Rabbi Oren Hayon Profile picture
Gadfly. Enthusiast. Cleric. Impassioned defender of banjo music and fermented foods; holder of innumerable other questionable opinions.

Jun 2, 2019, 7 tweets

I need to talk about what I just saw. (1/7)

I remember clearly when I first heard about the #CentralParkFive. I was the same age they were. (2/7)

The news coverage of the incident really unsettled me. I remember feeling deeply, viscerally afraid of "superpredators" and worrying that they would show up to go "wilding" in our Ohio town. (3/7)

Of course, I didn't realize how those narratives had been engineered and manipulated by those - in the media, in the justice system, and in politics - who had an interest in shaping black and brown boys into a new species of monster. (4/7)

So, for me, @ava DuVernay's #WhenTheySeeUs is more than just a great piece of writing and filmmaking (though it is that, too). (5/7)

It is a lesson and a rebuke - showing me how much of the story I never knew; and - now that I am as old as those boys' parents were, back in 1989 - how much of those families' sadness and suffering had been invisible to me. (6/7)

I don't mean to go on and on. But @WhenTheySeeUs is extraordinary, and beautiful, and heartbreaking. @ava has told the story of #TheExoneratedFive in an unforgettable work of art and justice. You need to see it, and that's all. (7/7)

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