Previously: Immigration Reform Protests Planned For Saturday
A Bay Area “tea party” activist is saying turnabout is fair play by calling for a boycott of San Francisco after several city officials called for a boycott of Arizona following a new anti-immigration measure that was signed into law in the state last week.
Bridget Melson, founder of the Pleasanton Tea Party group, said she is calling on her members and other like-minded people to boycott San Francisco after Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials who condemned the law earlier this week.
On Tuesday, Newsom imposed a moratorium on city employee travel to the state of Arizona for official business and announced the creation of a task force to determine how best to extricate the city from its Arizona-related contracts.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued a statement a day earlier, calling the law “draconian.”
The controversial law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires police officers to question, “when practicable,” those they “reasonably suspect” are illegal immigrants.
Under the new law, even lawful foreign residents would be committing a crime by failing to carry immigration documents, and it would be illegal to stop on a public street to negotiate the hire of day laborers.
Melson said that she was calling for Pleasanton Tea Party members “to not spend a dime” in San Francisco to show “that people are supporting the Arizona law, and that our representatives are not representing us whatsoever.”
She said representatives like Newsom and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is calling for a similar boycott in her city, “have gotten power-hungry, and are making these calls for us.”
Melson said politicians should “take a poll first to see how many people agree with it” before moving forward with a boycott.
Members of the Pleasanton Tea Party will be in San Francisco on Saturday as part of a counter-protest to a large march for immigration reform planned in the city on Saturday.
Melson said her group, along with other groups such as the Golden Gate Minutemen, will gather and march near the immigration march, which is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. Saturday at the intersection of 24th and Mission streets and end in Civic Center Plaza.
