Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The People Behind Social Media Are Not To Blame

For hours last night we waited for a decision we already knew the answer to. A little after 9 pm eastern Attorney Robert McCulloch announced the verdict of whether Darren Wilson would be indicted or not. Of course Darren Wilson was not indicted, but before getting to that point McCulloch did something super shocking. He blamed the citizens of Ferguson and social media for spreading the death of Michael Brown.

"On August 9th Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Within minutes various accounts of the incident began appearing on social media; accounts filled with speculation and little, if any, solid accurate information. Almost immediately neighbors began gathering and anger began growing because of the various descriptions of what had happened and because of the underlying tension between the police and a significant part of the neighborhood."
the reaction of @feministajones

McCulloch blamed you, me, and all our friends that use sites like twitter for spreading what was going on. He accused everyone that may have tweeted about Michael Brown being killed and subsequently said we had a negative affect on how the citizens reacted. He blamed the distrust that the citizens already had for the police on the citizens, even though a police officer had killed one of the citizens.

Michael Brown's death is not our fault. Anything anyone said on twitter at the time and in the months since then have not had any negative affect on anyone. What talking about this has done was put the issue at the front of everyone's eyes. Continuing the conversation has opened a dialogue for how safe we all really feel in the United States of America, how to protect ourselves more, how to avoid innocent people getting recklessly killed by police officers. In no way did we contribute negatively to a case that Ferguson, Missouri police was desperate to initially pretend didn't even happen.

This kind of stuff really makes me angry. We have young adults working so hard to be in jobs that don't pay enough, youth work their way up the corporate ladder, youth becoming entrepreneurs, and still taking the time for the ones they love. However, when these young adults are showing that they are getting involved in important events, whether good or bad, to make a stand, people like this idiot attorney want to demean them. I don't understand that part.

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Lashuntrice

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