An online fundraiser has been launched to pay for security for Black Lives Matter activist Zyahna Bryant – whose partnership with Dove to promote “fat liberation” sparked controversy after she was accused of having white students expelled for “misheard” comments.
The GoFundMe — which had raised nearly $10,000 by Sunday — was created last week by Erica Chapman, a Charlottesville, Virginia, woman who claims she is Bryant’s cousin.
“Zyahna has been receiving hate mail and threats for YEARS, and recently it’s gotten worse,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page.
Chapman said that Bryant, a community organizer and student activist who studied at the University of Virginia, has faced increasing threats since she announced last month that she was partnering with Dove Beauty to promote “fat liberation.”
“Unfortunately, in today’s national climate with so many angry, violent and unpredictable people, being a visible, outspoken advocate and activist comes with significant risks,” Chapman wrote.
“Zyahna is now a graduate student and we want to make sure she can continue all the work she is doing in the classroom and in the community. We don’t want to allow this racist attack to take over from that,” he added.
“Please help Zyahna’s friends and family support her by keeping her SAFE and protected while continuing her important work helping and uplifting marginalized people and communities.”
An online fundraiser is raising money to secure security for Black Lives Matter activist Zyahna Bryant.zysaidso/Instagram
The nature of the threat against Bryant is unclear. It is also unknown what kind of security measures he may have received.
The Post reached out to Bryant and Chapman for comment Sunday.
The fundraiser, which had netted $10,050 of a $15,000 goal as of Sunday, comes nearly a month after Bryant announced his partnership with Dove in late August.
GoFundMe, set up by her cousin Erica Chapman, had raised nearly $10,000 as of Sunday.GoFundMe
In a video posted on her Instagram page, the 22-year-old said: “My belief is that we should center the voices and experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times.”
“So when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, I think about centering the voices of those who live and who move through spaces and institutions in fat bodies.”
She captioned her video saying, “Fat liberation is something we should all be talking about … Tell us what Fat Liberation means to you using the hashtag #SizeFreedom and tagging @dove to share your story.”
It was later revealed that Bryant pushed University of Virginia administrators to have white student Morgan Bettinger kicked off campus for comments he later admitted he may have misheard – prompting some conservatives to say online they would boycott Dove products.
Bryant posted a video last month announcing he was partnering with Dove to promote “fat liberation.” Zyahna Bryant / Instagram
Former FOX host Megyn Kelly also addressed the controversy on her podcast, saying, “It looks like Dove doesn’t have access to Google, because a simple Google search would show Dove that she’s a very troubled person.
“This is the person who tried to ruin the life of a white student at the University of Virginia – he tried to actually ruin this young man’s life by trying to get him out of college by falsely claiming that this young white woman had made a comment about black people being ‘speed bumps’ at riots or BLM protests in front of the police,” Kelly said.
“I don’t care about his fat body,” Kelly said. “It’s more her anorexic thoughts that upset me. And this partnership must end or Dove must get the Anheuser-Busch treatment,” he added, referring to parent company Budweiser, which has seen its shares plummet since it partnered with transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney.
Billionaire Elon Musk called the situation a “mess.”
Dove and its parent company, Unilever, have yet to publicly discuss the controversy.
The saga began when Bettinger accidentally drove down a street in Charlottesville, where several Black Lives Matter activists were protesting in the summer of 2020.
He told Reason magazine he saw a garbage truck blocking part of the road, but because the road was not completely closed, he continued driving.
Bryant came under fire for trying to expel a white student from the University of Virginia over comments he admitted he may have “misheard.”zysaidso/Instagram
When he realized the road was actually blocked from traffic, Bettinger said, he decided to park his car and see what was going on.
As he passed, Bettinger said, the truck driver started talking to him, and the two had a brief conversation. Bettinger said he recalled telling the truck driver, “It’s a good thing you’re here because otherwise this guy would have crashed,” trying to praise his efforts to block traffic.
The driver later confirmed Bettinger’s statement to local police.
But Bryant overheard part of the conversation and tweeted that Bettinger said protesters “will make a ‘good run'” along with a video showing Bettinger backing down the street in his car while Bryant and several other protesters followed.
Morgan Bettinger drives down a street in Charlottesville, Virginia where Black Lives Matter activists protested in the summer of 2020. WUVA NEWS
“He then called the police and started crying, saying we attacked him,” Bryant claimed.
The tweet was quickly shared more than a thousand times, and internet researchers soon identified the driver as Bettinger.
His pro-police social media posts, and the fact that his late father worked as a police officer, seem to have upset people even more, according to the Daily Mail.
Just a day later, Bryant began demanding that school administrators fire Bettinger.
Bryant demanded that school administrators expel Bettinger, claiming he said the protestors “would make a ‘good run.'”zysaidso/Instagram
“Email this UVA dean now to demand that Morgan face consequences for his actions and that UVA stop graduating racists,” he tweeted.
Bryant himself filed a complaint with the University’s Judicial Committee, a student-run disciplinary system, alleging Bettinger had threatened the health and safety of students.
It found Bettinger guilty of making legitimate threats against protesters, despite not being able to prove Bryant’s claims about his intent.
Jurors ruled that even saying the word in a harmless way during a protest was punishable, according to documents obtained by Reason magazine.
Bettinger eventually graduated from UVA but with the marks remaining on his record possibly hindering his chances of getting into the law school of his dreams. The Jefferson Independent/YouTube
Bryant also filed a complaint with the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, in which she claims Bettinger repeated the statement five times and discriminated against her because of her race.
The EOCR office found that three of the five charges could not be supported, and the report found that Bryant most likely did not hear Bettinger’s comments firsthand after no witnesses could corroborate his version of events.
Bettinger eventually graduated from UVA but with the mark remaining on his record, Reason reported.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
