Twitter Forced the World to Pay Attention to Ferguson. It Won’t Last.
The protests in the wake of Brown’s death and Wilson’s non-indictment have done more than merely exist. They’ve mattered. They’ve changed the national conversation about racially biased policing. The way the events in Ferguson have captivated the news media and inspired sustained, enthusiastic coverage of issues affecting African-Americans is so rare as to be nearly unprecedented in American history.
“The story of black America is partly a story of erasure, but in Ferguson, social media made that impossible,” McKesson said.
It seems almost too good to be true. And it is. The current symbiotic relationship between the activists who tweet their despair over police bias and the journalists who amplify their stories is, at best, a happy and temporary coincidence, not a long-term strategy for social justice organizing.
[…]
“The goal isn’t how can we get the best media, it’s how can we stop getting killed,” he said. “We’re not trying to get fame, we’re trying to get to free.”
More: Twitter Forced the World to Pay Attention to Ferguson. It Won’t Last. - Vox