Black Lives Matter is demanding Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. D-R.I., cut all ties with a controversial country club.
Mark Fisher of BLM Rhode Island made the demand during an interview with ABC6. BLM wants Whitehouse out of the Newport-based Baily’s Beach Club, which is accused of only admitting white people.
"This is an issue that’s not going to go away and Sen. Whitehouse needs to address it, he needs to take it on," Fisher said.
"If he thinks we’re just going to forget about it, if he thinks that it’s going to get swept under the rug; it’s not.
"We’ll go to his club, we’ll go to his office, we’ll go to his home, — wherever we need to go."
Fisher said he is giving the senator until next Friday to issue a statement disavowing the country club and announcing his family has cut all ties with it.
The New York Post noted Whitehouse has denied that he is a member of the club and has maintained it does have "non-white members."
Whitehouse had said in June he would not ask his wife or any of his other relatives who hold membership at the club to resign.
"First, they are on the right side of pushing for improvements," he said. "Second, and more importantly, my relationship with my family is not one in which I tell them what to do."
He maintained he personally has "no membership to resign."
Bailey’s Beach Club has dismissed as "inaccurate and false" the claims that its private membership was "all-white," the Post reported.
In a statement to The Providence Journal in June, the club said: "Our membership comes from all over the globe to our small club and we welcome the diversity of view and background they bring to our community."
But Fisher claimed in the television interview: "This club is a proven racist club with exclusive ties to supremacy and exclusion, and that’s something that’s not going to be tolerated by me, by my associates, my affiliates or my organization."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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