So Kim Kardashian recently helped save a man from execution. Julius Jones was due to die by lethal injection in Oklahoma, but Kardashian’s activity on social media – she has over 265m followers – helped have the sentence overturned.
And together with Leeds FC she helped members of an Afghan women’s football team and their families escape to the UK.
But in the past Kardashian has been accused of hypocrisy. For example, she received a backlash for saying “climate change is real” during the Australian wildfires last year despite using private jets. Some of her followers on Twitter weren’t impressed, asking her to show she really cared by donating money.
And as Dean Burnett once pointed out in the Guardian, the celebrities who get involved in campaigns often get the facts wrong. Examples he gave include Kanye West randomly declaring bill Cosby innocent, which Burnett described as “ill informed.”
But most of the posters I found on Twitter respect Kim for her work, and I agree with T.Cat below who points out that when it comes to helping back people behind bars, she has done a lot more than the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
And the fact that she needs to fight for justice is underlined by the covert racism in the message a bit below it that dismisses Kim’s advocacy as doing no more that helping “murderers” escape justice
If Kim uses her privilege and power to help prisoners who have been wrongfully jailed, then she is changing lives. Yes sure some celebrity activism is just about getting publicity – but in Kim’s case, keep it coming.
