Last Thursday, 48 hours before federal agents killed the second person in Minneapolis this year, three activists in the Twin Cities were arrested for protesting a church where the leader of the local ICE office is also a pastor. Civil rights attorney and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Board member Chauntyll Allen, and veteran-activist William ‘DaWokeFarmer’ Kelly were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy against the rights of others, Title 18, Section 241 [18 U.S.C. § 241], a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. After the arrest of Levy Armstrong, the White House posted an AI-manipulated image of Nekima crying as she stood handcuffed next to federal agents — she never cried and a video recorded of her arrest published the next day showed her calm and dignified as she was taken into custody. The White House also darkened her skin in the image, a practice long used by the U.S. government and corporate media to foster and reinforce bias and prejudice and play on systemic anti-Blackness. The post falls in line with a long history of white supremacist messaging and meme posting from the Trump administration. Additionally, heavily-dramatized language was plastered on the image reading “ARRESTED – FAR-LEFT AGITATOR NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG FOR ORCHESTRATING CHURCH RIOTS IN MINNESOTA.” The official White House logo adorned the bottom of the altered image under text. This was preceded by several days worth of media propaganda blasting the church protest as a riot. “It just shows the racism and fascism in this administration, that they’re willing to literally invent reality,” said Levy Armstrong’s attorney Jordan Kushner.
via unicorn riot: White House Generates Racist AI Image After ‘Politically Motivated’ Arrest of Activists Over Church Protest
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