Protest the Detroit News
If you happen to have thumbed through a copy of our greater city’s “local” daily you’ll come across a story about activists in Detroit and boycotts. The usual characters of Minister Malik Shabazz and the Black Panther Nation and preachers are presented in the story but the difference is what it’s about.
The News story is about a council created to investigate and look into whether or not citizen boycotts are legitimate. The Public Protests Ratings Council founded by Rick Robertson is what the Detroit News decided to cover.
This is the difference between a paper like the Michigan Citizen and the boy’s down the road.
The Citizen is actually covering a boycott and protest on our current front page and the News is covering a council created to question boycotts. Where are the stories about the boycotts and protests? NOT IN THE NEWS. But the same editors who’ve gone along and ignored the news about cops raping Black men, cops killing kids for entering stores, and stores selling meat from two summers ago won’t run a story on that. Protest and other forms of civil disobedience have a long history of being the way those out of power forced those in power to be more human. Remember Rosa Parks?
Rather the News gives much love and ink to a group that demeans citizens’ right to free speech. Boycott is ‘NEWS.’ The audicity to publish a story about a group funded by businesses who’ve been boycotted and to defend the group is foolish.
Protests aren’t about councils they’re about the people. The day we need a board of directors to vote on a boycott is the day Martin Luther King Jr. will curse us all.
