NAACP says Florida travel warning is just the start of organizing effort

‘It’s to make the general public across the nation fully aware of what’s happening here in Florida,’ the NAACP chair Leon Russell said. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) say its travel advisory highlighting Florida’s “active hostility” to minorities is only the beginning of a campaign to engage voters in the state and nationally, as the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, prepares to launch his presidential run on Wednesday.

Leon Russell, chair of the NAACP, also told the Guardian that the group rejected calling for an economic boycott of the state similar to one that ended with South Carolina lowering the confederate flag in 2015.