Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/23/boston-red-sox-put-up-black.html
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It’s a start…
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That’s awesome!
(That building is partially to blame for my hearing loss…
Sugar Cubes, Billy Bragg, The Specials, and on and on…
It’s across Lansdowne Street from Fenway.)
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Actually no. The start was changing Yawkey way to Jersey Street. This is a continuation of the efforts on the part of the organization as a whole to make amends on its long gone ownership and past.
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This.
Plus they began instituting the zero tolerance policy for racists taunts a few years ago-- if you hurl an n-bomb at a game you are ejected, some fans have been permanently banned.
Tom and Jean Yawkey are rolling in their graves, and it’s about time.
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Good. For a team with a history of racism, this is a positive thing.
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Would this be the 2000 concert they put on? If so, we may have crossed paths.
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The billboard appeared to have been recently installed.
Crack reporting from WCVB. Better call in CSI - there’s no way to know for sure how this 5000-square-foot billboard got there.
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Don’t read the (YouTube) comments…
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The city has a history of racism too.
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Don’t ever read youtube comments - they’re too hard on one’s hope for humanity. Install a youtube comments blocker extension.
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I remember the bus protests. Boston has a long history of being as racist as anywhere in the South, if not sometimes more so.
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Well, thank you for reminding me to listen to some Sugar Cubes.
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I may appear somewhere in the crowd in the Jesus Lizard video that was shot at the old Venus De Milo. . . where they berated the crowd for wearing earplugs, then got pelted with a barrage of earplugs.
All that’s left now is the f$%king House of “Blues.”
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I hope Tom and Jean Yawkey are spinning in their graves so much it hurts them in hell.
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I’m from the area. “Progressive” Boston - one of the last cities (if not the last) to desegregate schools and baseball, and one of the worst in terms of housing and income disparity - is still segregated and racist as hell. The Sox publicly supporting BLM may be an empty gesture, but if it makes the racists among their fans angry by being “betrayed” by their team then I’m on board. Hopefully this will go along with policy changes and higher standards for management, players, and fans.
As a historical aside, I’m not sure if this current Sox-owned billboard retains the same dimensions, but this is the former location of the 252-foot billboard (cited as world’s largest but who knows) owned and managed by Stop Handgun Violence.
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Surprisingly little action positive or negative on my favorite local blog https://www.universalhub.com/2020/sox-send-message-turnpike-travelers.
Universal Hub is about Boston MA, USA and the local environs.
Couple of decades before that, but they still put on a good show!
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And yet its NBA team was the first to desegregate.
It was also one of the centers of the Abolitionist movement. A city of contradictions.
My own impression (I moved here almost 30 years ago) is that there’s a relatively small population of old-school “townies” who are very closed-minded and very vocal about it. Many of them still have positions of power too. The rest of the population, the more cosmopolitan employees of all the colleges, hospitals and research facilities, just puts up with them silently. Finally that is starting to change as well.
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Amen to that!
