The post that’s just below this one is Son of Baldwin pointing to a post by Greg Howard in re a bruhaha brewing on Twitter this past week or so over who represents #Black Lives Matter.
Son of Baldwin steps back from calling anyone out in the fight and instead offers the sound advice, “it would do everyone (including me) some good to occasionally self-evaluate and recalibrate.”
Twitter is good example of how the Internet creates filter bubbles. Unless you are on Twitter and follow DeRay McKesson you probably wouldn’t know about the fight that Greg Howard is writing about. Howard does a good job explaining it for an audience who might not follow any of the folks invloved.
I side more with DeRay McKesson than Howard’s reporting does. This isn’t quite the gist, but, Greg Howard is a reporter who’s on Twiter, whereas McKesson is a Twitter reporter. Andy Carvin on Twitter during the Arab Spring is where I noticed this difference I’m trying to point to. Carvin describes himself: “Real-time news DJ & occasional journalist, but not a social media guru.” And the notion of a “real-time news DJ” seems to fit with what McKesson does and probably is better than calling him a Twitter reporter. Either way, it’s not easy, and McKesson does it well.
There’s an article up at Poynter today by James Warren about how Gene Demby, who covers race for NPR, has almost resigned during the year since the first protests in Ferguson, Missouri because the beat is so distressing and unrelenting. Here’s a recent post by Denby, How Black Reporters Report On Black Death. Demby writes of Black reporters “having skin in the game” for a white guy like me is easy to see and hard to imagine really.
What McKesson and Johnetta Elzie do on Twitter seems especially distressing and unrelenting and how! Using social media for social activism is being invented as we go along. I don’t know how Elzie and McKesson manage; the emotional load is so heavy.
It was a big day on Elizie and Mckesson’s Twitter feeds with the roll out of Campaign Zero–click the link it’s worth checking it out.
As a minor note in the mix, earlier in the day I saw some tweets calling McKesson a racist because she said he hadn’t condemned the killing of Jamyla Bolden. That’s spurious nonsense, but hit me like a fist in the belly because before bed last night Johnetta Elzie shared a photo she took of school friends of Jamyla Bolden at a vigil. I’m an old white guy and the pain is so real to me. I begin to sputter and stutter trying to imagine how anyone familiar with what McKesson posts thinks it doesn’t matter to him, that he doesn’t feel aggrieved.
Day in and day out McKesson and and Elzie present a nuanced mix of observations and links about people reacting to tragedies and reaching for solutions in their Twitter newsfeeds. It’s impossible to think they don’t care. It’s wrong to imagine the documenting they do on Twitter as self-serving attention seeking.
There is so much that needs doing. The criticism of DeRay McKesson for putting his face on Twitter obscures how McKesson amplifies the actions of regular people to a wide audience. And how he and others like Johnetta Elzie inspire more us to act. Twitter is not all they do–really check out Campaign Zero–but what they do on Twitter is significant.
Black Liberation Movement
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