Shaun King

Shaun King
3h602 h15ihrt0gp50uluma7rsed1 ·
I am the Executive Director for two organizations, Grassroots Law and Real Justice, that have been working around the clock for 5+ years now. I’m so proud of our work and of our staff. ⁣
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➡️ Let me explain some safeguards that we have in place that help not only protect me, but protect the organizations, from the even the appearance of financial malfeasance.⁣
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It’s pretty harsh, but we went overboard because of the scrutiny I’m under.⁣
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1. I don’t have debit or credit cards from either organization.⁣
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2. I don’t have checks or check writing privileges from either organization. ⁣
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3. I don’t have the usernames or passwords to our bank accounts or any financial accounts.⁣
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4. I don’t sign off on requisitions. A reputable and experienced finance manager does this. ⁣
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5. I don’t have the power to approve purchases. Even small purchases anyone, including me, wants to make have to get approved independently. ⁣
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6. Anything above $5,000 has to have board approval. Our board is super serious and very experienced. Even smaller purchases sometimes flag something and then require board approval. ⁣
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7. We have a Human Resources expert that monitors and advises us. ⁣
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8. We submit QUARTERLY public reports to the FEC. And have done so for 5 years straight. That’s 20+ financial reports. ⁣
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9. Our board says no. While the members of our board respect me, I told them independently that I would NEVER take any decision they made to decline something I was advocating for, personally. And they know I mean it. They are there to protect me and to protect the organization and protect the work we do. ⁣
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10. We have legal experts on retainer that monitor virtually every decision we make to make sure that it’s not just ethical, but fully compliant.⁣
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🚨 11. I’ve surrounded myself with people that are frankly smarter than I am. More experienced. More knowledge. I don’t think of life like this, but I am rarely the smartest person in the rooms I’m in. ⁣
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And let me be clear: I WANT IT THIS WAY. ⁣
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I’m surrounded by smart people that have already been where I’m going and have already tried what I’m trying. ⁣
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This is key. And they are brutally honest with me and each other.⁣

The "Prison TikTok" Movement is the Newest Trend for Formerly and Currently Incarcerated People to Tell Stories of Redemption and the Horrors of Incarceration.
A recent report by The Marshall Project and NBC News uncovers the benefits and biases of the incarcerated community's use of the social media titan.

Donney Rose
54 min ago
36

Image credit: NBC News

TikTok is arguably the most influential social media platform out of all the digital juggernauts, amassing over 1 billion users per month, and serving as the cultural hub for some of the internet’s biggest viral moments and trends in recent years. What began as a short-video app that primarily attracted teen and young adult users, has exploded into a digital space where users of all ages and identity types share everything from cooking tips to the latest dances to fashion advice and more.

And much like its equally large social predecessors - Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, TikTok’s audience has grown into a platform where users seek to amplify social messages that are often minimized or flat out dismissed in traditional media. TikTok accounts are segmented into thousands of categories where videos showcasing a wide spectrum of topics and interests can be discovered. One subset of the platform that is rapidly growing in popularity is content created by the formerly and currently incarcerated.

The Marshall Project and NBC News recently collaborated to cover the trending social dynamic known as #PrisonTikTok. The content is serving various purposes for its creators depending on which end of the incarceration spectrum they exist. For the formerly incarcerated, TikTok is being used as a platform to tell their stories about their experiences while imprisoned and to humanize their efforts at getting reacclimated to society. For the currently incarcerated, who are creating content on TikTok using contraband mobile devices, their objective is primarily to show the inhumane conditions they are often subjected to while serving time, giving viewers real-time accounts of the horrors of mass incarceration.

But as with all things relative to the criminal justice system, mass incarceration and race, there is a disparity in what voices/stories are amplified via #PrisonTikTok content. An overwhelming majority of the content that goes viral, specifically regarding currently incarcerated people, are the posts of white creators - which has less to do with their stories being more heartwrenching or interesting, and more to do with how algorithms play into whose voice spreads the furthest.

Twitter avatar for @TalkPoverty
TalkPoverty.org
@TalkPoverty
Prison Tik Tok is lively, informative, and educational.

Most of the creators going viral for posting about their experiences, however, are white.

