Earlier this month Beyoncé, out of the blue (as usual), dropped "Formation" and (as usual) people lost their proverbial shit over it. Featuring, among other things, Beyoncé sinking a cop car in a flooded New Orleans with her body, and graffiti that says "Stop shooting us," the video has been hailed as a celebration of blackness – one that changes the way we listen to Beyoncé forever. The next day, her halftime appearance at the Super Bowl saw Bey plus dancers perform the track attired in outfits that referenced the Black Panther Party.
The track and performance sparked outrage among right-wing types who saw it as "a slap in the face to law enforcement". It provoked an organised anti-Beyoncé protest outside the NFL headquarters that only two people actually showed up to, and former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, to tell Fox News: “I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.”
Soon, Bey will head out on her Formation World Tour, which kicks off on April 27 at Marlins Park in Miami, Florida. The Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Javier Ortiz, however, has encouraged law enforcement officers to boycott the show.
Ortiz, president of Lodge #20 (which represents 1,100 officers), announced that his union had voted to boycott the event and urged all officers to do the same. Citing both the "Formation" video and Super Bowl performance as reasons, he issued a statement yesterday saying the singer sought to: “divide Americans by promoting the Black Panthers and her anti-police message shows how she does not support law enforcement.”
The opinion is not one widely shared though. Maj. Delrish Moss, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, told The Huffington Post that Ortiz and the Fraternal Order Of Police do not speak for the police department or the city and that the venue will be protected by police. "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," he said. "As far as we see, there’s no indication that anything that is said there will translate into police officers not working the job.”
If you'd like to kickstart your weekend by being thoroughly enraged, you can read Oritz's full statement over on Miami New Times.
from Noisey http://ift.tt/1oxd2pB
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