Group to protest Beyonce over Super Bowl halftime show
OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) - Apparently outraged by Beyonce’s Super Bowl Halftime performance of her new single “Formation,” a group is planning a protest outside the headquarters of the National Football League in New York City on Friday.
According to a post on Eventbrite, the group is promoting the hashtag #BoycottBeyonce, calling the pop singer’s performance a “slap in the face to law enforcement.” Organizers are asking participants to wear blue to show their solidarity with police.
The group objects to the song’s lyrics and claims that Beyonce was invoking the Black Panthers with her attire and that of her dancers. “Do you agree that the Black Panthers was/is a hate group which should not be glorified?” the group wrote.
The response follows an appearance on Fox News of former New York mayor and onetime Republican presidential candidate Rudy Guiliani, who described Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance as an “attack” on law enforcement.
“This is football, not Hollywood, and 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,” Guiliani told the network.
Beyonce’s song, “Formation,” has a strong theme of black empowerment, and the singer’s stylist told Essence magazine that the costumes were an intentional nod to the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 70s.
The outrage has also prompted a counter-protest, being billed as an “Anti-Anti-Beyonce Protest Rally.” That group says in an Eventbrite post, “When Black women affirm Blackness/Black womanhood, they are attacked and silenced.”
That protest is also scheduled to take place at the NFL’s headquarters in New York Friday morning.