Edited by: TJVNews.com
After much publicized controversy, it has been reported that the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be played at hitter-friendly Coors Field in Denver, Colorado on July 13th.
An AP report indicated that Major League Baseball officially announced the new venue Tuesday after pulling the Midsummer Classic from Atlanta over objections to extensive changes to Georgia’s voting laws. Coors Field last hosted the All-Star Game in 1998.
In a statement posted on the Major League Baseball web site on Tuesday, Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. said: “Major League Baseball is grateful to the Rockies, the City of Denver and the State of Colorado for their support of this summer’s All-Star Game. We appreciate their flexibility and enthusiasm to deliver a first-class event for our game and the region. We look forward to celebrating our sport’s best players and entertaining fans around the world.”
“We are excited to host this year’s All-Star festivities at Coors Field,” said Rockies Chief Operating Officer Greg Feasel. “We are confident that our organization along with the city, state, VISIT DENVER and the Denver Sports Commission are capable of putting on this premier event in a relatively quick time frame because of the preparations that had already been done. Summer in Colorado is something everyone in the country should experience, and we embrace this opportunity to show off our beautiful ballpark and everything our city, state and region have to offer.”
MLB decided to move the game from Truist Park in Atlanta in response to Georgia voting rules signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on March 25, as was reported by AP. Critics, including the CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola, have condemned the changes as being too restrictive.
The Hill reported that Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey has also called the restrictions “unacceptable” and “a step backwards,” and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the law “includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives.”
The Georgia law includes new limits on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run, amid a push in Republican-led states to reduce voting options after former president Donald Trump made claims of widespread fraud in last year’s election, according to an AP report.
Colorado has a Democratic governor in Jared Polis and a Democratic-controlled legislature. AP reported that The Rockies presented a detailed blueprint for hosting the game, from providing hotels to security.
Manfred made the decision to move the All-Star events and the amateur draft from Atlanta after discussions with individual players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd last year, the commissioner said in the statement.
On Tuesday, AP reported that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended voter access in Colorado and noted that it allows registration on election day and widespread voting by mail.
Kemp has vowed to defend Georgia’s measures, and other Republicans have criticized MLB’s move, according to the AP report. Texas Governor Greg Abbott backed out of throwing the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener Monday and said the state would not seek to host the All-Star Game or any other special MLB events.
With its spacious outfield and thin air, Coors Field has become a hitter’s paradise. The baseballs will be flying out of the stadium, especially in the Home Run Derby, as was reported by AP. The Los Angeles Dodgers will host the 2022 All-Star Game.
Fox Business reported that Coca-Cola has released a statement condemning Georgia’s new voting legislation, but the company requires valid ID to be admitted to its annual meeting of shareholders.
“At the entrance to the meeting, we will verify your registration and request to see your admission ticket and a valid form of photo identification, such as a driver’s license or passport,” the company wrote in reference to its 2020 annual meeting of shareholders, held before the coronavirus pandemic.
Georgia’s new voting law requires a drivers’ license or state ID number be listed to submit an absentee ballot to vote, among other new reforms, as was reported by Fox Business. The state already required ID to vote in person. It had previously relied on signature matching to verify ballots.
Coca-Cola is based in Atlanta. This week, the beverage company, among other Georgia-based companies, issued statements condemning the new legislation after threats of boycott.
Activists were in the midst of organizing a boycott of major Atlanta-based corporations such as Coca Cola over their initial refusal to condemn the GOP-backed elections bill, according to the Fox Business report.
Days ago, Fox Business reported that the AME Sixth Episcopal District said it would be calling for a statewide boycott of Coca-Cola until it expressly comes out against the legislation.
Bishop Reginald Jackson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that if “Coca-Cola wants Black and brown people to drink their product, then they must speak up when our rights, our lives and our very democracy as we know it is under attack.”
Fox Business reported that the bill, which passed the Georgia General Assembly’s House of Representatives last Thursday, would create new voter ID laws and limit ballot drop boxes. It would also shorten the timeframe for runoff elections, required when no candidate reaches 50% of the vote in Georgia, from nine weeks to four weeks. The state Senate will now debate the bill, which must be finalized by Wednesday, the end of the year’s legislative session in the state.
“We will speak with our wallets,” said Jackson, who leads more than 400 churches in Georgia.“This past summer, Coke and other corporations said they needed to speak out against racism. But they’ve been mighty quiet about this.”
Jackson said boycotts are also possible for companies like Home Depot and Delta Airlines, according to the Fox Business report.
Coca-Cola has come under increasing pressure to take a definitive stance against the legislation. Earlier this month activists held a die-in at the company’s tourist attraction in downtown Atlanta.
