Thread by @meredithdclark

I woke up to tweets (from journalists!) advocating for the publication of pics/footage of the #Ulvade victims’ bodies, ostensibly to get people to “wake up” about the reality of mass shootings. +

A number of these people referenced Mamie Till’s defiant decision to have an open casket at Emmet Till’s funeral.

The lack of comprehension of what it means to have agency is infuriating. +

“When Mamie Till did it, it jump-started the CRM!”

Are y’all OK?

The Anti-Lynching Bill was introduced in 1918. It was passed & signed into law in The Year of Our Lord 20 and 22.

We have endured nearly 10 years of watching Black people’s lives being snuffed out by taxpayer-funded police ON VIDEO and yet “defund” is considered radical.
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This fight was lost 10 years ago when folks let contempt for a Black president + politicians’ desire for job security override the demand for gun reform.

When white babies were shot to death at Sandy Hook and elected leaders obstructed legal action AND KEPT THEIR JOBS, we lost.

And that was AFTER Columbine.
AFTER Virginia Tech.

BEFORE Parkland – meaning there was plenty of time to come up with an effective messaging strategy that doesn’t involve exploiting children whose bodied have already been sacrificed to partisan politics.

Mamie Till’s decision was HERS to make. She birthed her son, raised him, kept him alive until bloodthirsty men took him from her.

And she did it during a time when media were not easily manipulated into gross caricatures of death, as they are now.

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Do you know about the hideous afterlife of the photos from Trayvon Martin’s murder?

How he his body has been ghoulishly animated to taunt his parents and people who loved him?

Stop tagging Sewell Chan and other editors. In fact, log off. Go outside. Touch grass. Or sit in a quiet room. Alone. And think about how and why you proposed such depraved rationalization.