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Post by Admin on Jun 1, 2020 0:47:14 GMT
The tension only intensified over the weekend as US President Donald Trump posted an insensitive tweet with regard to the Minneapolis protests. The protests were a result of the death of George Floyd due to police violence. The POTUS tweeted, "These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
Several international celebrities have spoken against US President Donald Trump after he posted the tweet. One of the many Hollywood celebrities who raised their voice against the POTUS was Taylor Swift. The singer took to Twitter and declared, "We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump". The tweet became the singer's most-liked tweet on the platform.
While the You Need To Calm Down hitmaker already voiced her opinions on Twitter, a source now told Us Weekly the catalyst behind the tweet. The insider shared that Taylor felt it was important she voices her opinions against Trump for she understood where how powerful her voice is.
"Taylor felt it was necessary to speak up against Trump and express her morals and values. She realizes how powerful her voice is and wanted to use it for the greater good. She wanted to speak out against inequalities in the world and support minorities, while also showing how anti-Trump she is," the insider shared.
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Post by Admin on Jun 1, 2020 5:27:08 GMT
As protests continue, celebrities are taking to their social media platforms to speak out about the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more black Americans who have died at the hands of police officers. This weekend, Lady Gaga posted her thoughts about the protests happening across the country. http://instagram.com/p/CA1w91OFWNF "I have a lot of things to say about this, but the first thing I want to say is I'm afraid to say anything that will insight further anger, although that is precisely the emotion that's justified," she wrote. "I do not wish to contribute to more violence; I wish to contribute to a solution. I am as outraged by the death of George Floyd as I have been by the deaths of exponentially too many Black lives over hundreds of years that have been taken from us in the country as a result of systemic racism and the corrupt system that support it. The voices of the black community have been silenced for too long and that silence has proven deadly time and time again. And no matter what they do to protest, they are still met with no compassion by the leaders that are meant to protect them. Everyday people in America are racist, that's a fact." This content is imported from Instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their website. In her video yesterday, Beyoncé stated that "we need justice for George Floyd," and linked to several petitions in her bio. "We all witnessed his murder in broad daylight," she said. "We're broken, and we're disgusted. We cannot normalize this pain. I'm not only speaking to people of color. If you're white, black, brown, or anything in between, I'm sure you feel hopeless by the racism going on in America right now. No more senseless killings of human beings."
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Post by Admin on Jun 1, 2020 19:04:47 GMT
Facebook employees are staging a rebellion over Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to act against Donald Trump, expressing their dissatisfaction with their boss on social media in a rare display of dissent from within the company.
Disagreement came from employees at all levels of the company, including some senior staff. Particular criticism was levelled at Zuckerberg’s personal decision to leave up the Facebook version of a tweet sent by Trump in which the president appeared to encourage police to shoot rioters. By contrast, Twitter hid the message behind a warning.
Andrew Crow, the head of design for Facebook’s Portal video-phone, tweeted: “Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy. I disagree with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen.”
Jason Stirman, a member of the company’s R&D team and the former chief executive of the “mental training” app Lucid, also posted on Twitter, saying: “I don’t know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I’m a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark’s decision to do nothing about Trump’s recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I’m not alone inside of FB. There isn’t a neutral position on racism.”
On Friday Zuckerberg said he disagreed with Twitter’s interpretation of Trump’s statement, which included the phrase: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Where Twitter had read the statement as incitement – encouraging police to shoot at protesters – Zuckerberg said he read it as a warning to protesters that the police would be shooting at them. The distinction meant that the post fell on the right side of Facebook’s rules, Zuckerberg said, and would not be removed.
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Post by Admin on Jun 3, 2020 7:11:24 GMT
In an internal video call with Facebook employees on Tuesday obtained by Recode, CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on his controversial decision to take no action on a post last week from President Donald Trump. In the post, Trump referred to the ongoing protests in the US against racism and police brutality and said, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Facebook’s handling of Trump’s post — which included language similar to what segregationists used when referring to black protesters in the civil rights era — has divided employees at Facebook and prompted them to openly criticize Zuckerberg in a way they never have before. Around 400 employees staged a virtual walkout of work on Monday, at least two employees have resigned in protest, others have threatened to resign, and several senior-level managers have publicly disagreed with Zuckerberg’s stance — calling for him to take down or otherwise moderate Trump’s post, as Facebook’s competitor Twitter already has. This tension spilled over into the Tuesday Q&A meeting that around 25,000 employees tuned into — with several employees’ posing questions that were highly critical of the company’s actions and policies, and scrutinized whether the company is listening to racially diverse voices in its upper ranks. “I knew that the stakes were very high on this, and knew a lot of people would be upset if we made the decision to leave it up,” Zuckerberg said on the call. He went on to say that after reviewing the implications of Trump’s statement, he decided that “the right action for where we are right now is to leave this up.” Zuckerberg said that he did a thorough analysis of the history around the apparent reference in Trump’s post, which he called “troubling,” but ultimately did not find it to be an incitement of violence under Facebook’s policies. “We basically concluded after the research and after everything I’ve read and all the different folks that I’ve talked to that the reference is clearly to aggressive policing — maybe excessive policing — but it has no history of being read as a dog whistle for vigilante supporters to take justice into their own hands,” Zuckerberg said on the call. He also said that, overall, Facebook still reserves the right to moderate Trump. “This isn’t a case where [Trump] is allowed to say anything he wants, or that we let government officials or policy makers say anything they want.”
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Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2020 18:41:22 GMT
Less than five months before the election, congressional Republicans are struggling to confront a host of thorny racial issues that have been unexpectedly thrust into the 2020 campaign spotlight.
They’re still scrambling to craft a response to nationwide protests against police brutality following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, divided over whether to rename Army bases named after Confederate leaders and resistant to banning all Confederate statues from the Capitol.
The resistance to remove the Confederate statues --- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) argue states should decide which figures represent them in the hallowed building -- is even creating friction in the party.
Rep. Will Hurd, the only black House Republican, said it’s a no-brainer to remove the nearly dozen statues of Confederate generals and soldiers who fought against the Union.
“The bottom line for me is if someone didn't want to be part of this great country, then why would we want to have their statue in the Capitol?” Hurd, who is retiring this year, told The Hill.
At the same time, he added, “I don't believe in whitewashing history. I think we should be doing everything we can to educate folks on ... the Confederacy and slavery and how bad it was and what was going on in the original sin of this country.”
The Grand Old Party’s struggles confronting America’s racist past aren’t new, but its handling of the current racial issues threatens to portray Republicans as tone-deaf and out of touch with the electorate as public opinion shifts dramatically over how police treat African Americans.
That shift is underscored by the number of U.S. corporations and entities like the NFL now showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement. NASCAR even banned people from flying the Confederate flag at its events.
A Washington Post-Schar School poll released last week found that nearly 70 percent of Americans believe Floyd’s killing represented a systemic problem in policing. And nearly 75 percent said they were supportive of the protests that have sprung up in cities across the nation in response to Floyd’s death after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.
The GOP’s scattered response to the racial crisis has been complicated by the actions and words of the man who will be atop the ticket in November. Indeed, President Trump, now facing a steep climb to winning a second term, has appeared in recent weeks more interested in fanning the flames of a 2020 culture war than tamping them down.
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