Twitter mutes pro-life group ahead of rally

It wasn’t all praise and applause at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Image Awards, held earlier this month.

Black pro-life groups, including the National Black Prolife Coalition, picketed the ceremony to protest the NAACP’s close relationship with Planned Parenthood and its support for gay “marriage,” LifeSiteNews reported yesterday—and they did so despite Twitter’s temporary suspension of their account, which was supposed to help rally supporters.

“Twitter shut us down,” Stephen Broden, a spokesman for the National Black Prolife Coalition and a Dallas-area pastor, said in an interview with Fox News. “I had to acknowledge I had been reported and I needed to change my behavior.”

The suspension was lifted as soon as Broden complied—but not for long.

He posted another tweet accusing the NAACP of betraying the black community and Twitter again shut down the account.

“By that evening we were completely suspended and we remained suspended for several days,” he told LifeSiteNews.

The suspension was finally lifted but only after the day of their planned protest had passed.

Twitter’s blockage wasn’t the only obstacle the pro-lifers had to overcome. The LAPD was called in to deal with the picketers, but officers found no reason to make arrests.

It was a peaceful, but effective protest, according to pro-life organizers, attracting the eyes of both Image Award staffers and attendees.

In an effort to keep its attendees from encountering the protestors, the NAACP changed its schedule and opened the doors to the event an hour earlier than planned.

“I guess they didn’t want attendees to hear what the protesters had to say,” Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and a longtime pro-life activist, told LifeSiteNews.

But the protestors still managed to get their message and materials into the hands of those attending the awards, including information on Tonya Reaves, a black woman who bled to death after an abortion while Planned Parenthood employees stood by and watched. The organization waited five hours to call an ambulance after tearing a hole in her uterus.

Another pamphlet, “Safe and Legal,” provided information about the dangers of legalized abortion. The picket generated such positive interest from both attendees and passersby that the protestors ran out of material to give out, King said.

Although the National Black Prolife Coalition’s Twitter account is up and running again, Leroy Dodd, the group’s social media manager, expects to face future challenges over the group’s Twitter and Facebook use.

“It’s becoming popular with liberals and liberal organizations to report conservatives—a way to silence opposition,” he told LifeSiteNews.