Daily Archives: August 3, 2020

This piece, written by a historian and biographer of John James Audubon, is the first in a series of pieces on Audubon.org and in Audubon magazine that will reexamine the life and legacy of the organizations namesake as we chart a course toward racial equity.

John James Audubon was a man of many identities: artist, naturalist, woodsman, ladies man, storyteller, myth maker. A now-legendary painter who traveled North America in the early 19th century, in an epic quest to document all of the continents avian life, he is above all known as a champion of birds. Today we see that legacy preserved in the National Audubon Society, but also in the cities, streets, and even birds that bear his name.

Audubon was also a slaveholder, a point that many people dont know or, if they do, tend to ignore or excuse. He was a man of his time, so the argument goes. Thats never been a good argument, even about Audubons timeand certainly not in this onebecause many men and women in the antebellum era took a strong and outspoken stand for the abolition of slavery.

Audubon didnt. Instead, he dismissed the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1834, he wrote to his wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, that the British government had acted imprudently and too precipitously in emancipating enslaved people in its West Indian possessions. It was with remarkable understatement that one of Audubons earlier biographers wrote that Lucy and John Audubon took no stand against the institution of slavery.

They took a stand for slavery by choosing to own slaves. In the 18-teens, when the Audubons lived in Henderson, Kentucky, they had nine enslaved people working for them in their household, but by the end of the decade, when faced with financial difficulties, they had sold them. In early 1819, for instance, Audubon took two enslaved men with him down the Mississippi to New Orleans on a skiff, and when he got there, he put the boat and the men up for sale. The Audubons then acquired several more enslaved people during the 1820s, but again sold them in 1830, when they moved to England, where Audubon was overseeing the production of what he called his Great Work, The Birds of America, the massive, four-volume compendium of avian art that made him famous.

The Birds of America was a tremendous artistic and ornithological achievement, a product of personal passion and sacrifice. Audubon thought big from the beginning, making his work ambitious in its reach, with 435 engraved images of some 490 species, and impressive in its scale, with each bird depicted size of life. Audubons avian images can seem more real than reality itself, allowing the viewer to study each bird closer and longer than would ever be possible in the field. The visual impact proved stunning at the time, and it continues to be so today.

Although never fully acknowledged, people of colorAfrican Americans and Native Americanshad a part in making that massive project possible. Audubon occasionally relied on these local observers for assistance in collecting specimens, and he sometimes accepted their information about birds and incorporated it into his writings. But even though Audubon found Black and Indigenous people scientifically useful, he never accepted them as socially or racially equal. He took pains to distinguish himself from them. In writing about an expedition in Florida in December 1831, Audubon noted that he set out in a boat with six enslaved Black menhands, as he called themand three white men, his emphasis clearly underscoring the racial divide in the boat and his place on the white side of it.

Audubon also, through his writing, manipulated racial tensions to enhance his notoriety. The tale of The Runawayone of the Episodes about American life he inserted into his 3,000-page, five-volume Ornithological Biography, a companion to Birds of Americaspins the tale of an encounter with a Black man in a Louisiana swamp. Audubon, who had been hunting Wood Storks with his dog, Plato, had a gun, but so did the Black man; after a brief face-off both men put down their weapons. Even as he described the tension easing, Audubon had already hooked into the fears of his readers. Published three years after Nat Turners slave rebellion in 1831, The Runaway presented the most menacing image imaginable for many white peoplethe sudden specter of an armed Black man. Audubon knew how to get peoples attention.

He also knew how to put himself in the most favorable light. The man and his family had escaped slavery and were living in the swamp, and as the tale unfolds, Audubon spent the night at the familys encampmentcompanionably but also quite at their mercy. It was the fugitives, however, who were really most vulnerable. The next morning, Audubon took them back to the plantation of their first master and convinced the planter to buy the enslaved people back from the masters to which the family had been divided and sold. And that was that: Reunited but still enslaved, the Black family was rendered as happy as slaves generally are in that country. (Exactly what happy meant, Audubon did not say.) In the span of a single storytrue or not, and many of Audubons Episodes were notAudubon portrayed himself as both a savior of a fugitive family and a defender of slaveholders claims to human property rights.

