The controversial activist asks, “What would Frederick Douglass do?”
BY THE TIME WE MEET, at 11 on a Wednesday morning in December, Shaun King, masterful activator of instant-react liberal anger and would-be digital-media titan , has already retweeted a double-digit string of articles to his 1 million followers on everything from the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi to the much-critiqued arrest of Jazmine Headley, a Brooklyn mother who was videotaped clutching her 1-year-old at a publicbenefits office before police forced her hands behind her back. (“Shame shame shame on this city for the trauma they caused this wonderful mother and baby boy.”)
Sitting at a table in Lula, a cozy Bed-Stuy coffee shop, King is still mulling over that last incident: “I’m just trying to figure out how did she spend four nights in Rikers because she was sitting on the floor of social services?! Sometimes I’m so furious I have to fight tears.” King’s in a hoodie and a brown leather jacket; he has bits of gray in his goatee and a simple silver wedding band on his right hand. He skips coffee in favor of the can of Red Bull he walked in with. In King, a 39-year-old father of five, some see a courageous, unflappable activist. Others see an all-purpose outrage machine. Both sides might agree that he seems to exist almost entirely as a voice inside the internet. But as he sits in front of me, he places his iPhone face down on the table and, to my surprise, duly ignores it.
King’s online fame began only a few years ago. In 2014, while working as the director of communications for a Southern California environmental organization called Global Green, he got a Facebook message from an old More house College classmate. It was the video of Eric Garner’s killing. “We didn’t even know his name at the time,” he recalls. “If I had to put my finger on one moment, that message changed my life.”
Denne historien er fra January 21, 2019-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra January 21, 2019-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
