People all over the country noted the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Wednesday. One of them, Brooklyn’s Josh Begley, made a video of cuts from the front seat of cars driving on 50 MLK Boulevards all across the U.S.
Begley offered no explanation for the 2:47 video he posted on Twitter, and has not responded to an interview request from Technical.ly. We think it’s worth a watch. The footage struck us as an emotional reminder of how big our country is, how many places the legacy of MLK and the civil rights movement touched.
Many Americans still may not feel that freedom exists in every village and hamlet and state and city, but, as the video suggests, an MLK Boulevard might.
50 MLK boulevards pic.twitter.com/yYQ6wtp9MJ
— Josh Begley (@joshbegley) April 4, 2018
Begley works as a research editor at The Intercept and identifies himself as a data artist. He’s made several simple, wordless videos over the past few years, including one of every concussion in the NFL last season and one of the entire length of the Mexican border. He also created the app Archives + Absences that sent a push notification of the name of each person killed by the police, coverage of which was one of the best articles we’ve published here at Technical.ly.
Activism through shareable videos is a tricky business, but if there were ever anyone to look to for how to do it, it’s Begley.
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