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Activist group stages elaborate hoax to announce Washington Redskins changed team name

Shalise Manza Young
·Columnist

An activist group called Rising Hearts created several fake web pages and launched them Wednesday morning, announcing that Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder had decided to change the team’s long-debated name to the “Washington Redhawks.”

The group created fake pages for the websites of the Washington Post, Bleacher Report, ESPN and Sports Illustrated, taking great pains to make them look like real pages for each outlet, and many people were convinced the news was real.

“We created this action to show the NFL and the Washington Football franchise how easy, popular and powerful changing the name could be,” Rebecca Nagle, a member of the Cherokee Nation and one of the organizers of the stunt, said in a statement.

An activist group called Rising Hearts staged a stunt on Wednesday, using fake web pages to announce that Washington had changed its mascot to Redhawks. (Twitter)
An activist group called Rising Hearts staged a stunt on Wednesday, using fake web pages to announce that Washington had changed its mascot to Redhawks. (Twitter)

“What we’re asking for changes only four letters. Just four letters! Certainly the harm that the mascot does to Native Americans outweighs the very, very minor changes the franchise would need to make.”

Native nations have argued for years that the word “redskin” is a derogatory slur, highly insulting to Native Americans. Historically, redskins meant the scalps of Native Americans, sold for cash; an advertisement from Minnesota in 1863 offered $200 “for every red-skin sent to Purgatory.”

Snyder has no plans on changing the team’s name, and that was reiterated Wednesday in a statement posted to Twitter:

The Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg tweeted this image, of a rail the newspaper’s site running down the most popular stories:

Stories two through five are real; but No. 1 is fake.

Rising Hearts is holding a news conference Thursday at the George Preston Marshall Monument in front of RFK Stadium, and there will also be a rally outside FedEx Field on Sunday, before Washington hosts the Arizona Cardinals.

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