This Twitter Trend Is Helping Support The People Protesting George Floyd’s Murder

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Photo: Steel Brooks/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

Protest requires a all sorts of different people filling in many different roles in order to be effective. There are the people on the ground, of course, the ones you see in photos. And then there is the behind the scenes support: supplies, jail support, and monetary backing. In order for direct action to succeed and be sustainable, all those pieces need to be in place. For people who cannot be on the ground, donating money to a bail fund is a tangible way to support protesters. And thanks to a Twitter trend, thousands of people have done just that for the folks in Minneapolis protesting the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer.

A Twitter trend where people “match” donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund has gone viral, with over 27,000 tweets mentioning the organisation as of Thursday afternoon and celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeting the link to his 3 million followers (disclosure: I participated in the "match" chain). As a result, the organisation has received an influx of donations to help pay bail for folks who get arrested during the protests. The organisation has been overwhelmed with donations and has asked folks to donate to other local organisations, as well, namely Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective.