BLM B-town calls for total BOYCOTT of the HT & the city run market.

For Immediate Release
​Black Lives Matter Bloomington Indiana 
02-11-2020
On February 2nd, the 2nd day of Black History Month, the Herald-Times (HT) in Bloomington published a front-page article supporting white supremacy in our community. This is not the first time the HT has published a celebration of the racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist American Identity Movement (AIM) and its members. Such pieces are transparently racist in nature and examples of biased journalism at its worst.
Therefore, we urge all people who individually subscribe to the HT to cancel their subscriptions and urge all businesses who subscribe to or advertise in the HT to cease all involvement with them and join us in a total boycott of the paper. The HT’s reporting is neither fair nor balanced. They did not contact nor communicate with BLM B-town, No Space for Hate (NSFH), the Purple Shirt Brigade, or any of the other groups who have been actively opposing SCF or Sarah Dye. Instead, the HT wrote Dye a front-page love letter. It is time to stop supporting corrupt journalism that supports the destruction of our communities.
Additionally, BLM B-town would like to address the City of Bloomington’s mishandling of its City-run farmers’ market. Recently, an article confirmed that the City spent over $100,000 on  security for its market in 2019 --more than 20 times the amount it spent in 2018. This increase is a direct result of the white supremacist threat that SCF invited into their booth and into our community every week. The City claims that more police equals greater safety for those attending the City-run market. However, Black & Brown, GLBTQ+, and other marginalized residents of Bloomington have voiced concerns that increased policing does not make us more safe. In fact, for those communities directly threatened by the City’s white supremacist vendors, more police and surveillance can be more dangerous to our lives and well-being than no police at all.
We strongly object to the continued presence of white supremacists at the City-run market, we object to the City spending horrifying amounts of money to protect those white supremacists and not marginalized people, and we reject the idea that the City has no means to remove SCF. We believe the City had a chance to change the market’s rules in order to exclude those who hold violent, racist viewpoints, and they chose not to do so. Instead, they changed the rules to limit the free speech of market patrons as well as market vendors in a multitude of ways, from signage on. 
We call on the City to divest from the City-run market entirely, and help provide support and aid to the newly emerging Farmer/Vendor-run market, currently known as the Eastside Market. We call on all those who currently attend the City-run market to not only engage in a total boycott of SCF, but to also boycott the entire, City-run market.
We call for this action because the City’s market cannot provide a safe, civil, and welcoming environment for all people as long as it continues to allow white supremacists a venue to recruit and promote their hate. 
To be clear, we call for a complete and total boycott of the City-run market by all people. We advocate for all farmers’ market attendees to support the newly emerging farmer/vender-run market, currently called the Eastside Market. Additionally, we advocate for all anti-racist farmers and vendors to join that market, leaving behind the City-run market. We call for a total boycott of the Herald Times in Bloomington for its biased reporting celebrating racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism & the American Identity Movement. It is long past time for Bloomingtonians to divest from institutions that promote the destruction of marginalized people. 
Black Lives Matter Core Council
Bloomington Indiana
Links & Email:
https://blm.btown-in.org/anti-racist-resource-list.html
[email protected]