Out of Prison, TikTok Influencers Are Reshaping How We Think About Life Behind Bars
But a dearth of content creators of color raises questions about the app’s algorithm.
themarshallproject.org
April 8th 2022

1 Retweet1 Like

Per The Marshall Project and NBC News report, the demographics represented in posts that go viral by currently incarcerated people “are almost the opposite of post-prison TikTok.” Meaning that Black TikTok users like Michael Lacey, who has amassed millions of views on his content since being released, are having their stories amplified after enduring inhumane treatment that synonymous with prison culture for incarcerated people of color, while several white and currently incarcerated folks are benefitting from empathy in real-time, and are less likely to hide their identity while creating content.

The #PrisonTikTok movement is not the first time the social media giant has been scrutinized for an imbalance in the ways its algorithms favor white creators over creators of color, or for its practice of shadow-banning content from Black creators. In 2020 Black TikTok creators expressed outrage over having Black Lives Matter content suppressed amid the uprisings of the summer of 2020. There has also been lots of commentary around Black TikTok creators earning considerably less through ad-sponsored content than their white counterparts, despite leading many of the trends on the platform that white creators go on to emulate.

Twitter avatar for @lynymo
MY NAME IS
@lynymo
@RenateARose it’s so annoying because people spend all day gaslighting the black creators as if they are exaggerated or making things up. It’s not a coincidence or a random happening that ALL of the top Black tiktok creators are paid significantly less than the top yt creators.
February 28th 2021

4 Likes
Hopefully, the attention garnered by #PrisonTikTok leads to expanded conversations around the failings of mass incarceration and spark policy change efforts that champion restorative justice over punitive justice. In the best-case scenario, the trend will not continue to solely focus on the inhumane treatment of currently incarcerated white folks, and the survival stories of Black and Brown folks who made it out. If the amplification of these stories and posts is to be equitable, then TikTok has to do everything in its power to ensure that the real-time cries of injustice levied against people of color are in a position to trend/reach the same level of virality as feel-good life-after-lockdown posts.

I trust that they know how to manipulate the algorithms if they want to.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Donney Rose is a Writer, Educator, Organizer and Chief Content Editor at The North Star

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I want to talk to you about the kid you see here.⁣
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That’s me. 1999.⁣
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Student Government President at Morehouse College.⁣
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I was 19. The first teenager and youngest student body President in over 50 years.⁣
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After so much therapy over this past year, it actually hurts me a little bit to see myself in this image.⁣
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4 years earlier in Versailles, Kentucky I was beaten to a pulp by a mob of racist white students at my high school. I ended up missing most of high school in 1995-1996 after 3 spinal surgeries and fractures to my face and ribs.⁣
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My childhood, as you can imagine, ended very abruptly.⁣
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As did most of my joy.⁣
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The surgeries and recovery were brutal.⁣
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I was diagnosed with PTSD.⁣
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And had to scratch and claw my way out of high school and into Morehouse, which became a refuge for me. A hospital for my heart and soul. An incubator.⁣
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But when I arrived at Morehouse in August of 1997, still just 17, I realize now that what I wore as seriousness and strength, in so many ways, was really just trauma.⁣
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I rarely smiled.⁣
Rarely laughed.⁣
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I knew other brothers just like this at Morehouse. And what I’ve come to understand now, nearly 25 years later, is that many of them, like my dear brother @LeeMerrittESQ, who matched me pound for pound with seriousness, had just escaped his own trauma growing up in South Central Los Angeles with a family immersed deep into the Rollin’ 60s Crips. He barely escaped it. It’s a miracle really.⁣
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So when we got to Morehouse, we had our guard up, and as a way of even showing our toughness or resolve, we translated that to a steely seriousness. ⁣
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I was already dating @MrsRaiKing from high school, but she was 2 years behind me, so for 2 years, in the land of beautiful Black women from Spelman, CAU, and Morris Brown, I wore this face and glare, to keep anybody that even thought of getting close to me at bay.⁣
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And then basically threw my entire life into fighting against injustice - locally in Atlanta, even on campus, and nationally with the brutal lynching of James Byrd in Texas and the murder of Amazon Diallo by the NYPD.⁣
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I don’t regret being so serious so young, but now I understand that it was a survival strategy for me.

