Interesting you mentioned Disney...I see Captain America / Chris Evans making very anti-Trump statements...after enjoying all the Marvel movies previously, I might pass up the rest.

There goes that franchise!

But I don't see the artists complaining about what their exercise of a fundamental right will cost them. And I don't see them even implying that 

Perez's staement is powerful and sincere:

"George Pérez has come out in protest of United States' President-Elect Donald Trump by pledging not to attend any conventions or comic functions in any 'Red States.' Pérez explains that he feels threatened by Trump's statements and actions, for both himself, his wife, as well as his family and friends.

Pérez provided this statement to Newsarama about his decision:

'Just as a confirmation and clarification, since I have been flooded with requests for such, yes, I have indeed decided that I will no longer be accepting invitations to conventions and similar functions in states that supported and allowed a scurrilous and openly bigoted, misogynist, deceitful, homophobic, uninformed, philandering, sexist egomaniac to become our commander and chief and disgrace us in the eyes of the world. I have a lot of friends who will be adversely affected and run over by this crazy driver now that he’s been allowed the keys to the car, and I just had to take a stand somehow.

To me, it’s not a question of not respecting other people’s choice. This isn’t policy he was talking about; it’s oppression, it’s hate and fear, it’s tacit approval of violent action against those with whom one doesn’t agree with. It’s the denial and threatened removal of basic human rights and liberties. I am an Hispanic. I’m threatened. My wife is a woman; she is threatened. I have friends, fans and many members of my extended family, gay, straight, transgender, black, Hispanic, Muslim and, yes, even many whites, who are now scared and poised for disaster.

Mine is really a meek protest, but it is all I could think of. My actions won’t really cost anyone anything. No one will be hurt if I don’t come to conventions. In fact, I am the one who will lose a substantial source of income. I can live with that. My friends, my family and many of my fans deserve that much and so much more, from me.

However, since I still take great pride in my professional reputation, I will be honoring all convention commitments already announced. I have sent letters to many of the organizers offering them the option of canceling my appearances if they think I would be a detriment to their show. I assured them that politics would never be discussed by me and my focus would remain on giving every convention goer the best con experience I can give them. So far, everyone has been incredibly supportive and I will do my best to make sure I don’t let them down.

I already did a show in Jacksonville (I live in Florida— a red state, regrettably) and it went very well, and I made a nice chunk of change for a veterans’ charity. I trust that all will go as swimmingly for all my further appearances.'"

(Highlights mine.) 

I think the man is acting in accordance with his well-founded principles.

Perez hopes to send a message to everyone who lives in these states that their exercise of the right to vote or not to vite had consequences, that they should have voted, that they should have realized what voting third party or leaving the presidential ballot blank would mean.

And if voters want to see either artist, they can probably find their ways to staes where they will appear.

Don't know how this is any different from artists refusing to appear in South Africa during apartheid.

Maybe there are more people in various states, red or blue, who regret that they didn't take more of an interest in the election. The boycotts of North Carolina may well be a reason that the NC gubernatorial election remains unsettled, though seems to be favoring Roy Cooper, the Democrat, who is against the so-called "bathroom bill."

PS: Can you imagine a certain President-elect offering to honor previous commitments and donating anything to charity?

And speaking of boycotts, guess who'll be boycotting half the country to get an ego-fix?

www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/trump-plans-election-victory-tour-in-red-states?utm_term=.yiWrOBxk5#.aiwp7ZOKL

I really, really don't want this thread to turn into the "new" politics thread, but the above quoted text just leapt out at me and I couldn't let it go.

Sorry, my old friend, but much as I enjoyed the majority of your well thought out post above, the situation with Perez is not even close to being comparable to South Africa during apartheid and said boycotts of that country.

Musical artists boycotting South Africa was a case of a few concerned, high-profile people doing anything that they could do to protest against, make life difficult for, or hopefully derail one of the most cruel, oppressive, neo-fascist systems of government that existed in the late 20th century. Protests that were also taken up by the governments of countries like the UK and U.S. (along with many others), by implementing trade sanctions and disinvestment programs against South Africa.

You are no doubt fully aware that South Africa had a system of government, under which, the entire indigenous population of a country -- the majority population, not incidentally -- were persecuted, murdered and subjected to social, economic and geographic segregation for no reason other than the colour of their skin. Where these people had their lands and assets stripped from them, were driven into squalid shanty towns, and were regularly picked up and beaten by an all-white, quasi-military Police force. And crucially, this was something that was overwhelmingly supported by the majority of the white population of that country.

A comic book artist boycotting certain U.S. states, in which a minority of people voted for the Republican nominee, because he considers that nominee to be a bigot, just isn't comparable. Especially when, as I understand it, most of the people in those states either voted Hillary or didn't vote at all.

I definitely think Trump is an idiot and a dangerous man to have in the White House, but I cannot honestly believe for one second that racial minorities in America (or any other person living in America, for that matter) will ever have it as bad under Trump as blacks had it in South Africa under the National Party. That's like comparing a headache to cancer.

If it turns out that I'm wrong and in a few years time the majority of people in America are living like black South Africans did in the '60s, '70s and '80s, then OK, I'll agree that Perez has got something worth boycotting. As it is, he's flipping the finger at states in which the majority of his fans didn't vote for Trump. That seems like an ineffective form of protest, to say the least.

