Monday, August 6, 2018

NCCPR in Youth Today: After anonymous child abuse reporting Is “weaponized” to attack family of #BlackLivesMatter activist, congressional candidate asks “What’s going on?” Here’s the answer.

When she first learned that journalist and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King and his family were being harassed by a troll who had called in a false report of child abuse, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was outraged. She is the activist and champion of the poor and working class who was catapulted to national prominence when she won an upset victory in a Democratic congressional primary in New York City.
But even with all her experience as a progressive organizer and activist, she was shocked by how child protective services agencies work.
“This is wrong,” she tweeted. “Shaun is an activist that has been targeted in the past. Anonymous claims should be thoroughly vetted before exposing his children + family to a potentially damaging experience.”
And then she added a question: “What’s going on here?”
What’s going on here? Business as usual, that’s what’s going on here. The only part that’s unusual is that this is one of those rare occasions when child protective services targeted a family with the resources to fight back (not to mention more than one million followers on Twitter).