Boycott

NEW YORK -- Tired of receiving second-class treatment on the payrolls of three of the sport's four Grand Slams, the women who make their living from professional tennis may resort to a boycott to bite the hand that feeds them -- but feeds the men more -- if the three shallow-pocketed Slams don't make a millennial motion toward equality.Billie Jean King calls it a potential "girl-cott." Bart McGuire, the WTA Tour's chief executive officer, calls it a militant maneuver he hopes his troops won't deploy.

LOS ANGELES -- In the face of skyrocketing gasoline prices, a grass-roots protest dubbed The Great American Gas Out is spreading like wildfire across the Internet and gaining credibility as politicians line up to support the boycott.With gas prices leaping an average of 43 cents per gallon in California and 14 cents nationwide during the past month, The Great American Gas Out is urging drivers to turn their backs on the pumps for one day, April 30."We are all sick and tired of high prices when there are literally millions of gallons in storage," blares a widely circulating e-mail promoting the protest.

While local black ministers planned to urge motorists today not to buy Texaco products, area Texaco dealers said yesterday they hadn't felt much impact from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's call for a boycott of their stations.Meanwhile, the NAACP, which has given Texaco Inc. 30 days to develop a plan to improve its treatment of minorities, outlined its demands to the oil company and threatened to launch a stock divestiture campaign if they are not met.The Rev. John L. Wright, president of the United Missionary Baptist Convention, said his group and others, including the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, would call for a boycott at a morning news conference in Baltimore.

The Maryland AFL-CIO yesterday said it had launched a statewide boycott of Crown Central Petroleum Corp.'s gasoline to pressure the Baltimore company to end a nine-month lockout of workers at a Pasadena, Texas, refinery."

After the 7 1/2 -month players strike, major-league attendance is down 25 percent. To protest the absence of games and help ensure that there's not another work stoppage, some fans have joined Fan Out America, founded by Ed Bunker, 30, of Carney. This week, Bunker spoke about the past and future of Fan Out America with The Sun's Brad Snyder.Q: What inspired you to start Fan Out America?A: The inspiration came from a story on National Public Radio. "Morning Edition" was doing a piece on the impact of the strike on the local economies in Florida.

A proposed boycott of ABC-TV drew support from Latino actors here over the weekend.Last week, a coalition of 45 Latino groups issued a statement criticizing all four major networks for the lack of Latinos in prime time. But the statement singled out ABC for a boycott, saying that the network had reneged on a promise made by Cap Cities/ABC Inc. President Robert Iger that there would be a series with Latino characters on the network by last September.ABC denies that any such deadline was set. A network statement issued in response says that Iger promised only "to try to develop Latino-themed programming in prime time as quickly as possible."

LIKE BOB DOLE, I haven't seen "Money Train.Unlike Bob Dole, I don't need to.Anybody with even the slightest connection to the popular culture knows exactly what the movie is like. It's a comedy-action buddy movie, meaning lots of cool stuff blows up, people jump off and/or onto trains, there's plenty of cartoon violence, spaced nicely around wisecracks from the appealing co-stars, and everybody -- at least everybody who lives -- lives happily ever after.In other words, it's standard holiday movie fluff, doing pretty good box-office, and would have attracted no particular attention except that a couple of sociopaths set fire last weekend to a New York subway token booth, just like in the movie.

Opponents of the proposed Westminster bypass are considering a boycott of area businesses that oppose an alternate plan to upgrade the existing highway.Carroll Life, a citizens group that says it has about 100 members, has been fighting a proposal to build a Route 140 bypass north of Westminster, where many of them live. The group circulated fliers last week suggesting the boycott.The flier "was in direct response to the letter the Greater Westminster Development Corp. and the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce sent out to local businesses," said Carroll Life member Paula J. Davidson.

I was 18. I had been at college only a week and there was this poster asking us not to buy South African oranges. It seemed so obvious and so compelling that I wrote immediately to my parish priest at home demanding that he preach on the topic that Sunday. I truly believed that if enough of us students did as I did, the walls of Jericho would soon come tumbling down.That was 34 years ago. I have since learned not only that it takes more than the marching feet of students to change South Africa, but that South Africa is only one of many terrible examples of man's bestiality to man. Yet to me, as to many of my generation, South Africa remains the special case that affected us more intimately and emotionally than Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq or Rwanda.

