Entertainment journalist ReBecca Theodore-Vachon, #OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign, filmmaker Lauren Warren, "social justice warlord" Shanelle Little and Black Girl Nerds founder Jamie Broadnax have joined forces to stop HBO from airing the newly announced show, Confederate, with #NoConfederate.

It has been a week since news broke about the latest project from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. And since, there has been intense scrutiny because of the two showrunners' history with people of color in Game of Thrones.

The show based off of George R.R. Martin's novels, had several instances where people of color were poorly written. For example, the entire Dorne story line was mishandled, the Sand Snakes were relegated to angry sex objects and in episode 10 of season three, the white character Daenerys Targaryen was lifted up by a crowd of brown freed slaves.

The new project, Confederate, has drawn ire for envisioning an alternate history where the Confederacy wins in the Civil War and slavery still exists well into modern times.  

Author Roxane Gay wrote about her frustration with the idea in The New York Times stating that slavery fan fiction isn't something she wants to see. 

"My exhaustion with the idea of Confederate is multiplied by the realization that this show is the brainchild of two white men who oversee a show that has few people of color to speak of and where sexual violence is often gratuitous and treated as no big deal," she wrote.  

Theodore-Vachon pointed out on Twitter that “Y’all are good with dragons. Y’all are good with magic. When it comes to black people … no, I do not trust you.”

As a response, #NoConfederate will be in full force this Sunday while episode three of season seven of Game of Thrones airs.  

 “Just as I said with #OscarsSoWhite, it would be great if the two of them would open the door to traditionally underrepresented folks so that more stories can be told,” Reign told The Root. “Clearly they’re under the impression that whatever they brought to HBO was going to be greenlit, so why not provide opportunities for others?”

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Reign said that this was a preemptive strike to stop a problematic show from airing.  "We are very intentionally acting now, before the scripts are written, before the parts are cast. We want to say to HBO: Don’t put any additional money into this, because we are not going to go away."

"We want to work with HBO, because there are times when they do great work," she added, citing Issa Rae's Insecure and the network's commitment to adapt 10 August Wilson plays. "This is about Confederate specifically. This particular show should not see the light of day."

ConfederateWhite supremacy