Social Media & The Political Revolution
"I am coming down from the mountaintop to tell every young person that is poor and working class, and has been told regardless of the color of your skin that you don't belong, don't listen to them. They don't even know how they got at those seats.” — Michelle Obama
Growing up I was never shielded from the worlds’ violence and negativity. However, being surrounded in a hispanic community for most of my life, it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized the uphill battle people of color had to trek in order to be in the same position as our other colleagues.
Change is at everyone’s fingertips. The Stoneman Douglas student survivors took to Twitter earlier this year to go head-to-head with the current President of the United States. The students replied to his insensitive tweets and did not stop there. Twitter opened the gates for opportunity and these students are an excellent example of people seizing the moment. They created the #NeverAgain and #Enough hashtags, organized rallies, speeches, groups, spoke to senators such as Marco Rubio and asked him not to take money from the NRA. They accomplished all these amazing milestones because of the social media platform they had access to.
“A woman working alone is fierce. A group of women working together is a force.” Women from around the world came together to fight for equality in the work place and express their stories against sexual abuse. It began with one activist and her hashtag #MeToo, which gained traction once Alyssa Milano tweeted out the hashtag. Brave women joined forces and continued to speak out against their abusers through social media and other media outlets such as the news and TIME magazine. The #MeToo campaign had branched into the #TimesUp movement. The permanent cultural shift had begun and high-profile men were knocked off their thrones. Women from an array of positions were given a voice and began fighting for equality in the workplace.
The LoveWins hashtag gained momentum on the day the Supreme Court made the decision to legalize Gay Marriage. Everyone from the President Obama to celebrities were tweeting out their love and support for the groundbreaking decision. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook showed their support by releasing rainbow emojis, rainbow location tags and rainbow profile pictures. The positive support of the ruling flooded all social media platforms from around the world. This hashtag brought the world together and placed a positive spotlight over the LGBT community. They fought extremely hard to gain the fundamental rights of a human being and finally had their moment to shine. Social media can and should be used to spread love and positivity and on this day the world broke the internet.
In a world where bots, trolls, memes and gifs are constantly circulating social media platforms it is amazing to witness people who use their platforms for change and positivity. People are continuosly fighting for equality for all, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, and defunding the police. The world is changing and although the current administration uses these platforms to tweet hatred, we thankfully have people in this world who are fighting for humanity and ready to make a permanent positive change in the world with the help of social media.
