Bill McKibben: I Was Used to Social Media Abuse. Then Someone Suggested Shooting Me

I have known and long deeply respected Bill McKibben and the work he is doing in the world to help us save ourselves from the largest threat to the survival of humans and all species. I have read his books and articles, participated in 350.org events, and seen Bill speak on multiple occasions. My heart hurts as I reflect on the violence of death threats and more that he's received along with countless others who are speaking the truth and working courageously to bring about the radical and vital changes that are in the best interests of us all. My ongoing work, practice, and prayer is that each of us will grow stronger and stronger in our absolute commitment to nonviolence and in standing up to violence in all its forms. May we be the peace our world hungers for! — Molly

Climate activist and co-founder of 350.org Bill McKibben has a suggestion: Let's stop threatening to kill one another.

What does it say about a society when people just routinely call for the killing of those they disagree with? 

by

Bill McKibben

In a world where the president goes on Twitter to call a woman“horseface” it seems pointless to call for “civility.” So let me suggest that we start with a lower bar, maybe one we could still hope to achieve: Let’s stop threatening to kill one another.

One morning last week I had to write to a young colleague in the environmental movement. He works in South America, he’d been getting death threats over social media and he was rightly alarmed. I could counsel him a little because I myself have been getting them, sporadically, for a long time. But I couldn’t counsel him much, because what is there to say beyond “Be careful, know that it’s a tribute to your effectiveness and don’t hesitate to take some time off”? 

I was his age when I first started getting such threats, in the 1990s, and they’ve escalated over the years as campaigns I’ve helped organize against pipelines or for fossil fuel divestment have gained traction. I remember one police officer telling me that “the ones who write you aren’t the ones who shoot you,” which I found comforting for about 15 seconds till I thought through its implications. 

My practice has been just to delete threats from my email—I find that if I don’t, I keep looking at them, and I imagine (I hope) the main goal of their authors is to distract me. If you’re going to be a lightning rod, some sparks are probably the price.

An hour after I’d written to that young man, though, something happened that moved me to think about this more thoroughly. It began last week when the Los Angeles Timespublished an op-ed article of mine describing a trial in Minnesota where some protesters—acting peacefully, threatening no one, and informing the company they were protesting against—engaged the emergency shut-off valves on two pipelines and forced the company to temporarily shut off the flow of oil from Canada’s tar sands into the United States. 

The case against the protesters had been dismissed on the grounds that they’d done no damage; I was trying in my essay to explain why nonviolent civil disobedience helped in the fight for a workable climate.

Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/21/i-was-used-social-media-abuse-then-someone-suggested-shooting-me