At the height of the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s, the term “outside agitator” became something of a rallying cry for opponents of equal rights. It was racially loaded, and its main purpose was to demean activists, undermine the legitimacy of their calls for social justice and suggest that these “people” — often epitomized by white, northern youths who boarded buses to travel into the heart of the Jim Crow South — did not represent the true feelings of local residents — Black and white alike. More than a half-century later, a similar phenomenon is playing out, only today, the internet has seemingly flipped the script, allowing the voices of hatred and division from far away to impact our neighbors nearby.
Thanks to social media and the ongoing decimation of any civil protections or behavioral guardrails, hate-spewing keyboard trolls are running amok in cyberspace, causing real-world trouble here in our own community.
Just last week, Jamesport-based nonprofit The Butterfly Effect Project posted a flyer on Facebook, promoting the group’s upcoming, tenth annual Wo/man Empower Wo/men event, which BEP founder and executive director Tijuana Fulford said, “honors all aspects of diverse individuals” who show leadership and a commitment to bettering local communities.
As soon as it went up — literally within minutes — the post, which featured a photo of six Black women, most as young as high school-aged, was hit with a barrage of hate-filled racist and misogynous comments deemed “grotesquely racist and ignorant” by Brookhaven Town Executive Dan Panico.
A few clicks on the commenter profiles revealed that none of them lived anywhere near here. They knew nothing about the organization, its mission or who it supports. They were just trolls displaying their anti-Black racism for all to see. Why? We can only make assumptions.
At the end of a press conference called by the organization to address this latest unprovoked, unwarranted and deeply troubling attack, Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard suggested that the “ignoramuses” might not be so hateful if they had a Butterfly Effect Project to lean on themselves.
The sad reality is we may never know if these hate mongers are real or bots, nor can we truly measure how widespread the vitriol is, as far too many of these attacks go unreported — often out of fear of real-world reprisals.
What we do know, and witnessed with our own eyes and ears at the press conference Friday, is that the pain inflicted is real, and that, even when directly targeted, the butterflies and dragonflies of BEP won’t cower to hate. Like the civil rights leaders of generations past, they are prepared to go a step further and confront the hatred with compassion.
“My mother has educated me on ‘the Black talk’ when it comes to how Black kids are getting treated in society and what is put up against us,” said Alexandria Fulford, Ms. Fulford’s daughter and one of the young women pictured on the flyer. “It’s always going to be a struggle, but you always have to educate the uneducated and I’m never going to stoop low, and I will always rise above it and never let it tear me down. Because although my color is my testimony, it is not my oath.”
The aspiring civil rights attorney continued, “I don’t wish no hate on the people in the comments, and I don’t wish on nobody’s downfall. But what I do wish is that for once in our country, the division stops and the fighting stops.”
Like the town officials, other local media organizations and supporters who showed up Friday, Ms. Fulford, we are behind you, 100%.