Speaker 1: So just a quick heads up. This episode talks about
Speaker 1: police violence. You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from
Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: So if I sound tired or emotional right now, it's
Speaker 1: because I am. I saw something happening online and I
Speaker 1: felt just called to respond. That's how I put it
Speaker 1: to my very patient producer, Tari, who agreed to scrap
Speaker 1: the episode she had all set to publish today so
Speaker 1: that I could. So here's what's going on in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Dante Right, a twenty year old black man, was shot
Speaker 1: and killed by police during a traffic stop, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, this just really got to me. Right was
Speaker 1: initially stopped by police for having expired tags, and the
Speaker 1: stock got confrontational after police spotted an air freshener dangling
Speaker 1: from his rear view mirror, which is a traffic violation
Speaker 1: in the state. Now you might be thinking, why in
Speaker 1: the hell do you need police to have this kind
Speaker 1: of confrontation for something as simple and small as an
Speaker 1: air freshener. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this same
Speaker 1: thing has happened to me multiple times. And if you're black,
Speaker 1: I probably don't need to tell you that these kinds
Speaker 1: of low level traffic stops can turn violent or deadly
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. According to Harvard School of Public Health, black
Speaker 1: people are more than three times likely as white people
Speaker 1: to be killed during a police encounter, and studies have
Speaker 1: also found that black drivers are far more likely to
Speaker 1: be stopped by police than white drivers. So yeah, just
Speaker 1: driving around your own community as a black person can
Speaker 1: be a death sentence. When Dante, who you know, at
Speaker 1: twenty years old is still so young, was being pulled over,
Speaker 1: he initially called his mom for help, and something about
Speaker 1: that just really breaks my heart. In an emotional press
Speaker 1: conference following his death, Dante's mother, Katie Wright, shared her
Speaker 1: heartbreak and it's really hard to listen to and to
Speaker 1: need everyone to know that he was my life. He's
Speaker 1: my son and I can never get that back. Does
Speaker 1: the most stake. The Brooklyn Center of Minnesota police chief
Speaker 1: said that Kim Porter, the police officer who killed Dante,
Speaker 1: meant to use her taser but grabbed her gun instead.
Speaker 1: But if you've ever held a taser and a gun,
Speaker 1: I've held both, you know they feel really different. So
Speaker 1: how does a police union president and a twenty six
Speaker 1: year veteran of the police force, like kim Porter, make
Speaker 1: this kind of quote mistake. Dante's dad is not having it.
Speaker 1: Here's what he had to say on Good Morning America today.
Speaker 1: I cannot accept that I lost my son. He's never
Speaker 1: coming back. I can't accept that a mistake. That's not
Speaker 1: that doesn't even sound right. You know, this officer has
Speaker 1: been on the force for six plus, for twenty six years.
Speaker 1: I can't accept that now that officer kim Porter, she
Speaker 1: resigned this afternoon. But to be clear, this is actually
Speaker 1: a pretty common thing that officers do when they expect
Speaker 1: to be fired, because it can be kind of a
Speaker 1: defensive move to prevent facing further discipline like losing your pension.
