This morning when I woke up, I refreshed the top window on Google Chrome. It was the blog for the Supreme Court of the United States and I was hoping to see some good news about the fate of Troy Davis. As all of you should know, at 11:08 pm, Mr. Davis was executed by lethal injection…I had work at 3:45 am, so I had gone to sleep around 10 pm.
I would love to say that I am proud of my generation for our eagerness to obtain information and come together to rally behind Troy Davis, but I’m not. In fact, I’m upset with us.
Protestors standing with the image of Troy Davis' face to showcase their message, "I am Troy Davis."
I remember reading someone saying on Twitter that they wanted to know what we could do to make Troy Davis the “#1 trending topic” on the social networking website. When I said something questioning the impact that it would have, a friend of mine responded. He told me to “remember the revolution in Egypt & Iran” and to not “underestimate the power of social medias.” While I can understand where he was coming from, I had to disagree.
The reason the revolutions in Egypt and Iran were successful was not due to social networking, rather it was from people actually stepping out to be heard. Sure, some of the pivotal events were publicized online, but it wasn’t just talk, there was action. In fact, if you do a little digging and go to different news sources, you’d see that the revolution (which is still going on) had more to do with actual work in those countries rather than our valiant efforts to raise awareness with a singular tweet.
Take Egypt. What was done to really bring about this revolution? Some efforts very similar to the ones that many of our grandparents and great-grandparents used in the civil rights movement. Non-violent civil resistance, marches, acts of civil disobedience–and do you know what the cost was? More than 800 lives…6,000 people injured.
Like I said earlier, some of the success of events that took place can be attributed to the Internet. The efforts of activists such as Asmaa Mahfouz who made videos and posted them to YouTube as well as making a Facebook event for the protest that took place on January 25, 2011, is a perfect example of using social networking sites to make a difference–however I have seen a trend in the United States where we talk about what we would do, but then do nothing, and just as quickly forget that we said we’d do something.
What makes Troy Davis’ death more sickening to me isn’t just the injustice of it all but the worry that it won’t leave the impact that it should. People have tried to say that his name will be remembered around the world, but I doubt that the people who were so strong behind him via Twitter within the past 24 hours will even remember what happened next month.
That is painful and upsetting to me in a way that I can’t even begin to express.
So I beg of you Millennials to do what you can to stay informed about what is happening in our country and overseas. Don’t let Twitter be your main source of news and if it is, at least do half of the work–don’t ask us why something is a trending topic–do the research yourself.
a young black woman. 