Betsy Fish has never been to Georgia, but that didn’t stop the Reno, Nev. high school teacher from launching a fundraiser to help Atlanta-area businesses affected by Major League Baseball’s decision to take its All-Star Game and Draft event elsewhere.
The MLB left Georgia in protest over its new election reform law that some say will make it tougher for Georgians to vote in future elections. Fish sees nothing wrong with the new law. She does, however, anticipate economic harm from the MLB’s departure and wants to help those affected.
“I wasn’t happy with the game being pulled out of Atlanta. What the MLB did was wrong leaving Atlanta,” the 70-year-old widow told Atlanta Civic Circle. “I agree with the new law. It is a fair situation for all people. It encourages fairness and accuracy in voting for everyone.”
She blames a “small group of people” for instigating and inciting problems over the way Georgia will conduct its elections, adding that she believes “Americans have been told malicious inaccuracies about the new Georgia Integrity Election Law.”
“People have to do what’s right, not what they’re being pushed to do,” she said, referring to how she believes companies like Coca-Cola have caved to public pressure.
She sprung into action when she heard that businesses and workers expecting to work the All-Star Game originally slated for Truist Park in Cobb County could effectively lose $100 million from MLB’s exodus. That’s why she’s intent on raising $100,000 for those businesses. She has enlisted the help of a Christian-based crowdsourcing website called GiveSendGo.com.
“I’m tired of people making political issues out of things that shouldn’t be political. There are a lot of us Americans who feel the same way,” Fish said. “We’re being controlled by a small minority of people and we need to take a stand and fight back.”
Fish has reached out to the offices of Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms about her fundraising campaign. She has yet to hear back from either official.
So far, Fish’s GiveSendGo.com campaign has raised about $1,200 in the few weeks since she contacted the brother-sister team of Jacob Wells and Heather Wilson who run the site. The six-year-old site tends to attract people looking to raise money for medical emergencies, church mission trips, and other similar situations, according to spokesman Will Hadden. Fish’s fundraiser is rather unique.
“When something this big catches their attention they try to get more directly involved,” Hadden said. Wells and Wilson expect Fish’s campaign to run through the summer.
Meanwhile, officials at the Cobb Chamber of Commerce which sits directly across the street from Truist Park declined to talk about the loss of the All-Star Game.
“We’re moving on,” one official told Atlanta Civic Circle. “We don’t want to entertain any more headlines about it.”
The chamber did, however, send along a previous statement from Chamber Chief Executive Sharon Mason.
“We are deeply saddened and very disappointed with the decision to move the 2021 MLB All-Star game out of Georgia. Our county, region and state were excited and ready to host fans to experience our community with many events planned that were associated with the games,” the statement reads “This decision will have a negative impact on the frontline workers and local businesses located around Truist Park and our region that were looking forward to the economic boost from these events. It is important that we support our local businesses now more than ever.”
Efforts to reach Holly Quinlan, chief executive officer of Cobb County Travel & Tourism, were unsuccessful.
At Dress Up at The Battery just outside the entrance to Truist Park, business doesn’t seem to be hurting, thanks to warmer weather, the opening of the baseball season, and more relaxed attitudes and policies about the pandemic.
“We have been on Cloud Nine,” Meg Leoni, director of sales at the women’s retails shop, told Atlanta Civic Circle last week. “We’ve had the busiest days. [Customers are] excited to come out to the games. They need last-minute T-shirts. Honestly, for us, we’ve been nonstop busy. A lot of people want to support local businesses and want a change of scenery. People are getting a little more comfortable because they’re vaccinated.”
Last Friday, stores in and around the stadium did well as some 41,000 people — full capacity — attended the stadium for the first time in more than a year.
As for calls for boycotts against some of Atlanta’s biggest corporate players? Companies like Coca-Cola have spoken out against the new law, but some critics say it was too little too late. Additionally, some Hollywood movie moguls have vowed to make no movies in the Peach State as long as the new law exists.
But do these promises really have an impact? Do boycotts really work?
“Typically, they do not work, “ Maurice Schweitzer, a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told Atlanta Civic Circle.
Additionally, he said, “the economic implications are not perfectly clear. In this case, there is going to be some economic fallout. But for boycotts to work, they have to be persistent and you need people to remain energized about an issue.”
“Right now there are so many calls for boycotts,” added Schweitzer, who has been tracking boycotts for a decade. “People get exhausted by them. It’s become very noisy for consumers who have enough trouble just sort of navigating their everyday lives to make decisions around what to and what not to boycott.”
He envisions musicians, actors, and other performers as well as some movie-makers boycotting Georgia.
“Ultimately though, I don’t think this campaign — until it really puts the squeeze on Kemp — is going to make a big difference.”
Consequently, the aim of the boycott winds up hurting the very people it was trying to help, he said.
“You have such a divided decision-making body that the people who are getting harmed by the boycott are not the people who made that decision.”
Schweitzer said Georgia’s boycott is “on the bubble.”
“It might affect change if performers really get on board. But the key is going to be if it really absorbs a lot of attention.”
That doesn’t mean, though, that boycotts throughout history have been ineffective. Here’s a look at boycotts throughout the centuries.
A History of Boycotts
1760s: The first U.S. boycott occurred when America was still in its infancy and under British rule. To recoup its losses during the French-Indian war, Britain imposed taxes on the colonies called the Stamp Act. The colonies revolted and were especially angry that they were taxed without being represented during the decision. It leads to the slogan “no taxation without representation.” Colonists boycotted British goods and rebels threatened British tax collectors. The incident ultimately led to the American Revolution.
1880: Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell uses a form of resistance during the Irish land agitation to protest high rents and evictions. The term “boycott” was coined after Irish tenants followed Parnell’s suggestions on conduct and successfully ostracized a British estate manager named Capt. Charles Boycott.
1955: One of the most successful and famous boycotts in history occurred in Montgomery, Ala., Blacks refused to ride the bus to protest segregated seating. It began on Dec. 1 and lasted 381 days. It made seamstress Rosa Parks, an enduring symbol of the Civil Rights Movement and forced Montgomery to integrate its transportation system.
1965: The United Nations asks member states to sever economic ties with then-Rhodesia, which had illegally declared its independence from Great Britain earlier that year. The boycott remained in effect until 1979.
1965-69: Labor activist Cesar Chavez and the National Farmworkers Association (now the United Farmworkers of America) led a boycott to protest the below-minimum wage pay being paid to Filipino farmworkers who walked off their jobs. The Delano Grape Strike prompted millions of Americans to not buy grapes.
1970s: Several boycotts against South Africa’s segregated system called apartheid. U.S. Colleges are pressured to divest their holdings in South Africa.
Late 1970s-mid 1980s: Although started in the 1960s, the divest from South Africa movement gains steam during this time on college campuses as students protest against Apartheid’s brutal treatment of Black Africans. It called for sanctions and boycotts as well as pulling out investments from the country.
1977-1984: Nestle drew international fire after it tried to sell breast milk substitutes to developing countries. The boycott highlighted that formula is less healthy than breast milk and mothers in many developing countries didn’t have access to clean water to use the Nestle product.
1980: The United States calls for boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the then-Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. It called for sanctions and boycotts as well as pulling out investments from the country.
(Header image: Dollar bills via Unsplash. Graphic by Hannah Jones.)