Art Imitates...White Privilege
A new stage play exploring the world of white privilege forces its' audience to reflect on the dangerous role this privilege plays and how it can so easily lean into the institution of white supremacy

Kendi King
Apr 10

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Photo: Kelly Marshall
“Ideally, the system is not the person. But the critique of a system must feel like a critique of the people” - Claudia Rankine, Help.

Last night, I saw a stage play, written by a brilliant Black woman, an established poet and playwright. Claudia Ranikes’ Help centers around a Black woman’s experience in the white corporate world and, ultimately, in the white-dominated world that is the United States.

I was thrilled to be back in the theater thrilled to be seeing the work of such a prophetic Black artist. Excited to witness a piece of work that looked at issues of race through a creative lens, and to experience this with other Black audience members.

Upon arriving at the theater, I was quickly reminded of a truth I’d forgotten in the time the pandemic kept most venues closed - the world of theater is exceptionally old and white. I could count on my fingers the number of fellow Black audience members.

Help is a show about white privilege. Its primary focus is an observation of the ways this privilege presents itself in everyday life. It pulls no punches in exploring how Black people are more aware of white privilege than white people themselves - how we have to be. It calls out the dangers of white privilege, how easily it lends itself to the establishment of white supremacy, and perhaps most strikingly, how white men especially have gotten very skilled at gaslighting people of color into disproving the existence of said privilege.

It’s a hell of a show to see, especially as a little Black girl surrounded by old white people.

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I took my seat and buckled in for what was sure to be an interesting ride.

“Some white people just work so hard to get where they are, they find it impossible to fathom that a Black person had to work harder than them to get the same thing” - Alrick Brown, Filmmaker.

The release of this play feels almost like divine timing, as issues of white privilege are being brought to light across all fronts. It was announced yesterday that two more Black coaches have joined Brian Flores in the discrimination lawsuit filed against the NFL. The main claim of the federal class action litigation stems from the hiring and promotion of white men to positions of high status and pay, over the promotion of Black and Brown men with equal if not more qualifications.

It was recently revealed that Wells Fargo, a banking company whose success is widely known to have benefited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade, rejected more than half of its Black loan applicants. According to an analysis of federal mortgage data by Bloomberg News, “...only 47% of Black homeowners who completed a refinance application with Wells Fargo in 2020 were approved, compared with 72% of White homeowners”. Even the most qualified Black applicants were denied loans for houses in neighborhoods mostly populated by people of color.

There has been a major shift in the fight for racial equity from having to convince white people that racism does in fact still exists (the argument of “but isn’t slavery over?” hardly ever holds up anymore) - to now having to convince them to understand the role racism plays in modern society.

Yet to acknowledge that, to truly acknowledge white privilege in all its facets, takes far more than simply condemning the hate crimes and police killings perpetrated against Black people on a daily basis - and that’s something many still struggle to do anyways.

Contrary to popular belief, bigots are not the sole proprietors of privilege, as white privilege benefits even the most liberal of white people receive who equally are not willing to give it up.

“If the cost of my way of living is your life, that’s none of my concern” - Claudia Rankine, Help.

If I was white in America, I’m sure I wouldn’t want to give up the ease that comes with anything either. To not have to constantly wonder what factor your race plays into every professional conversation, casual interaction, or glance exchanged in the store - who would forfeit such a thing?

I get it, white people, about as much as I can possibly understand.

Still, I am asking you to give it up. To recognize where your privileges play a role, and where it can be utilized to uplift someone who does not have it.

And by the time the 90-minute production of Help had ended, me and the handful of other POC understood laughed at jokes that only we could truly understand, and watched the faces of the white people around me to see if they were soaking up any of the truths being spoken about themselves to them - I came to a conclusion:

The only way to de-weaponize white privilege is for its beneficiaries to turn away their benefits until the playing ground is a level one.

I also concluded that many, perhaps even most white people, are unwilling to even admit that a such thing as white privilege really exists. And as the cast of the show took their bows, and the nearly all-white audience beamed and roared with applause, I wondered if they knew what the show was even about.

I wondered if they knew it was entirely about them.