The New York Times reported that Coca-Cola ultimately issued a carefully worded statement saying that “voting is a foundational right in America” and pledging to “work to advance voting rights and access in Georgia and across the country.” But it didn’t publicly weigh in on the legislation before Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed it into law last Thursday.
On February 23rd, the New York Post reported that Coca-Cola employees were urged to be “less white” as part of the company’s alleged diversity training — but the material was taken offline following a viral whistleblower post.
The “Confronting Racism” course in question was offered by LinkedIn Education and allegedly utilized by Coca Cola, according to the NY Post report.
“In the U.S. and other Western nations, white people are socialized to feel that they are inherently superior because they are white,” reads one of the slides, allegedly sent from an “internal whistleblower” and posted on Twitter by YouTube commentator Karlyn Borysenko.
The Post also reported that another slide suggests “try to be less white” with tips including “be less oppressive,” “listen,” “believe” and “break with white solidarity.”
Borysenko, who describes herself as a supporter of banning critical race theory, said the screenshots were sent to her from an “internal whistleblower” from Coca-Cola, who told her the course was “required.”
On Friday, it was reported that President Biden called the new Georgia election law “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” likening its provisions to racially discriminatory laws cast aside in the 1960s.
“More Americans voted in the 2020 elections than any election in our nation’s history. In Georgia we saw this most historic demonstration of the power of the vote twice — in November and then again in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate seats in January. Recount after recount and court case after court case upheld the integrity and outcome of a clearly free, fair, and secure democratic process,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden continued by saying: “Yet instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”
He added that, “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over. It adds rigid restrictions on casting absentee ballots that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters. And it makes it a crime to provide water to voters while they wait in line — lines Republican officials themselves have created by reducing the number of polling sites across the state, disproportionately in Black neighborhoods.”
The New York Times reported that last Thursday, hours after the Georgia voting restrictions were signed into law that protesters at the Atlanta airport called for a boycott of Delta Airlines, Georgia’s largest employer. In front of the Delta terminal, they lobbied for employees to pressure their employer and urged the airline’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, to use his clout to sway the debate.
Delta is a major corporate supporter of the gay community, and was among the many major companies that last year said it stood with the Black community after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, according to the NYT report. At the time, Delta said it would look for ways to “make an impact and take a stand against racism and injustice, from programs to policy changes.”
Fox Business reported that while Democrats claim the bill is “anti-voting” legislation, Republicans say the bill would expand voting accessibility, with two mandatory early voting days on Saturdays and giving counties the option to hold early voting on two Sundays. Earlier versions of the bill had limited early voting on Sundays, a popular time for Black churchgoers to head to the polls.
Gov. Brian Kemp has publicly endorsed a provision of the bill that requires ID for absentee voting, but has not otherwise weighed in, according to the Fox Business report.
Meanwhile, The Hill web site reported that former President Donald Trump called for a boycott of Major League Baseball after it decided to move its All-Star Game out of Georgia in protest of the state’s new bill signed into law that tightens voting restrictions.
“Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans, and now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the Radical Left Democrats who do not want voter I.D., which is desperately needed, to have anything to do with our elections,” Trump said in a statement released by Save America PAC.
“Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with Free and Fair Elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!” he added, referencing other companies that have criticized the new law.
The Hill reported on Tuesday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is calling on Republicans to boycott Coca-Cola. “If they want to boycott us why don’t we boycott them,” Paul said during an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday. “This is the only thing that will teach them a lesson. If Coca-Cola wants to only operate in Democrat states and have only Democrats drink them, God love ‘em. We’ll see how well they do when half the country quits drinking Coca-Cola.”
The New York Post also reported on Tuesday that Florida Senator Marco Rubio addressed the issue in a scathing letter to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, saying his decision “reeks of hypocrisy.”
“I write to ask you whether you intend to maintain your membership at Augusta National Golf Club,” Rubio challenged Manfred in the letter Monday, according to the Post report. “As you are well aware, the exclusive members-only club is located in the State of Georgia.”
The Hill reported that Kemp also challenged the top brass at Major League Baseball over the announcement, casting it as “cancel culture” and added that the league caved to Democratic pressure.
“Georgians–and all Americans–should fully understand what the MLB’s knee-jerk decision means: cancel culture and woke political activists are coming for every aspect of your life, sports included. If the left doesn’t agree with you, facts and the truth do not matter,” Kemp said in a statement, according to The Hill.
The Hill also reported that Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said that he is instructing his staff to cobble together legislation that would strip MLB of its federal antitrust exception.
Trump in particular has claimed repeatedly that Georgia experienced widespread voter fraud after Biden won the state by just over 11,000 votes. His loss there marked the first time since 1992 that a Republican presidential contender lost Georgia, according to The Hill.