There have long been lingering questions about Audubons own racial identity. His birth in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to one of his fathers two mistresses on a sugar plantation suggests he may have shared some measure of African descent. The truth of that may be impossible to know for sure even now. Audubon may not have known for sure himself, yet he took care to leave a specific impression.In an essay written for his sons, he described his birth mother as a lovely and wealthy lady of Spanish extraction from Louisiana, who went back to Saint-Domingue with Audubons father and became one of the victims during the ever-to-be-lamented period of negro insurrection on that island. Neither part is true, but both could have been useful to Audubon: Having a European mother killed by Black rebels reinforced a white identity, and in an American society where whiteness proved (and still proves) the safest form of social identity, what more could Audubon need?

Audubon made his place in American culture by creating a self-identity as outsized as his images of birds. Much of that is justified: As an artist he set a bar for realism in nature art that raised the worlds standards and continues to influence artists today. His paintings of birds and other wildlife were remarkablefull of exacting detail and often exciting drama, both of which make his work so vibrant and valuable. Although the veracity of his science has sometimes been called into question, his major written work, Ornithological Biography, remains a valuable resource and a very good read. And he left in his wake a movement of people ardent in their passion for identifying and protecting bird life, including the founders of the first Audubon societies, which took his name long after he died. But if we look at John James Audubon as a figure in history, not as a figure of his own myths, we come away with a truer picture of the man himself.

That is an important exercise, and not only for historians. Audubons Runaway could not escape the long reach of slavery, and neither should heor any of us. In this critical time of reckoning with racism, we must recognize that the institution of slavery in Americas past has a deep connection to institutions in the presentour governments, businesses, banks, universities, and also some of our most respected and beloved organizations. Audubon didnt create the National Audubon Society, but he remains part of its identity. As much as we celebrate his environmental legacy, we need to grapple with his racial legacy. If we could train our binoculars on history, now is the time to do so.

Gregory Nobles is author ofJohn James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). He is also a member of the National Audubon Society and two local chapters, Atlanta Audubon and Michigan Audubon.

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The Myth of John James Audubon | Audubon - National Audubon Society

In these tumultuous times, an event meant to promote understanding among people may be just what your soul needs.

Enter Candles on the Water, an annual program that advocates for peace and harmony by commemorating the bombings of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This year marks 75 years since the bombings, and a local group plans a program of music, prayer and public proclamations, concluding with a launch of lantern boats into the Susquehanna River at sunset.

On August 6, 1945, a uranium atomic bomb called Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. About 140,000 people were killed and thousands of others died within months from burns and radiation sickness. Just three days later, a plutonium bomb called Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, where 70,000 were killed.

As a member of Pax Christi, a Catholic organization that rejects war, preparation for war and every form of violence and domination, Ann Marie Judson has been involved with Candles on the Water for about 20 years.

Judson explained that the idea began taking shape in 1982 at a session on nuclear disarmament held at the United Nations. At the time, Mayor Araki of Hiroshima proposed a new program to promote the solidarity of cities toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. Harrisburg was one of the first to sign on. Today, the Mayors for Peace movement totals 7,905 cities in 163 countries and regions.

Judson said that Harrisburg peace activists Deborah Davenport and Milton Lowenthalheld the first event in the 1980s.

Lowenthal was instrumental in Harrisburg becoming a member city of Mayors for Peace, she said.

Judson described the event as an ecumenical effort to help unify people and bring attention to the cause.

It represents solidarity with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and our common desire for the abolition of nuclear weapons, she said.

Judson said that Bill Dallam of Mechanicsburg will address the crowd during the event. Dallam was on site just three weeks after the bombings, she said. As a member of the military, it was his job to measure radiation.

He was told it was a classified, secret mission, she said. They didnt want anybody to know all the damage we caused.

Judson explained that Dallam encouraged his wife, Mary Lou, to paint a depiction of the devastation. The painting reads, Never Again, and has been used on the front Candles on the Water program schedule.

Peace Garden

The Peace Garden is another permanent reminder of the bombings and is located above the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River between Maclay and Emerald streets.

We brought the idea back from Hiroshima after the international conference, said retired Harrisburg pediatrician Dr. Jim Jones.

The two-block area includes three large sculptures inspired by the destruction in Hiroshima and the hope that followed. The sculptures are the work of Dr. Frederick Franck, a writer, artist and oral surgeon who once worked with Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa.

Among the sculptures are flowers, trees and plaques containing sayings that promote peace, hope and renewal. A pole among the brightly blooming flowers bears messages of peace written in four languages.

