CULTURE

Jennifer Lawrence Joins Twitter to Bring Attention to Breonna Taylor

The actress has joined the chorus of voices demanding that justice be served for Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home by police officers on March 13.

by Brooke Marine

June 18, 2020

Tim Walker

Jennifer Lawrence has joined the chorus of voices demanding that justice be served for Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home by police officers on March 13.

The actress is just the latest in a slew of celebrities who have demanded that the officers who killed the 26-year-old E.M.T. while she was sleeping in Louisville be arrested and prosecuted. In addition to the many Twitter threads on the subject, Beyoncé recently wrote an open letter to the Attorney General requesting he act swiftly and bring justice to Taylor and her family. So far, no arrests have been made and the officers remain employed by the Louisville police department.

Lawrence, who was born and raised in Kentucky, has now joined Twitter to call for justice. For years, she was adamantly anti-social media, often joking in interviews about the fact that she would “never get Twitter” because she wouldn’t be able to keep up with it. “If you ever see a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter that says it’s me, it most certainly is not,” she told BBC Radio 1 in 2014. She also later admitted to having a finsta to lurk on Instagram without being seen. But now she has changed her tune, and joined the platform publicly to bring attention to a worthy cause: holding police accountable for the death and erasure of Black women in America.

“As a Louisvillian, as a human being, I cannot be silent,” the actress wrote on Twitter, urging Attorney General Daniel Cameron “to take immediate action to hold those responsible for her death accountable” and “to commit to transparency in the investigation and prosecution of these officers.”

She also shared a tweet outlining the corruption of the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex as they pertain to the one in four Black men who will be incarcerated in their lives.

None of this should come as much of a surprise, however. After all, Lawrence did say in 2018 that she would take a hiatus from acting to focus on activism.