Florida NAACP calls for travel advisory amid political tensions

The NAACP Florida Chapter wants its national board to ask people not to visit or move to the Sunshine State in light of recent proposals targeting diversity and racial issues.

At the organization’s state conference on Saturday in Orlando, members proposed asking the national board to issue a travel advisory — especially for people of color.

When the vote came back unanimously, Hillsborough County NAACP President Yvette Lewis said she felt relief.

“We are an organization that protects people’s civil rights, and this is a first step to doing that,” Lewis said. “People are seeing what’s happening in Florida. They’re paying attention, and I hope that help is coming.”

Lewis said that she was not expecting the vote but wasn’t surprised about it, either.

She said that efforts to strip the rights of Black and marginalized people have predated this legislative session. They’ve transpired, she said, through voting fraud arrests and wrongful convictions, through redistricting maps that have broken up predominantly Black voting blocks, and through the whitewashing of history in schools.

She said that current legislation that would infringe on people’s rights — like a proposed 6-week abortion ban and bills that would restrict the use of preferred pronouns in schools — are also behind the organization’s call.

Bills that target diversity in education — by eliminating funding for equity and inclusion initiatives and banning certain teachings — are especially painful, Lewis said.

“When slaves tried to educate themselves, they were beaten. When they tried to learn to read, they were killed for having books,” Lewis said. “I have to relate this back because this is how I feel.”

If the NAACP national board moves forward with action in Florida when it reconvenes in May, it won’t be the first time a travel advisory or boycott has been issued for a state.

In 1999, the organization called on a boycott of South Carolina because the state flew the confederate flag on capitol grounds. That boycott was in place for 15 years.

In 2017, the organization declared a travel advisory for Missouri when the state Legislature passed a law the state chapter had deemed allowed for “legal discrimination.”

Historically, advisories and boycotts have been a means of creating economic pressure, by denying tourism dollars to states seen as unsafe to people of color.

But that’s just a small piece of it, Lewis said.

She hopes that the advisory brings national attention to what she said is an urgent situation — one in which she fears the history of oppression will be repeated.