Black Lives Matter tweets and media outlets

BLM protest in Minneapolis

Last updated on March 25th, 2023

The past week has seen numerous protests nationwide sparked by Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd, an unarmed African-American man. This round of Black Lives Matter protests have, in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, seen large numbers of people protesting.

Twitter has seen tons of tweets in support of Black Lives Matter; however, some of them are awkward. Case in point: the San Francisco 49ers’ tweet. The 49ers, of course, happen to be the team Colin Kaepernick played on, and who’s now blacklisted from the NFL for… protesting against police brutality against African-Americans. (*Sigh.*)

Below are some of the more noteworthy tweets by media outlets I’ve seen.

Bookshop.org

Online book seller (and independent bookstore backer) Bookshop.org tweeted a thread listing various Black-owned bookstores:

Many bookstores are still closed due to the pandemic. However, most of the ones listed have a Bookshop page, which provides some help.

Animation and “Big Two” comics

Nickelodeon made two tweets:

That second tweet’s accurate. Nick went off the air for over eight minutes, just scrolling the above message silently.

Disney offered this tweet across its social media outlets, including the Marvel Twitter account:

As others noted, Marvel hasn’t exactly been the most diverse company when it comes to hiring Black creators, editors, etc.

Cartoon Network tweeted a quote by Martin Luther King:

DC Comics offered (as of this writing) two tweets. The first, a quote by Superman from “Action Comics” #775:

The second, a retweet from their bosses at Warner Bros.:

Bryan Stevenson is a social justice activist. Still, like Marvel, DC also has ongoing issues stemming from a less-than-diverse creative and editorial staff.

I’ve also seen some people on Twitter wonder if the Green Lantern Corps should be less “space cops” in tone after all this. However, Big Two superheroes tend to be strongly tied to the police, either by tradition or by nature: Batman and Commissioner Gordon; DC publishing a book about Gotham City’s police department; Barry “The Flash” Allen works for the Central City police department; J’onn J’onzz was a police detective; the Legion of Super-Heroes has the “Science Police”; Superman’s had various ties to the Metropolis police department (Inspector Henderson, Maggie Sawyer, Dan Turpin); and so on.

Sesame Street’s account offers this tweet:

There’s no such tweet so far for PBS Kids’ account. Meanwhile, PBS proper’s account has been heavily tweeting about the protests, Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd for days.

Sports (besides the NFL)

The various major sports leagues have also tweeted in support. Ignoring the (hypocritical) NFL, we’ll start with the NHL. Their Twitter account spent most of Tuesday retweeting statements from the various NHL teams, plus Seattle’s yet-to-exist team. For example, the New Jersey Devils’ statement (update: tweet deleted)

https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/1267251431716855811

Major League Baseball’s main account (as of this writing) didn’t have anything, but the individual teams did; for example, the Seattle Mariners’ account:

Finally, the NBA retweeted (from their related “NBA Cares” account) several tweets from the Atlanta Hawks and New Orleans Pelicans, including this video one:

Conclusion

I’m not sure I have much else to say about George Floyd (and police brutality) that hasn’t been said before. There’s one way American society can fix all this, of course: not allowing the police to kill unarmed Black people without cause. (Among other law enforcement and legal system reforms.) But given the current state of affairs, it’s debatable how long that’ll take to happen.

“Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis” by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Flickr / cropped from original)

Anthony Dean

Anthony Dean is the owner of Diverse Tech Geek and Diverse Media Notes.

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