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 |