mass incarceration in ways we haven’t seen since the 60’s, backward fascist reactionaries like Rudolph Giuliani and various national police organizations have unleashed a torrent of abuse attacking Beyonce and accusing her of ‘cop killer entertainment'”.
“We have a serious job to do and she sells records”, he said.
Beyoncé is now catching flack from the New York Police Department.
Moss commented, “Right now the union president has his First Amendment right to say whatever he wants to say, but that doesn’t always translate to reality”. But he later stumbled on her Formation video, which featured a black boy dancing in front of police in riot gear, who put their hands up in surrender. “The fact that Beyoncé used this year’s Super Bowl to divide Americans by promoting the Black Panthers and her antipolice message shows how she does not support law enforcement”.
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A representative for Beyonce has yet to comment on the report.
