Social media stardom took Joseph Williams by surprise. The South Side community activist doesn’t even have a Twitter account.
But a college student’s video of Williams talking about how he and other local volunteers defused tensions at the site of the police shooting Sunday in Englewood has garnered more than 125,000 views, with comments such as “Good man right here” and “If you want to know what’s happened in Chicago, here is a great eye witness.”
“I feel good that we were able to shine a light on some of the truth, because there are always two sides to the story,” said Williams, 31, founder of the children’s literacy nonprofit Mr. Dad’s Father’s Club.
“I feel good to be able to share some of the intel from the boots on the ground. I was excited to tell people about how we came together as organizers and activists to help protect that community.”
Social media has played a variety of roles in the aftermath of the Englewood police shooting, which left a 20-year-old man who allegedly fired at police wounded. In addition to high points such as Williams’ citizen’s perspective on police action and community organizing, there have been lows such as false reports that police had shot and killed a 15-year-old.
What’s clear, said Kishonna Gray, a University of Illinois at Chicago assistant professor of communication, and gender and women’s studies, is that we’re hearing voices that wouldn’t have had a platform 30 years ago, when a few mainstream news reports would have sketched out the facts of the case.
“Instead what happens is I can go to Twitter, and at the top of my Twitter feed is this Black man who is giving more context to the situation,” Gray said.
“We had to at least engage (with him), even if we wanted to diminish the things he was saying or go toward a different way of receiving information. The fact that we had to see him and had to engage with him — I think that’s one of the benefits of receiving messages from social media.”
Erroneous social media reports bothered some observers, including Williams, a married father of five whose youngest child wants to be a police officer. Williams said that false social media reports hurt his neighbors, who were very upset by them, and they hurt the neighborhood-based police commander who helped local organizers get the situation under control after disputes with officers brought in from another district.
But Gray takes a wider view: pointing out that misinformation was a problem as far back as the Middle Ages, when erroneous reports were posted in public places.
Misinformation can affect police response to a crime, Gray said, as when Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old with a toy gun, was killed by police. The information that Tamir was probably a juvenile with a toy was not relayed to the responding officers, according to The New York Times.
Even when misinformation is shared on social media, Gray said, it can at least be corrected immediately. With print publications, it might take a day or more to see a story corrected.
Social media isn’t good or bad, she said. It’s a tool, and we handle it better when we’re savvy and responsible.
She said she waits a while to retweet a big development, allowing time for nuances (and potential errors) to reveal themselves.
“It all goes back to digital literacy,” she said.
In the Williams video, which was filmed by a college student and photographer with the Twitter handle @vashon_photo, he talks about how police responded to neighbors who gathered after the shooting.
Williams told the Tribune that he was looking for a Netflix movie to watch with his 5-year-old son Sunday when he learned of the shooting. He raced over to the crime scene, where he and about 10 other community organizers and activists tried to keep the crowd of neighbors calm and get them good information about the shooting.
In the video, he criticizes police for kicking a man in the face, leaving blood on the sidewalk. A Chicago Police Department spokesperson said only that citizens with complaints can bring them to the police or internal affairs.
Williams also complains in the video that police ripped a young man’s shirt, chased people and tried to punch people.
The crowd was fairly quiet but concerned before the man was kicked by a police officer, Williams told the Tribune. After that, there was more tension.
“They weren’t like regular officers,” said Williams, whose 5-year-old son calls a neighborhood officer “uncle.” “They were just trying to fight you.”
The organizers and activists worked with neighbors to form a human chain, shielding police from the crowd and the crowd from police. When their local District 7 police commander, who grew up in the neighborhood, arrived on the scene, he worked with Williams and other organizers to mediate the dispute, Williams said.
Gray said that there’s nuance in such situations that gets lost without the kind of diverse perspectives that social media can provide.
“The community has always been there, the community has always sent out first responders, and the community has always shown up and spoken out against different levels of violence — not just police violence but also that intraracial violence,” she said. “And those are the things that always get silenced.”
Williams said that he feels good that organizers, citizens and even some police were able to work well together.
As for the video, he pronounced it “weird” to see himself talking into the camera but also “supercool.”
“I just feel blessed to have been able to help,” he said.
