The killing by Minnesota police of George Floyd grabbed the media's attention recently. Nobody can be indifferent to this heinous crime, and the JS community have also reacted to the incident.
What Happened
The article would be incomplete without a brief description of the event.
George Floyd a black man, died on May 25, 2020, after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer from Minneapolis, knelt on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while Floyd was handcuffed face down in the street. Two other officers, Thomas Lane and J Alexander Kueng, further restrained Floyd and the fourth officer, Tou Thao, prevented onlookers from intervening. The incident occurred after Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill buying cigarettes at a nearby market. Several witnesses took videos of the incident. The videos that showed Floyd repeatedly saying, "I can't breathe", rapidly spread across social networks and media. All four officers were fired the day after the incident.
We are proud that the JS community leaders have spoken with one voice in this regard and supported the anti-racism movement. Their support is not just bare words. The react.js, express.js, electron.js, and many other communities have asked their users to support organizations and movements which aim to tackle racial inequality. For instance, the Equal Justice Initiative. It is a non-profit organization that is committed to challenging racial and economic injustice and that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial.
Below you may see how some of JS community leaders reacted to this crime.
TypeScript
You can see the Black Lives Matter banner on the official TypeScript home page, and the futuristic city turned from bright blue colors to black.
React.js
The React.js community couldn't ignore the event and added the Support the Equal Justice Initiative banner to the home page. In addition to the official community response, many developers from the React Core Team also expressed their support. In particular, they staged a virtual walkout Monday over CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to take action on a series of controversial posts from President Donald Trump last week. Dan Abramov twitted:
Angular
As a gesture of solidarity, the Angular official website is now using a dark color scheme and has the #BlackLivesMatter banner at the top:
The official Twitter account of Angular posted:
Babel
Babel has gone further: on June 3 the official site was shut down and the following message was shown to all users:
The message contains donation links.
Electron
The Electron home page displays the post with the signatures of the Electron community.
In addition to some words of support, there are also the donation links to support the movement and Floyd's family.
TestMace
Our team stands in solidarity with the rest of the JS community and takes unprecedented measures - the light theme is temporary unavailable in the application, and the #BlackLivesMatter banner will appear at the top of the screen after running the app. Current users would also have to use a dark theme.
Conclusion
As you see, the big players of the JS community couldn't be silent and explicitly supported the movement. We are convinced that it is our responsibility, too. In this case, to be silent means to be complicit. To be silent today is to endanger yourself and your family tomorrow. TestMace wishes to express its deep sorrow to George Floyd's family and stands against racial inequality and police brutality.
Let us know about other companies’ support campaigns in the comments below.
Top comments (13)
I was reading react docs this morning and noticed the theme change. Pretty cool!
Bro, that isn't cool. Kind regards from Russia. Read my other comment.
Why only JS community? Language entry level matters?
Wanted to try Node but saw all this "politics" and now decided to use Flutter. Thank you, BLM!
I am Russian, I don't separate people by color. BLM does! CLM! And life without consciousness doesn't matter. Kind wishes and bye, Node (and thank the author for the extended list of what matters for me)!
Vanilla is for a white boy! (I don't separate, they just told me that I am white )
And #Flutter.
I think it's more important that you feel comfortable voicing your opinion here than anything else.
In the realm of programming everyone should feel welcome.
What I didn't understand is your comment about Node and Flutter. Could you explain that to me? I understood something about a political statement being on the Node JS site so you decided to use Flutter instead. Is my understanding correct?
Just so you remember... Dev.to is a community which supports each and everyone here. Sorry if you were offended.
Hello dear friend!
I was not offended at all! (BLM yes, offends me - I saw their faces) I was... confused.
I am Russian and I don't care the color. But I care the logic and consciousness.
As for me, that was the sign "DON'T ENTER" And I didn't.
Yes, you understood me absolutely right, in this context Flutter is just a word.
If you are interested, I need to choose the minimalistic and ultramodern tool to build SPA.
And it would be Vanilla. I am afraid Node now! And moreover, I have to install their binaries! No!
Thank you for your kind words, Bernard and best wishes for the new year!
p.s. there was a question in the beginning of my comment, did you miss this? ok, that was a rhetorical question.
You call JS community something wrong. Here is JS community for example: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...
And thank you for a good hashtag for a bad communities.
It's awful politics are creeping in to the tech field. It could get worse, and I don't think developers appreciate it.
i don't believe in these big giants, where were they before all of this ???? do we really need to die so they can see unjust? this shouldn't have happened at all!
I know what you mean, but it's better late than never. Many of us hope this will bring more awareness to racial inequalities and finally bring some change for the better!
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments. Some comments have been hidden by the post's author - find out more