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Anti-anti-Beyoncé protesters got in formation this morning in Manhattan outside the NFL headquarters, but "Boycott Beyoncé" protesters didn’t follow suit.
Protest against @Beyonce outside NFL HQ turns out to be no show #1010wins pic.twitter.com/dY6O2dD6aY
— glenn schuck (@glennschuck) February 16, 2016
Only a few — possibly just three — protesters showed up.
The protest emerged after an Anti-Beyoncé Protest Rally that appeared on EventBrite received national attention.
Currently, it is unclear who is behind the event. The event links to a group called Proud of the Blues, whose Facebook page does not link to a specific user. The organization’s website domain was registered through the Central African Republic, which does not require a user's personal data to be registered in order to set up a website with the .cf subdomain.
But the group's message mirrors conservative backlash the singer received following her Super Bowl performance of "Formation" that paid tribute to the Black Panthers.
"Are you offended as an American that Beyoncé pulled her race-baiting stunt at the Super Bowl?" the event description asked. "Do you agree that it was a slap in the face to law enforcement?"
Based on the turnout, it’s hard to tell if many sympathize with the sentiment.
One Beyoncé protester told Racialicious she grew up listening to Beyoncé, and said that while "Formation" wasn’t the singer’s first political song, her song and Super Bowl 50 performance were "sparking an outrage."
"If your birth certificate says you were born in America, you should act like it," she said.
As Racialicious pointed out to the protester, American history shows protest is actually quite American.
The anti-anti-Beyoncé demonstrators gathered across the street too. Their purpose was to counter the idea that Beyoncé’s celebration of her black identity was hateful, as the event’s elusive organizers and conservatives have suggested.
Mela Machinko, a co-organizer of the Black Girl Rising collective that created one of two separate counterprotest events on EventBrite, said at the protest, "Me loving me doesn’t mean me hating you."
The anti-Beyoncé protesters were allegedly supposed to make an appearance around 1 pm Eastern. No other protesters came.
