#OscarsSoWhite Protest Planned for Oscars Sunday

Hashtag creator April Reign told TheWrap there will be “counter-programming that starts on Oscar night,” but declined to go into specifics

Oscars Statuettes #OscarsSoWhite Academy Awards

#OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign says there will be a protest on Feb. 28, the day the Oscars are set to take place, to advocate for more diversity across the nominee categories.

“We do have another protest planned,” Reign told TheWrap. “There will be counter-programming that starts on Oscar night.  This is something we did last year, and I can’t tell you exactly what will go on, but last year we live tweeted the movie, ‘Coming to America,’ and people were watching with us on Netflix and live-tweeted, and people decided to turn off their TVs and not watch the Oscars.”

A group of #OscarsSoWhite protesters gathered on Feb. 9 outside the luncheon celebrating this year’s nominees, calling attention to the lack of diversity in all categories.

Roughly a dozen protesters could be seen holding signs featuring a stark white Oscar statuette set against a black backdrop and the popular #OscarsSoWhite hashtag scrawled across the top in red.

#OscarsSoWhite began resurfacing on Twitter when the Academy failed to nominate a single person of color for the second year in a row. The outrage over the lack of diversity made stars and filmmakers like Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Moore and Spike Lee say that they would not attend the ceremony this year.

In response, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Jan. 22 what it referred to as “a sweeping series of substantive changes” to its rules to promote diversity in Academy membership and to double the number of women and diverse members of AMPAS by 2020.

Reign started the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite when the nominees for the 2015 Academy Awards were announced, tweeting, “ they asked to touch my hair.”

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