Jones and Judson are thankful that the city provides the water for the Peace Garden and for the hard work of volunteers who are responsible for the upkeep, along with the dedication of organizations like the Physicians for Social Responsibility, which plant 1,200 annuals every spring.

Judson stressed the importance of keeping history in mind as we move forward.

Ive been dedicated to the cause of peace and Candles on the Water for many years because it reminds us that nuclear weapons should never again be used, she said.We are all brothers and sisters on this planet, and the abolition of nuclear weapons is a critical necessity.Never again!

Candles on the Water will take place on Sunday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m., with attendees meeting in Riverfront Park in Harrisburg across from the John Harris Mansion. Please bring lawn chairs or blankets. For more information, email annmarie512@aol.com.

Originally posted here:

A Shimmering Peace: Candles on The Water offers hope on 75th anniversary of nuclear bombings - The Burg News

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Emancipation Day is rightly celebrated as one of the most important anniversaries for Jamaicans. Sadly, this year's was not our traditional Augus'1 jubilee style commemoration. Last year this time celebrators had settled into their north coast resort accommodation, done the Saturday night party bit, and booked time out for Caymanas Park, cricket matches, beach outings, and family gatherings.

The West Indies team was struggling against a well-oiled Indian side (sounds familiar), Denbigh was summoning farmers from labour to refreshment, and for many a Red Stripe and a game of dominoes was sufficient to while away the time and reflect, oh so briefly, on the reason for the holiday.

That was last year, 2019. But this year COVID-19 has put paid to all that excitement and everything is now on virtual reality. A great effort has been made to bring the shows into our living rooms, but so much is missing from these events without the crowd excitement.

What a change we have witnessed when, in six months, January to July, a blanket of soberness and containment has curtailed the world's normal behavioural patterns as we seek to shield humanity from the scourge of the coronavirus pandemic.

The celebrations we indulged in last year have been toned down and, although we still danced, we danced with one eye open for the security forces who were placed on anti-COVID-19 alarms and crack down duties.

The Government allowed 'let up' to some extent, but to my mind the almost total abandonment of masks and social distancing which has reached peak during this holiday period makes it obligatory for a return to some of those restrictions, advisories, and guidelines issued by the Government and the World Health Organization at the start of the pandemic.

Comparing the lock down we went through at Easter to the wild abandonment we are revelling in at Emancipation makes one shudder to think that we could be laying ourselves open for the coming of that dreaded second wave we have been warned against.

The practice of wearing masks, washing hands, and social distancing must be followed strictly. We have been through the initial importation, cluster and community stages, and the cycle has turned full circle as, with the reopening of our borders, we are right back into the importation stage.

There is one other stage we don't speak about much, and it's the complacency stage. The belief that, in spite of the increasing numbers (importation), Jamaica is doing so well that we can drop our guard. The complacency stage can be the most dangerous stage of all.

As was said earlier in this column, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has taken on the mandate of leadership and is not letting us down. He has been very much in charge; forthright and decisive.

Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton has taken on the responsibility for one of the heaviest burdens ever cast on a minister of government in the history of Jamaica, and continues to do exceedingly well.

Indeed, the latest Bill Johnson polls commissioned by this newspaper have given a vote of excellence to the Government for the job they are doing to protect Jamaica from the effects of the virus.

This vote of confidence must be shared by the unflappable Chief Medical Officer Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, whose style we find to be engaging, comforting, compassionate, and, most importantly, inspires trust.

These three have been leading the fight for Jamaica, supported by Cabinet ministers, medical officers, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the police, as well as thousands of workers stretched to the max across the country. Altogether they have earned the confidence of the people they lead.

Unfortunately, with an election prognosis now turning up the volume, it's going to be almost impossible to keep politics out of this health crisis. The ungracious and unworthy politicking that has crept in can be a diversion from the real issues that face us.

We simply cannot play politics with coronavirus, and where it has happened and is likely to continue to happen we must rein it in. Please don't play games with life and death.

Our big brother, the USA, has been involved in some amount of turmoil in that regard as it too prepares for elections in November. The excitement and enthusiasm around conventions and public rallies have been crowded out by the coronavirus outbreak and coloured by the Black Lives Matter movement spurred by the killing of George Floyd.

