The article was centered around the Black Lives Matter movement, but with a focus on the Freddie Gray tragedy. The beginning of the article is a very vivid description of being a part of the protest. After the description, the narrative of the article shifts towards a single protester, Deray Mckesson who has been attending every protest from New York City to Ferguson Missouri.
With that, in my opinion, the central idea present in the article is the influence of technology and social media in modern protest. When it comes to posting on social media that has to do with protesting and politics it’s usually seen as a cry for attention.
During the discussion after the viewing of “Whose Streets?” a majority of people seemed to agree with one person when they stated that posting on social media for progress is doing the bare minimum and to go out and be a part of the action is much more progressive. On the contrary, in the documentary “Whose Streets” social media played a major role in the protest for equality, for example, the format of the documentary was the way Twitter is set up to show the influence social media has on protest now.
In the article, Deray Mckesson starts off the protest with about 90 twitter followers. Throughout his journey throughout the protest, he gains more attention causing his follower count to soar because he was in the midst of the action, just like Johnetta Elzie who was a St. Louis native.
She had been involved in the protests since they began in August and she used many of the social media platforms, including Tumblr which she never used before, because she just wanted more places to display the protest.
In the context of the films “Get Out” and the documentary “Whose Streets?” The use of social media and technology plays a major role in both pictures in getting the point across. For example, in the documentary “Whose Streets” the use of different social media sites was used to not only gather people for protests but also to stop the spread of one-sided news through the media. People used their social media accounts to showcase their side of the story in comparison to what channels like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC were putting out to the public.
Going back to the article, one of the main ideas was that these young people have used their social media platforms to create the civil rights movement for this generation. When it comes to the film “Get Out” directed by Jordan Peele, there’s a specific scene that stood out to me that seemed to go with the article (Spoiler Alert)**** when Chris’s best friend, Rod goes on the internet and discovers that Logan King was actually Andre Hayworth the man who was kidnapped at the beginning of the film.
This scene to me symbolized the use of the internet now and making shocking discoveries about the things that happen all around you and right under your nose. In that case, my question is, do you believe that this generation civil rights movement will have the same impact in the way the previous one did due to technological advancements and social media?