Shaun King
f2ucm1f04on01o77 hrremsdg ·
Last week police in Grand Rapids, Michigan shot and killed a young Black man named Patrick Lyoya - a Congolese immigrant and father of 2 young girls.
Both the family and a local county commissioner who saw the body camera footage have said that police put a gun to the back of Patrick's head and shot and killed him execution-style. I believe them.
Of course, police and prosecutors are stalling by refusing to release the footage, refusing to name the officer, and giving that officer and others time to scrub their social media history, and get their lies together. It's despicable.
I think this is going to be case that is going to shake the nation.
Listen to The Breakdown with Shaun King here: https://smarturl.it/tnsthebreakdown

517-334-0054⁣
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Need y’all to do me a favor RIGHT NOW, OK?⁣
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Call that number.⁣
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And save it on your phone as Patrick Lyoya.⁣
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And let them know that you are DEMANDING that they:⁣
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1. Fire the cop that executed Patrick by shooting him in the back of the head. ⁣
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2. That the DA charge the cop that killed him or immediately step down and appoint a special prosecutor. ⁣
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Let’s GO!⁣
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📲 517-334-0054⁣
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We will talk you through it!

It’s Always Felt Like the World Was Ending and Other Lessons I Learned From Spike Lee

When faced with such inexplicable violence in such close proximity at a time when inexplicable violence seems to exist around every corner, from the war that continues to rage in Ukraine, to the consistent brutalization of Black and Brown people at the hands of American law enforcement - it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the world is ending. And by that, I do not mean a literal end to planet Earth, (which climate change is sure to bring anyways).

I mean an end to our way of life as we know it.

In the aftermath of all this violence, I cannot help but feel on the brink of something great and terrible - great in the sense of the toll of terror it will take.

It all feels like the precipice to a civil war of some sort, like a breaking point. Yet when Spike Lee, one of the most established and influential filmmakers of all time and Professor at NYU Film School, my college, talked about New York City in the summer of 1977 - he expressed a similar sentiment.

In his ‘99 film Summer of Sam, Spike Lee paints the picture of an Italian-American community in the Bronx in the summer of 1977 - one of the hottest summers in the city’s history, the summer of NYC’s infamous blackout. That summer a serial killer who called himself the Son of Sam murdered six young people and wounded seven, mostly targeting young white brunettes in the Bronx and Queens. So while the city experienced brutal heatwaves, with Black and Latine people on the tail end of a Martin Luther King-era Civil Rights movement suffering the worst of it, a serial killer roamed the streets for the seasons' entirety.

The terror we felt for one day as the subway shooter roamed the streets, the people of New York City withstood for the entire summer of 1977.

As the film came to an end, Professor Spike Lee gave us all the cover of the New York Daily News from that morning, and from the morning the Son of Sam was caught. He told us all what it felt like to live in such a saturated moment in time, how he captured the riots that followed the blackout on a super 8 camera and the ways in which his memory influenced the film we’d just seen. He urged us to imagine what that level of prolonged anxiety does to a city -to its people.

This is not to invalidate the feelings of impending doom my generation, Gen Z, has had to wrestle with our entire lives. The burden of growing up with the 24-hour news cycle is real, and the toll the creation. and rapid expansion of the internet and social media have taken on our generation and younger is undeniable.

I took my Professor's lesson to serve as a sort of comfort that we are not isolated in these often isolating feelings.

Generations that came before us have felt the impending breaking points of civil war, segregation, the building up and tearing down of Jim Crow laws, the assassination of Malcolm & Martin & Medgar, and anyone else who dared step out of line in the name of injustice.

None of that came from nowhere.

The tension had to build, and the people had to feel it.

We are feeling it now.

Kendi is currently a student at New York University and is the author of multiple award-winning poems, short stories, stage, and screenplays.

Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose stolen cells have revolutionized medical research since she died of cervical cancer in 1951; Image via The Guardian
Medical racism is defined as the systematic and widespread racism against people of color within the medical system. For Black Americans, racism in the field of medicine looks like disparities in healthcare coverage, healthcare workers holding biases against BIPOC patients, misdiagnoses, perceived ability to withstand higher levels of pain, less healthy outcomes and shorter life spans.