America has only itself to blame for allowing racism to play such a dominant role in the decision-making process to select a Government in the world's largest democracy. And, in 2020. A lot of battles have been fought and won down that road. The Civil War 1861-65, which ended in victory for the Northern states and the abolishment of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalised by the Jim Crow laws, the decline of the Ku Klux Klan, the civil rights movement, and the historic march on Washington in 1964, all of which were important milestones on the way to eradicating racism in America.

But those accomplishments and seminal victories have not proven to be decisive enough. A 2013 report published by the Economic Policy Institute, which assessed the progress made by the original March on Washington, contended that the attainment of civil rights alone cannot transform people's quality of life unless accompanied by economic (and social) justice. It pointed out that much of the primary goals of all these historic victories listed above (housing, integrated education, and widespread employment at equal wages) have not been met. They further argued that, although legal advances were made, black people still live in concentrated areas of poverty, where they receive inferior education and suffer from widespread unemployment; hence, the unsettled, restless situation in America and the anger and pain now manifesting itself in mass protests all over the United States.

I was surprised to learn that there is no national public holiday declared in the USA to mark Emancipation. The District of Columbia observes a holiday on April 16 to mark the anniversary of the signing of Emancipation Act. Elsewhere in the United States, the emancipation of slaves is celebrated in sections of several states and on different days, including Florida (May 20), Puerto Rico (March 22), Texas (June 19), and in Georgia (Saturday closest to May 29), Mississippi (May 8) and Kentucky (August 8).

In contrast, Jamaica has long recognised August 1 as a day for national celebration. And even when Emancipation Day, for a while, has been subsumed by the August 6 Independence celebrations 1962 to 1998 Jamaicans still continued to honour and observe August 1 in communities all over the country with sporting tournaments, parties, fairs and picnics.

The holiday is more than just a welcome break from work when one can lounge around and relax in preparation for Independence Day. For Jamaicans, the day is a very important date in our history as a people, as it represents the time when our forebears were 'freed' from the shackles of chattel slavery.

On this day, August 2, 2020, let us spare a sobering thought for what took place in Jamaica on the night of July 31, 1834.

On that night, 186 years ago, thousands of enslaved Africans flocked to places of worship all over Jamaica to give thanks for the abolition of slavery.

In 1834 many of the slaves could still recall the time when they were uprooted from their peaceful villages and forcefully taken to a port of departure, where they awaited the arrival of a slaver.

The journey to the West Indies was horrible. The ships were overcrowded and unsanitary, resulting in the breakout of various diseases. Many of them died. Others thought least likely to recover were chained, ankle by ankle, and thrown overboard, weighed down with cannonballsalive.

Those who endured the journey were then forced on to the plantations to begin their sentences of slavery, with multiple whippings, torture, and instances of sexual abuse. Many were killed for daring to seek freedom. The enslaved African was now mere chattel.

So here comes freedom in 1834 from all these unspeakable horrors. Their joy was not to be just another Red Stripe beer, a day at the track, or a Sunsplash night at the park. This was genuine, heartfelt, deeply emotional joy and thanksgiving celebrations: That overwhelming feeling of thanksgiving to the Almighty God who had intervened in the machinations of man and had finally set the captives free.

The Emancipation Day holiday, as we celebrate it in 2020, can never fully pay tribute to, or recall the passions and the immensity of the feelings that must have overwhelmed the Africans who, that night, were to hear the proclamation of liberty to the captives, and experience for themselves the opening of the prison doors to them that were bound.

And can you imagine how our forefathers and mothers celebrated? And did they not have more cause for natural joy than we have today? Those former slaves, yes, our 'owna' family, set the pace for grand times to be had by all when they left church that night to spill out into the streets for joyous celebrations and thanksgiving.

Queen Victoria gi wi free, tiday fus a Augus', tenky Massa, they sang, as the women paraded around the rural neighbourhoods in their tailored petticoats with tashan lace edging. The Bruckins party songs and dances which have been handed down to the present generation were the highlights of any celebratory gathering: Jubilee, Jubilee, this is the year of Jubilee...

We are fortunate to get a first-hand description of what took place in the churches that night from a parson, Reverend Henry Bleby, who was an eyewitness to the event, and who actually conducted the service of thanksgiving and freedom in one of the churches in his charge. From an address which Rev Bleby gave to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1858 we glean how he remembered, in detail, every second of the service, every sob, every gasp, and, at the end of the night, every soulful prayer that sang and ran through the congregation.

