LOGAN SQUARE — One of Logan Square’s most outspoken pastors has joined clergy nationwide in the latest online social justice movement, #UseMeInstead.
The hashtag appeared last week after it was discovered that Florida’s North Miami Beach police department was using the mugshots of black men residing in the community as target practice.
According to Rev. Erik Christensen of Logan Square’s St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, the idea for #UseMeInstead quickly evolved through a conversation on a closed Facebook group for Lutheran clergy in response to the Florida case.
“We were appalled to learn that the North Miami Beach police department was using mugshots of black men in the community for target practice,” Christensen said Monday. “The idea was to send actual photographs of clergy in their collars as a way of reminding the police department that the people they interact with each day cannot be reduced to targets.”
Grateful for those in law enforcement who treat it as a public trust, I invite them to #usemeinstead of black youth. pic.twitter.com/ULCt5cOelu
— Erik Christensen (@erikchrist1973) January 18, 2015Christensen said he was especially heartbroken to learn that the target-practice story had begun when a Florida woman, National Guard Sgt. Valerie Deant, saw a photo of her own brother full of bullet holes in the trash after it had been used for target-practice.
“Whatever the need for target practice may be, the practice of using these photographs of black men seems obviously desensitizing and dehumanizing,” Christensen said. “As a white man with an Asian sister and an African-American partner, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to find pictures of my family being used in this way.”
One of the benefits of social media campaigns is that it allows people from all over the world to respond to events quickly, Christensen said.
On Jan. 25, the pastor was featured in a Washington Post story along with several of his peers in the clergy who had also taken to social media under the #UseMeIntead hashtag. The hashtag is part of a wider movement in connection with #BlackLivesMatter.
“I'm aware that white privilege protects me from the kind of profiling that my loved ones live with every day, and I wanted to be part of this project as a way of drawing attention to the injustice of that privilege,” Christensen told DNAinfo Chicago. “My hope is that law enforcement in Florida comes to understand that they are accountable not only to their local constituency, but to a wider public — as we all are.”
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