It is also largely rooted in experimentation on non-consenting Black bodies in the name of advancing science or for the greater good. The history of Black bodies being utilized as guinea pigs in American medicine dates back to slavery and has persisted throughout the generations. Research labs, pharmaceutical companies and other players in the field of medicine have amassed billions of dollars at the expense of Black bodies functioning as test subjects. A large contributing factor to the dehumanization of Black folks in this country is based on how cavalier scientists, researchers and medical doctors have been, historically, when it comes to either trying things out, stealing genetic information, ignoring the severity of a condition, or flat-out giving Black people inaccurate information as it pertains to our physical well-being.

Black folks did not just develop a healthy mistrust of the American healthcare industry because we wanted to walk around skeptical of healthcare providers. Our ingrained cultural paranoia is the response to generations of watching our loved ones suffer or die on account of medical racism, while other folks have benefitted from healing/restoration after scientists were able to produce treatments thanks to the sacrifice of our ancestors.

One of the biggest examples of a medical misfortune endured by a Black patient, and subsequently used as a cash cow for a biotechnology company, is the story of Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of five who died from cervical cancer in 1951, and would later have her cells exploited by Thermo Fisher Scientific (TFS), a biotech company that has made significant medical advancements, and millions of dollars off of Ms. Lacks’ cells without the consent of her family or estate.

In 2019, a bill sponsored by the late U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings called the Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act of 2019 passed unanimously in the House and the Senate. The language of the legislation acknowledges the wrongdoing, stating that “For more than 20 years, the advances made possible by Henrietta Lacks' cells were without her or her family's consent, and the revenues they generated were not known to or shared with her family.” The Lacks family has a current lawsuit filed against TFS that calls the company out for “unjustly enriching” itself off of Ms. Lacks’ stolen cells. TFS has called for a time-barred dismissal of the lawsuit claiming that the statute of limitations has run out on the Lacks family/estate.

Recently The North Star had the opportunity to speak with Boaz Cohon, a Senior Strategist at Rebuttal PR, a strategic communications firm that specializes in high-stakes litigation, that is working with the Lacks family attorneys, Benjamin Crump and Christopher Seeger, as they are in pursuit of financial justice from TFS and to ensure that companies of the sort do not engage in this type of for-profit genetic theft in the future. Throughout our conversation, it was also revealed that six Democratic that co-sponsored the Henrietta Lacks Act also have reportedly received funding from TFS during the 2022 election cycle, bringing into question the hypocrisy of these elected officials and the legitimacy of the legislation itself.

“(The lawsuit) was filed in 2021 and the impetus for it being filed has more to do with just lawyers who aren't trying to exploit the Lacks family, but just to seek justice for them,” Cohon stated. “Being willing to take on a big threatening corporation, like Thermo Fisher.”

According to Cohon, the Lacks family had previously been victimized by predatory lawyers seeking to build up their profile as opposed to getting restitution for the family, the combination of Seeger, and Crump, a renowned civil rights attorney, is helping the family chart a new path towards justice.

“I think that the family finally linked up with the right people who can hopefully get them some semblance of what they deserve,” Cohon said.

Cohon informed The North Star that the six politicians, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH), Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY), Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-NY), and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), that co-sponsored the Lacks Act and were alleged to have received campaign contributions from Thermo Fisher, have not been called out on their hypocrisy for receiving funding from the same company that stole and profited from Ms. Lacks’ cells. He also did not definitively say that they knowingly accepted money from the very company that prompted the legislation in the first place.

“It’s definitely possible that they know. It’s possible that they don’t know. It’s possible that they’re just ignorant of who they’re getting money from. But the truth is whatever of those scenarios is the case, it doesn't matter from a perspective of whether they're acting ethically and whether they're acting hypocritically.”

Nevertheless, the lawsuit against TFS is still in litigation, despite the corporation’s best wishes that it disappears. In October 2021, The John Hopkins newsletter published an article titled “An apology is long overdue. Hopkins must do more for the Lacks family,” as it was at the Hopkins Hospital in 1951 where doctors harvested Ms. Lacks’ cells without her consent, the same “HeLa” cells that would ultimately be in the possession of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

For the past seven decades, a family has fought for some semblance of justice from the medical industry. Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal cells” have allowed for extraordinary scientific breakthroughs, including being a vital component in the development of the polio vaccine, but they were never supposed to be harvested by Hopkins Hospital without her consent, and certainly not be a revenue driver for TFS while they intentionally did not profit-share with her family.