Sirs, he told his audience, I was there when slavery was abolished. I saw the monster die. This day, 24 years ago, I stood up late at night, in a very large church (unnamed), and the aisles were crowded, and the gallery stairs, and the communion place, and the pulpit stairs were all crowded, and there were thousands of persons looking in. This was at 10 o'clock at night, on the 31st of July.

I took my text from Leviticus 25: 10. By and by, the midnight hour approached. When it was within two minutes of the first of August, I requested all the people to kneel down, as befitting the solemnity of the hour, and engage in silent prayer to God.

A moment of the highest drama was approaching.

By and by, the clock began to strike: It was the knell of slavery. It was the stroke which proclaimed liberty to 800 souls. And, Sirs, what a burst of joy rolled over that mass of people when the clock struck, and they were slaves no longer.

Over at the Baptist church in Falmouth a similar procession of time in motion. As the clock started to strike the first chime of midnight, Rev William Knibb said quietly, The hour is at hand, the monster is dying. There was silence. Then when the church bell outside struck midnight, he shouted: The monster is dead: The Negro is free!

At Rev Bleby's church there was also a heavy silence that had gripped the congregation. Then when the midnight hour struck a burst of joy rolled over that mass of people as they realised they were slaves no longer. He told them to rise from their knees, And, Sirs, it was really affecting to see, in one corner, a mother, with her little one whom she had brought with her, clasp her baby to her bosom. And there was an old, white-headed man, embracing a daughter. And, here again, would be a husband congratulating his wife.

This is what you call unspeakable feelings. One great, large, significant, unforgettable moment in history. Outside the churches the people gathered to bury the chain shackles all over the countryside.

Rev Bleby, again, takes the platform. I cannot tell you the feelings which with which those people, just emerging from freedom, shouted. And they literally shouted the hymn which was sung in the church that night:

Send the glad tidings o'er the sea,

His chains are broken, the slave is free

This is the Negro's jubilee...

Lance Neita is a public relations consultant and historian. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or to lanceneita@hotmail.com.

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'This is the Negroes' Jubilee' - Jamaica Observer

Three months of quarantine taught us to live online, so its perhaps unsurprising that it was what we saw online that sent us back onto the streets. On May 25th, the circulation of video footage capturing George Floyds murder by four Minneapolis police officers quickly incited local protests. Three nights later, our feeds streamed with live images of protesters burning Minneapoliss Third Police Precinct. In the course of June, uprisings expanded at unprecedented speed and scalegrowing nationally and then internationally, leaving a series of now iconic images, videos, and exhortations in their wake. Every historic event has its ideal medium of documentationthe novel, the photograph, the televisionand what were witnessing feels like an exceptionally online moment of social unrest.

Indeed, the struggle in the public square has unfolded alongside a takeover of the virtual one. Amid cell-phone footage of protests and toppling statues, the Internet has been further inundated with what we might call activist media. Screenshots of bail-fund donations urging others to match continue to proliferate. Protest guides, generated from years of on-the-ground activist experience, are readily shared over Twitter and Instagram, telling readers how to blur faces in photographs or aid in de-arrests. There are e-mail and phone-call templates, pre-scripted and mass-circulated. Webinars about police abolition now constitute their own subgenre. And city-council meetings, which had already migrated to Zoom because of the pandemic, have come to host the hallowed activist tradition of town-hall agitation. (Well-timed appeals for the police department to suck my dick, it turns out, can be as effective online as off.) As some of Junes uprisings evolve into todays encampments, the long revolutionary summer of 2020made all the longer by quarantinecontinues apace online.

Some of this story may seem familiar. In Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, from 2017, the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci examined how a digitally networked public sphere had come to shape social movements. Tufekci drew on her own experience of the 2011 Arab uprisings, whose early mobilization of social media set the stage for the protests at Gezi Park, in Istanbul, the Occupy action, in New York City, and the Black Lives Matter movement, in Ferguson. For Tufekci, the use of the Internet linked these various, decentralized uprisings and distinguished them from predecessors such as the nineteen-sixties civil-rights movement. Whereas older movements had to build their organizing capacity first, Tufekci argued, modern networked movements can scale up quickly and take care of all sorts of logistical tasks without building any substantial organizational capacity before the first protest or march.