Let's be clear, I never compared the system of apartheid to the Trump election; what I compared is the right of an artist, for that matter, anyone, to protest as he or she sees fit. 

Kids in a high school may want to protest against seniors not being allowed to take a member of the same sex to the prom. A school's prom policy is also not comparable to apartheid, but the students still have the right to protest what they perceive as an injustice. It is not the degree of evil that determines when, where, or how one can protest; it is that we have the right to protest gainst it, no matter how minor it may seem to others.

I don't think I or Perez suggested that Trump is going to try to institute apartheid, though if you read and watch the news, it's easy to see why Muslim-Americans might not be the only ones a little on edge. And I'm glad you think that life is so peachy now and has been for black Anericans, and that they and we shouldn't be leery of Trump.

Sorry, but not enough of us were leery of him over the past two years. Look what he's done in less than a month as the president-elect. If it talks like a neo-fascist, walks like a neo-fascist and threatens the press, protesters and anyone who dissents like a neo-fascist, well...

And it is hardly a stretch to compare the treatment of black Americans throughout our history to apartheid, not when the legacy of over 200 years of slavery was a systematic denial of voting and other civil rights. Not when the party Trump now represents has used the gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to suppress the vote in African-American precincts. 

The artists who boycotted South Africa did so when apartheid was at its height. Your description of apartheid (I bolded it) is applicable without exaggeration to the treatment of African-Americans here for hundreds of years. That a change occurred, slowly, to be sure, is a tribute in large part to the kinds of protests that shed light on the evils that were being done to American citizens because of the color of their skin.

Which, btw, makes the execrable Jefffrey Beauregard Sessions' and his disdainful dismissal of Thurgood Marshall, a genuine American hero, when he was questioning Elena Kagan during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2010 even more reprehensible. 

Why anyone would not want to draw attention to what he sees as injustice, intolerance and the potential elimination of civil rights before America reaches the depths to which it sank from 1609-1965 (and beyond) escapes me.

Well... No, many African-Americans still haven't been allowed to vote. And for a very long time, being black in America meant living in a segregated society that quacked like apartheid, walked like apartheid and frankly, was apartheid. And the scars of that centuries-long system are still raw.

That it sounds to you like a conspiracy theorist's fever-dream is simply proof of what I'm saying, Confessor. The Trump election is like falling down a rabbit-hole built by Orwell, Kafka and Koestler.

There is a clear and present danger now, on many fronts, of not just the erosion, but the out-and-out destruction of the core principles of this nation. I wouldn't expect someone from "away," as people say in Maine, to be as conversant with the ins and outs of American politics as we are here.



It's easy to get up on our high horses and tell folks like Perez what he should have been doing before the election. I have no idea what he may have been doing. Do you?



In any event, all of us, whether the context be politics, our careers, or our health, have to deal with the here and now. If you've bben a lifelong smoker, and the doc tells you that you have lung cancer, you don't forfeit your right to do all you can to defeat it because you made a mistake before.



I don't want to be delivering a lecture or a harangue, least of all to you, Confessor, but as you admit, you "don't know anything about suppression of voters in African-American precincts." If you were more familiar with our history, you might also be less inclined to make general statements about the progress of race relations here. I get it; many of us here were hopeful, even misty-eyed, about the so-called post-racial America portended in Barack Obama's two terms. But immediately upon his election, the right-wing opposition declared that it would do everything it could to defeat him.


“Improving overall” and “going in the right direction” are probably the kinds of observations someone not living here might be inclined to make in the wake of the Obama terms.



Yes, life for most African-Americans is indeed better now than it was for black South Africans during apartheid, but that doesn’t mean that being black in America is the same as being white.



Check into Shelby County v. Holder. Read the majority opinion. Then see what Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi did immediately after the verdict was rendered.



Check into U.S. District Court Judge Biggs’ assessment of the purge of black voters in North Carolina.

Check into the actions of Ohio Secretary of State John Husted and Governor John Kasich and their attempts to restrict voter registration, absentee voting and early voting.



Check into Kris Kobach, the Trump transition team’s immigration “expert,” who has relentlessly placed roadblocks in front of potential and already-registered voters in Kansas, because he is convinced – he says – that “aliens” are voting and negating the votes of American citizens. No, there’s no proof of his claims.

Kobach called the ACLU and the League of Women Voters Communists because they dared to oppose his voter ID law.
Kobach has ties to anti-immigration groups labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups. Shocking.



Sorry to go on like this, Confessor, but the alarm bells have been ringing here for a while.



PS: Yes, it was only 200 “nuts” meeting in a federal building in Washington, DC, but when the president-elect cannot bring himself to denounce self-described “white nationalists” screaming "Lugenpresse," “Heil Trump!” Heil Victory!” and whose leader says of those opposed to Trump, “One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” a chill should go down the spine of anyone who calls himself an American. 

Probably best to take this conversation over to the Politics thread, Prince Hal and @razormaid, since it's now been reopened. If either of you want me to move any of your posts from this thread over to the Politics one, just let me know.

Likewise, let's all take the ongoing discussions about Perez and Ramos et al boycotting various states as a protest against Donald Trump over to the Politics thread too.

Thanks all.