We will continue to follow the developments in this story, as we advocate for Black Americans to be the recipients of better medical practices and to have autonomy over what, if any, offerings our bodies choose to donate or sell towards the advancement of modern medicine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Donney Rose is a Writer, Educator, Organizer and Chief Content Editor at The North Star

Shaun King

Before I started writing my upcoming memoir, a writing coach implored me to make a very difficult decision that most writers simply don't make. And I understand why...
I decided that I was going to tell the whole truth about my life - good and bad, high and low, successes and failures, funny and traumatic, and everything in between. And be brutally transparent.
Most memoirs don't do this, but the BEST ones do. And when you decide to tell it all, you then have to open old wounds, open some doors that you closed, and be prepared to be judged by the whole world for it.
It's not an easy decision. Not at all.
But I am writing Lemons and Stones (the name of my memoir) to not only tell you my story, but to help you better understand your own. I am weaving into this text lessons that were so hard-earned for me that I think will really help transform your life. That's my hope at least.
And I've broken out on my own to make this an independent book because I felt it was the best way to make sure that nothing I have to say gets censored or watered down.

Shaun King
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Let me be clear on something. ⁣
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THAT IS OUR MONEY THEY ARE SPENDING.⁣
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It’s not their money. It’s OURS.⁣
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And what I know is that they CLEARLY find money for whatever the hell they value. ⁣
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Israel is one of the richest countries in the world. They don’t need a DIME from the United States, but we send them BILLIONS. It’s STUPID.⁣
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Now Ukraine. ⁣
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Biden can’t find money to wipe out student loan debt. But keeps finding BILLIONS for Ukraine from somewhere. ⁣
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No money for universal healthcare like the WHOLE WORLD HAS. ⁣
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But has money for war and weapons. ⁣
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It’s gross.

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The Breakdown with Shaun King
A lot of people are incorrectly framing Elon Musk purchasing Twitter as being left versus right. I strongly disagree. This is about the richest man in the world, who was born into Apartheid and raised by a white nationalist, wanting to be sure that powerful white men can say whatever they want - about whoever they want - without consequence.
Listen here: https://smarturl.it/tnsthebreakdown

From time to time I have to remind the world who I am and what I’ve been through.⁣
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That’s me. ⁣
400 stitches to my face.⁣
Teeth shattered.⁣
Eyelid sewn back on.⁣
Eyes swollen shut.⁣
Bottom lip sewn back on.⁣
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Before you ever knew me, before social media even existed, I had been to hell and back multiple times. ⁣
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As a 14 year old I was shot at at close range and narrowly escaped with my life.⁣
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At 15 I was beaten so badly by a group of racist white students that I missed the next 2 years of high school recovering from 3 spinal surgeries.⁣
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I had white students spit on me.⁣
Throw a jar of tobacco spit in my face.⁣
Try to run me over with pickup trucks.⁣
Tear up my mother’s yard with trucks.⁣
Call me every name imaginable. ⁣
Threaten to kill me. ⁣
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That was before I turned 16. ⁣
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I lost half of my closest childhood friends to drugs, violence, and prison. ⁣
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And out of ALL OF THAT, I scratched and clawed through physical therapy and counseling for PTSD to escape that trauma and enter Morehouse College. ⁣
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In 1997 I became a licensed minister and traveled the country teaching and preaching as a 17 year old.⁣
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In 1997 I was dorm President at Morehouse.⁣
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In 1998-1999 I was one of the most known student activists in America fighting for justice for James Byrd and Amadou Diallo.⁣
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In 1999 I became the youngest Student Government President ever elected at Morehouse.⁣
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That’s 23 years ago. ⁣
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In 2001 I married my high school sweetheart @MrsRaiKing and we had our first baby. ⁣
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I’ve been with ONE WOMAN my entire adult life. We’ve been together for 25 years. ⁣
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I’ve been faithful for 25 years.⁣
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I’ve raised my 3 biological kids.⁣
And we’ve adopted 2 nieces.⁣
And raised many more. ⁣
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We are putting 2 kids through college.⁣
And have kids in elementary, middle, and high school. ⁣
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I’ve sold patents for inventions.⁣
I’ve started and sold 3 businesses. ⁣
I’ve written a New York Times Bestselling book. ⁣
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I don’t have a boss and am a free Black man. ⁣
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I’ve helped to elect over 100 leaders across the country. ⁣
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I’ve helped over 500 families impacted by police violence. ⁣
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I sleep good at night. ⁣
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I love myself and my family and my people and God.⁣