The speed afforded by such protest is, however, as much its peril as its promise. After a swift expansion, spontaneous movements are often prone to what Tufekci calls tactical freezes. Because they are often leaderless, and can lack both the culture and the infrastructure for making collective decisions, they are left with little room to adjust strategies or negotiate demands. At a more fundamental level, social medias corporate infrastructure makes such movements vulnerable to coptation and censorship. Tufekci is clear-eyed about these pitfalls, even as she rejects the broader criticisms of slacktivism laid out, for example, by Evgeny Morozovs The Net Delusion, from 2011.

Twitter and Tear Gas remains trenchant about how social media can and cannot enact reform. But movements change, as does technology. Since Tufekcis book was published, social media has helped representand, in some cases, helped organizethe Arab Spring 2.0, Frances Yellow Vest movement, Puerto Ricos RickyLeaks, the 2019 Iranian protests, the Hong Kong protests, and what we might call the B.L.M. uprising of 2020. This last event, still ongoing, has evinced a scale, creativity, and endurance that challenges those skeptical of the Internets ability to mediate a movement. As Tufekci notes in her book, the real-world effects of Occupy, the Womens March, and even Ferguson-era B.L.M. were often underwhelming. By contrast, since George Floyds death, cities have cut billions of dollars from police budgets; school districts have severed ties with police; multiple police-reform-and-accountability bills have been introduced in Congress; and cities like Minneapolis have vowed to defund policing. Plenty of work remains, but the link between activism, the Internet, and material action seems to have deepened. Whats changed?

The current uprisings slot neatly into Tufekcis story, with one exception. As the flurry of digital activism continues, there is no sense that this movement is unclear about its aimsabolitionor that it might collapse under a tactical freeze. Instead, the many protest guides, syllabi, Webinars, and the like have made clear both the objectives of abolition and the digital savvy of abolitionists. It is a message so legible that even Fox News grasped it with relative ease. Rachel Kuo, an organizer and scholar of digital activism, told me that this clarity has been shaped partly by organizers who increasingly rely on a combination of digital platforms, whether thats Google Drive, Signal, Messenger, Slack, or other combinations of software, for collaboration, information storage, resource access, and daily communications. The public tends to focus, understandably, on the profusion of hashtags and sleek graphics, but Kuo stressed that it was this back end workan inventory of knowledge, a stronger sense of alliancethat has allowed digital activism to reflect broader concerns and visions around community safety, accessibility, and accountability. The uprisings might have unfolded organically, but what has sustained them is precisely what many prior networked protests lacked: prexisting organizations with specific demands for a better world.

Some of this growth is simply a function of time. It has been seven years since Black Lives Matter was founded. Since then, groups such as the Movement for Black Livesan explicitly abolitionist, anti-capitalist network that includes more than a hundred and fifty organizationshave lent unity and direction to a coalition that was once, perhaps, too diffuse to articulate shared principles. These groups have also become better at using the Internet to frame, formalize, and advance their agenda. As Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles write in #HashtagActivism, social media provides a digital counterpublic, in which voices excluded from elite media spaces can engage alternative networks of debate. When moments of rupture occur, this counterpublic can more readily make mainstream interventions. Recent discourse about prison and police abolition might be the clearest example of a shift in the Overton window, though Bailey points even to the language that were hearing on television, white supremacy being named for what it is, as unimaginable just a few years ago.

Whats distinct about the current movement is not just the clarity of its messaging, but its ability to convey that message through so much noise. On June 2nd, the music industry launched #BlackoutTuesday, an action against police brutality that involved, among other things, Instagram and Facebook users posting plain black boxes to their accounts. The posts often included the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter; almost immediately, social-media users were inundated with even more posts, which explained why using that hashtag drowned out crucial information about events and resources with a sea of mute boxes. For Meredith Clark, a media-studies professor at the University of Virginia, the response illustrated how the B.L.M. movement had honed its ability to stick to a program, and to correct those who deployed that program navely. In 2014, many people had only a thin sense of how a hashtag could organize actions or establish circles of care. Today, people understand what it means to use a hashtag, Clark told me. They use their own social media in a certain way to essentially quiet background noise and allow those voices that need to connect with each other the space to do so. The #BlackoutTuesday affair exemplified an increasing awareness of how digital tactics have material consequences.

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The Second Act of Social-Media Activism - The New Yorker