Choudhury writes: "Despite the heroic efforts of many activists, it was recently uncovered that the U.S. government is surveilling the #BlackLivesMatter movement - tracking its activity online."
Black Lives Matter protest. (photo: Getty)
Stop the #BlackLivesMatter Surveillance
13 August 15
ne year after Michael Brown’s death at the hands of law enforcement in Ferguson, many #BlackLivesMatter organizers continue to drive the movement for justice – standing up for the lives of Black men, women, and children wherever and whenever injustices occur.
Despite the heroic efforts of many activists, it was recently uncovered that the U.S. government is surveilling the #BlackLivesMatter movement – tracking its activity online.
Government monitoring of #BlackLivesMatter activists’ Facebook pages and Twitter accounts without any evidence of wrongdoing is just plain wrong. These actions threaten to scare activists off from speaking, organizing, and expressing themselves – as is their right under the First Amendment – and throws open the door to racial profiling.
DeRay McKesson, #BlackLivesMatter organizer, says “truth-telling has always been considered a radical act in America.” Throughout our country’s history, the federal government has used the fear of a threat – real or perceived – to conduct surveillance on domestic groups and people who look or act different. From the communists during the McCarthy era to Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to Muslim civil rights leaders and academics after 9/11, our government has used this tactic time and again.
Government surveillance of civil rights activists is still as wrong today as it was in the past. We do not need to wait another 50 years to understand that.
Modern protest movements speak, empower, and organize through social media. Their tweets, blogs, protests, marches, and die-ins are the trumpets they use to call for reform and social justice. If we let government surveillance of activists on social media chill them from expressing themselves freely online, we take away their voice.
Join the thousands of supporters who have already signed our petition asking the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to stop their unnecessary and unfair surveillance of the Black Lives Matter movement:
Add your name to ask the government to end the unjust surveillance of #BlackLivesMatter activists.
Nusrat Choudhury is a Staff Attorney, for the ACLU's Racial Justice Program
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