Shaun King is in Los Angeles, California.
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Somebody asked me today how it feels to have hundreds of thousands people saying cruel things about you at the same time online. ⁣
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It’s a generally terrible feeling but I have grown to understand a key point that helps me see my way through it. ⁣
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These people saying horrible things about me, don’t actually me. Have never even been in the same room with me. So it’s hard for me for to value or quantify the hate of strangers.⁣
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But let me tell you who knows me. And whose opinion I value. ⁣
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➡️ Ask them about me. ⁣
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Ask the family of Malcolm X about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Amadou Diallo about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Oscar Grant about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Trayvon Martin about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Eric Garner about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Mike Brown about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Philando Castile about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Monroe Bird about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Alton Sterling about me.⁣
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Ask the family of EJ Bradford about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Terence Crutcher about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Botham Jean about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Stephon Clark about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Nate Woods about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Rodney Reed about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Antwon Rose about me.⁣
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Ask the family of DeAndre Harris about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Jemel Roberson about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Ahmaud Arbery about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Breonna Taylor about me.⁣
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Ask the family of George Floyd about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Marvin Guy about me.⁣
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Ask the family of Fanta Bility about me.⁣
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I could go on. I’ve forgotten so many names in this moment. ⁣
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Ask the people of Standing Rock about me.⁣
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Ask Michael Thompson about me. ⁣
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Ask Bernie Sanders about me. ⁣
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Ask District Attorneys I’ve helped elect in 25 American cities about me.⁣
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Ask the HUNDREDS of men and women those DA’s have exonerated about me. ⁣
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I didn’t even mention a single celebrity.⁣
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I’m talking about people I’ve given my WHOLE LIFE to love and guide and support. ⁣
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Listen - my reputation on Twitter might be in the DIRT, but my reputation on these streets, my reputation in the homes of the oppressed, my reputation among families fighting for justice is GOLDEN.

Shaun King



😅😅😅😅⁣
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1. Glad to know how much I mean to these sorry motherfuckers.⁣
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2. Didn’t delete my account. They literally made that up. I was getting so many death threats and hack attempts from his cousins who stormed the Capitol that I had to take some steps to make my account more secure.

Shaun King
·
#1 trend in the world. ⁣
⁣
Not Elon Musk.⁣
Not Ukraine. ⁣
⁣
Me. ⁣
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It’s stupid really. ⁣
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It’s mainly people saying ugly stuff about me because I dared ti challenge the richest man in the world on what he plans to do with the biggest flow of information in the world. ⁣
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But what it shows me is something else. ⁣
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I’m a threat. ⁣
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And when I speak truth to power, it interrupts the whole world. ⁣
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I’ve tried my whole life to have the courage to say hard things about racism, bigotry, corruption, and greed. It’s cost me a lot. And my it has cost my family a lot. ⁣
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I just hope it makes a difference.

Came outside to the sun in the backyard to rest my mind, body, and soul. ⁣
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Brought the dogs out here with me and they come up to check on me like they know something is wrong. ⁣
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I’m terrible at not working. ⁣
Not helping. ⁣
Not advocating. ⁣
⁣
In just these 24 hours that I’ve been recovering from surgery I’ve had about 150 people and family and organizations request assistance.⁣
⁣
But I know this is a marathon. ⁣
And that if I’m not well I won’t be of any use to my family or anyone else. ⁣
⁣
I am not ashamed to say that it would truly help me right now if you would consider pre-ordering my upcoming autobiography, Lemons and Stones. ⁣