HILTON HEAD, S.C. -- In what may be the first sign of the NAACP backing away from the activism that marked the tenure of fired executive director Benjamin F. Chavis, organization leaders yesterday postponed a threatened economic boycott of South Carolina.At war with state officials over the flying of the Confederate battle flag above the Capitol dome, Dr. Chavis had threatened in July to strike at the state's $7.3 billion tourism industry with a black boycott unless the flag comes down.But still struggling to recover from the controversy surrounding Dr. Chavis' dismissal and faced with splintered local support, national NAACP leaders instead came to this sedate island resort to deliver fiery rhetoric, lead 600 chanting protesters on a two-mile march and then announce that they would wait for legal action to run its course before deciding what further action to take.

Three members of the Baltimore City Council yesterday agreed to sign a boycott commitment against a downtown hotel that has been involved in a long-standing battle with the union representing its employees. City Council Vice President Edward L. Reisinger and city Councilmen Bill Henry and William H. Cole IV were expected to sign boycott pledge cards against the Sheraton Baltimore City Center because of the labor dispute. This month marked two years that doormen, housekeepers and other staff have worked without a contract, according to United Here.

ABUJA, Nigeria -- Opposition candidates in Nigeria's presidential election, which is scheduled for Saturday, have threatened a boycott unless the polling is delayed to ensure what they have called "a level playing field for all." Their decision, announced Tuesday night, threw a chaotic election season into deeper confusion and raised the possibility that the long-planned vote might not take place Saturday. Nigeria's government rejected the demand, saying yesterday that the vote would proceed.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- For Kitty Green, the NAACP's call for an economic boycott of the state seven years ago was a "slap in the face." While the teacher-turned-entrepreneur supports the civil rights organization's effort to remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds, the sanctions hit her business hard. Now some members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are questioning whether it's good policy to continue the boycott. In 2000, the flag was moved from atop the State House dome to a monument in front of the capitol, and there's no plan to move it again.

The e-mail alerts zip across the nation, fomenting outrage: Levi-Strauss donates to Planned Parenthood. Don't buy their blue jeans! Johnson & Johnson advertises Tylenol in a gay magazine. Click here to register your disgust! In the past 12 months, conservative advocacy groups have urged their millions of members to stop buying brand after trusted brand. Boycotts have long been a mainstay of both the right and the left, but analysts say there's a new intensity to the protests, as social conservatives test their ability to punish companies for taking liberal stances.

It is a loud voice beaming out of the tiny Middle Eastern peninsula country of Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Since its inception in 1996, it has been raising eyebrows in the Middle East and elsewhere for its provocative approach to news and analysis. After Sept. 11, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, the first 24-hour all-news network in the Arab world, won international notice for its exclusive footage from Afghanistan and its broadcast of a series of taped speeches from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

A group of Anne Arundel County parents is organizing a statewide boycott of Maryland's student performance test, saying it doesn't measure the basic skills that are the foundation of knowledge. The parents plan to keep their children home during the five days in May when the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test is given to third-, fifth- and eighth-graders. A pupil who misses four or five days of the test is given a score of zero, slightly lowering the school's average score.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening's administration chastised Maryland's Commission on Indian Affairs yesterday, saying it overstepped its authority in calling for an economic boycott of a baseball Little League that uses major league nicknames. "The Commission has no authority to impose, or enforce, an economic boycott," the administration said in a statement issued yesterday. "The Commission may only make recommendations, and the State and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development have clearly rejected this specific recommendation.

WASHINGTON - Boycotts are an effective means for achieving social change. The Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott was a key point in the struggle for civil rights. Southern Baptists are boycotting the Walt Disney Co. to protest the company's moves away from family-friendly entertainment. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has made headlines for its high-profile boycotts of South Carolina for flying the Confederate battle flag atop the state's capitol and most recently the Adam's Mark hotel chain over what it claims are discriminatory practices.

Embers remain from the fire that raged inside Cliff Wiley two decades ago. Wiley, 45, may be the most accomplished sprinter ever to come out of Baltimore. He was a paradox, a law student who thrived in events that have no time for strategy. He led the Black American Law Students Association at the University of Kansas and was accustomed to speaking out for his rights, so it took every ounce of restraint for Wiley to remain silent when he shook Jimmy Carter's hand at the White House. Wiley is one of the Lost Olympians, the men and women who earned the right to represent the United States in the 1980 Games, but never went to Moscow.

The NAACP is preparing in the next three months to identify and boycott banks with poor records of lending to minorities, the group's president and chief executive, Kweisi Mfume, said during a speech yesterday at the annual convention. The tactic is not new for the 91-year-old civil rights organization, which has employed boycotts, lawsuits and embarrassment in its efforts to tug corporate America toward change. The results have been mixed. Experts say the NAACP's economic potency vacillates, depending on its leadership, its targets and others' definition of success.