Speaker 1: And right now there is absolutely nothing stopping her from
Speaker 1: joining a police force someplace else. And all of this
Speaker 1: is pretty hard to watch, especially when you consider that
Speaker 1: it's happening in Minnesota, just a few short miles away
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis, where the city is currently gripped by a
Speaker 1: trial for officer Derek Chavin for killing George Floyd, another
Speaker 1: unarmed black man whose death sparked a massive global racial
Speaker 1: justice movement this past summer. Y'all. It's just a lot,
Speaker 1: this moment, the black death, all of it. And here's
Speaker 1: where it gets even worse for me, because we can't
Speaker 1: even have this moment without bad actors on social media
Speaker 1: coming in to exploit our pain. This afternoon, when I
Speaker 1: logged into Twitter, I found a handful of big, influential,
Speaker 1: verified far right accounts comparing Dante Right, who was shot
Speaker 1: and killed for just driving his own car, and Ashley Babbitt,
Speaker 1: the white woman who you might remember was shot and
Speaker 1: killed by police while she was pushing her way into
Speaker 1: the capital during the insurrection. On January six, popular conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory podcaster and convicted felon dnish to SUSA tweeted, why
Speaker 1: do we know the name of the cop who killed
Speaker 1: Dante Wright but not the name of the cop who
Speaker 1: killed Ashley Babbitt. These kinds of sentiments were echoed by
Speaker 1: many big far right accounts, so much so that Ashley
Speaker 1: Babbitt's name is currently trending on Twitter right now as
Speaker 1: I record this. Instead of letting a community that's already
Speaker 1: been through so much more in this loss, bad actors
Speaker 1: are trying to seize on the conversation and use it
Speaker 1: to distort and downplay the insurrection. On January six, one
Speaker 1: person tweeted, Ashley Babbitt innocently entered an open capital as
Speaker 1: part of a legitimate protest, a capital purposely left mostly
Speaker 1: unprotected to entice them in. She was unarmed, as we're
Speaker 1: all protesters on that day, an unarmed insurrection. She was
Speaker 1: shot dead for her opinion. Who killed her? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just so much wrong with that statement. And as
Speaker 1: much as I see the worst of what humanity has
Speaker 1: to offer online from following the darkest corners of the
Speaker 1: Internet for this very podcast day in and day out,
Speaker 1: I have to say this just hurt. And this is
Speaker 1: what I mean when I say discourse on social media
Speaker 1: has reached a point where sometimes it seems impossible to
Speaker 1: have any kind of real dialogue, even about things that
Speaker 1: are important or impactful. And it should also just go
Speaker 1: to show how brazen bad actors are on social media. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that anyone deserves to be killed by
Speaker 1: the police, full stop. But to compare Ashley Babbitt, someone
Speaker 1: who was forcing her way into the capital through a
Speaker 1: broken window during a violent and deadly insurrection, and Dante Right,
Speaker 1: someone who was just driving his car, minding his own
Speaker 1: business is so deeply disingenuous that it's insulting. I am insulted.
Speaker 1: We should all be insulted. And peep the way these
Speaker 1: bad actors are trying to use race to further stoked
Speaker 1: this division. They say, the officer who killed Ashley Babbitt
Speaker 1: is a black man, and we know the officer who
Speaker 1: killed Dante Right is a white woman. The Daily Wires
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh tweeted, if everything else was the same, but
Speaker 1: Ashley Babbitt was a liberal black woman and the cop
Speaker 1: who shot her was a white man, there will be
Speaker 1: murals painted in her honor across the country, and that
Speaker 1: cop would be on trial for murder. It's so obvious
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and by now we should recognize this
Speaker 1: as a page right out of the bad actor playbook.
Speaker 1: These people sees on conversations that are already racially or
Speaker 1: politically charged and flatten them out and distort them until
Speaker 1: it seems impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation
Speaker 1: at all. They want to divide us, They want outrage.
Speaker 1: They zero in on our tensions and our pain points
Speaker 1: and poke at them until they throb I talk so
Speaker 1: much about disinformation, what it does to our discourse and
Speaker 1: our democracy. But this is its true cost. Even in tragedy,
Speaker 1: even in death, they exploit. Nothing is sacred, nothing. It's sick.
Speaker 1: It makes me sick. I'm tired, y'all, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: y'all are too. I'm sick of having to defend our
Speaker 1: humanity again and again to people who are hell bent
Speaker 1: on using our pain, our lives, and our identities and
Speaker 1: our deaths to score cheap points and push false narratives
Speaker 1: that end up hurting us. All my friends that color
Speaker 1: of change or organizing Text enough to five five or
Speaker 1: check the link in the show description to get involved.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you at Hello at tangoi dot com. Disinformed is brought
Speaker 1: to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unbust Creative.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our
Speaker 1: supervising producer and engineer. Michael Lamato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check
Speaker 1: out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.