Shaun King ·
I can't quite explain to you how it feels to be publicly and widely accused of something that you did not do. Regularly, well-meaning people tell me to ignore it, or to shake it off, but it's just not that easy.
False accusations spread like a virus.
They impact my family in countless ways.
They impact the organizations and companies that I manage. They impact the donors and supporters that I've spent a lifetime cultivating.
They impact my livelihood and ability to provide.
They impact my credibility.
They impact my name.
They impact opportunities.
They impact my ability to help families in need.
For most of my adult life I've fought hard to help exonerate people, primarily Black men, who were wrongly convicted for crimes they didn't commit. And time after time they've told me one of the hardest things they had to hold, was the thought that the world, sometimes even their own family or friends or neighbors, actually thought they were guilty of the things they were accused of.
A dear brother I've grown to know and love who was framed by the Philadelphia Police, was convicted as a young man for raping and murdering an old woman that he didn't even know and zero physical encounters with. For 25 years in prison he had to wear that shameful crime he didn't commit around his neck. Can you imagine?
This week, on 2 different occasions, I've been publicly accused of completely false BS. And it spread like wildfire. Still spreading.
And both accusations are 100% false.
I can file those in a pile of about 25 different lies people have told about me over the years. And no matter what I say or do, they simply continue to float out there.
Now what I know, is that that's the purpose - to discredit me.
To keep people from working with me and supporting me.
To cause me harm and trouble and stress and to weaken my work and lessen my impact.
But it's just not right.
Social media allows complete fabrications to spread like wildfire and does nothing to intervene or correct them.
In many nations, it's illegal to spread falsehoods like this, but in the US, because I am a public figure, it's almost as if I don't have any rights whatsoever to defend myself legally.
It's extremely frustrating.
Cardi B set some encouraging recent precedent by winning her lawsuit against someone who spread complete falsehoods about her - and I am hoping that I can go that route as well.
Just sharing my heart here.
Love and appreciate you all.
Shaun King

I’m about to confess something. ⁣
This country backed me into a corner. At first I hated it. Now I’m glad to be in the corner.
Let me explain…
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3-4 years ago, I had mainstream aspirations. I believed in my heart that I could be a crossover leader that was widely accepted. I thought about politics and was asked to consider running for office. ⁣
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In some ways I was on that path. ⁣
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I traveled and spoke and organized in 47 states - more than any other leader in the country.⁣
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I spoke at Facebook and Google and Spotify.⁣
I spoke at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.⁣
I spoke at nearly 200 colleges and universities.⁣
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I won awards from Rihanna and the family of Malcolm X. ⁣
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I privately advised some of the biggest stars and athletes in the world. ⁣
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I wrote a New York Times Bestseller.⁣
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Bernie Sanders asked me to introduce him at his campaign kickoff in front of 15,000 people in Brooklyn and again at his kickoff in Vermont.⁣
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But slowly, something started to happen.⁣
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People started to spread flat out lies about me saying:⁣
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1. I stole from families I raised money for - one of the grossest things anyone could ever do. Doing so would be a state and federal crime. And it’s a complete fabrication. ⁣
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2. Saying I’m lying about my race. Something I’ve never done a day in my life. Ever. ⁣
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3. Saying I plagiarized ideas or articles. Also 100% fiction. It’s literally never happened. Not once.⁣
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4. Saying I vaguely mistreat people, particularly Black women. Which crushed me. I’ve never mistreated a single soul in this movement. Ever. Never raised my voice. Never used a harsh word. Never abused my power. ⁣
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And slowly, if you started to believe one lie about me, the other 3 seemed possible. ⁣
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And the lies were so charged, so genuinely awful, like saying I stole from the family of Tamir Rice, like who the **** would ever do that, that slowly but surely, people stopped supporting me. No matter how many receipts I provided.⁣
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People stopped inviting me to speak. ⁣
I mean 99% of all invitations.⁣
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Last year was my most effective year of organizing in my entire life - but the media erased my role in anything good I did. ⁣
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And about 300,000 people unfollowed me across social media. ⁣
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And just now. ⁣
As in this month. ⁣
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I’ve realized I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
If you are still here, THANK YOU.
Shaun