It’s no secret that the American establishment’s got a big problem with the disproportionate amount of extrajudicial killings of black people. While white people might be arrested after killing people, innocent black people have been shot and killed by police in high-profile incidents in Baltimore, Ferguson and New York and there have been hundreds of protests about this in the past six months alone.
What might be asecret, though, is that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have been privately donating tens of thousands of dollars to the cause, helping protestors get out of jail after arrests and assisting the #BlackLivesMatter movement get organised in more cities around the US and beyond.
That’s what activist dream hampton has said, at least.
In tweets since deleted but screengrabbed by Complex, she said: ‘I’m going to tweet this and I don’t care if Jay gets mad.’
‘When we needed money for bail for Baltimore protestors, I asked hit Jay up, as I had for Ferguson, wired tens of thousands in mins.’
‘When BLM [#BlackLivesMatter] needed infrastructure money for the many chapters that we’re growing like beautiful dandelions, Carters wrote a huge check.’
‘…and more stuff, too much to list actually, that they always insist folk keep quiet.’
After explaining that police arrests on protestors – and the bail put on them - equate to tariffs on free speech, she tweeted:
‘welp, I just got the ‘can you shut the fuk up & head to brunch’ text. Gonna erase my error ridden rant. Hope you got your little screenshot.’
Wowee. Jay and Bey were previously under fire for pushing the agenda of streaming sevice Tidal, acting as if they were righting a huge institutional wrong, but never publicly quite showing the same consideration for the thousands of black people across the US protesting in this hugely important movement:
But maybe that’s all changed… Bey and Jay’s people haven’t commented, but Tidal and Jay-Z did publicly donate to the Rally 4 Peace gig in Baltimore, which served as a fundraiser for anti-institutional racism movements, and even after deleting all the above tweets, dream tweeted:
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.