The mayor of St. Louis announced her departure from Twitter, citing Elon Musk’s now-deleted comment referencing the 2014 Ferguson protests.
“The clincher for me. “I’m out,” Mayor Tishaura O. Jones tweeted from her personal account on Thanksgiving, along with a screenshot of Musk’s since-deleted message.
Musk tweeted a 12-second video of a closet full of #StayWoke t-shirts at what he claimed was Twitter’s San Francisco office on Tuesday.
Musk said in a since-deleted follow-up tweet that the shirts were inspired by the 2014 protests in the town 20 miles northwest of St. Louis, which were prompted by the tragic police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Musk highlighted that Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Brown, was exonerated.
“Hands up, don’t shoot” is fictitious, he wrote. Everything was a fabrication.
Musk also tweeted a link to a March 2015 Department of Justice study stating that reports saying Brown had his hands up were “inaccurate because they contradict the physical and forensic evidence.”
In a separate investigation, the Department of Justice accused Ferguson police officers of racial bias and profiling, resulting in the resignations of the city manager, police chief, and municipal judge.
The family of Brown also reached a settlement with the city in a wrongful death claim.
In response to Musk’s remarks, Jones, who is African-American, replied, “Y’all can have this bird app,” adding, “Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrate and Happy Holidays.”
However, the account remained operational as of Saturday evening.
Jones did not completely cut her Twitter wings, however. The official mayor’s account tweeted a photo of her at a Thanksgiving parade hours after her personal announcement of her resignation.
Jones’s spokesman, Nick Dunne, stated that the official account will continue to operate “in the near future.”