Friend,

Last week we witnessed a deadly white-supremacist insurrection that many in our communities had warned of and feared.

We also saw a much more muted stance from law enforcement toward violent white supremacists than we see them take toward peaceful Black protesters. While none of this takes us by surprise, I want to acknowledge how deeply painful it is.

In the days that followed, we finally saw social-media platforms take action to stop white-supremacist organizing and violence. We collected many of the wins we and our partners in Change the Terms and Stop Hate for Profit have been pushing toward for years:

• Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump and purged the accounts of over 3,000 white supremacists.
• Facebook banned Trump indefinitely.
• As of now, 10 other platforms have either suspended or restricted Trump from spreading lies and hate: Google, Discord, Instagram, Reddit, Shopify, Snapchat, Spotify, TikTok, Twitch and YouTube.
• Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores, and the racist site’s web host — Amazon — dropped it.
• Text-messaging services and even the company’s own lawyers broke up with Parler.

Of course, it shouldn't have taken an insurrection to get platforms to take white-supremacist violence seriously. But these wins are the turning point we’ve been working toward, and we’re not taking our foot off the pedal now — especially with ongoing threats of violence around Inauguration Day and the days leading up to it.

For the next nine days, we’ll be sending you a daily action to help keep the pressure on during this pivotal moment. Keep an eye out: Our 9 days of action begin tomorrow. For now, take a breath.

Thanks for all you do,

Jessica, Lucia, Dutch and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net