- The lawyer of an influencer facing 6 felony charges said media criticism of her client is racist.
- She describe it as an "all-out assault on black and brown people."
The lawyer of an influencer who was charged with six felonies after she livestreamed herself as a crowd looted stores in Philadelphia says criticism of her client is racist.
In an open letter, published on Instagram over the weekend, Jessica Mann, a managing attorney at Shaka Johnson, decried the "unjust portrayal" of Dayjia Blackwell.
Blackwell, who is known as "Meatball" online, was charged with six felonies and two misdemeanors, including burglary and conspiracy, after being arrested mid-livestream last Tuesday.
In her own footage of the events, Blackwell could be heard laughing, cheering, and saying: "Tell the police they either lock me up tonight or it's going to get lit — it's going to be a movie."
But Johnson said the media response was unjust.
"It sickens me to witness the media's complicity in what can only be described as an all-out assault on black and brown people, as their character and actions are mercilessly vilified," she wrote.
Mann described Blackwell as a "vibrant and charismatic" Black woman who was "catapulted into the limelight" by her social media content.
The content, she said, includes silly skits and pranks that "uplift her audience."
But Mann said that the person described above doesn't "garner clicks" on websites.
"So you post her mugshot with tears streaming down her face and her hair a mess to satisfy your need to get 'clicks' and sell a salacious story," Mann wrote.
Mann also argued that the media should have focused on how Blackwell was "doing nothing more than capturing the raw reality of public outrage when she streamed the events" on September 26.
Mann said the media had overlooked the "underlying catalyst" for her actions — the dismissal of charges against a former Philadelphia police officer who was arrested in the fatal shooting last month of Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop. (Insider covered this in its initial reporting.)
But speaking to 6ABC Philadelphia last week, Philadelphia's interim police commissioner, John Stanford, accused Blackwell of leading a "caravan of looters" from store to store, as well as "committing burglaries and encouraging others to commit burglaries."
At a press conference, he said that people looting Apple, Lululemon, and other stores were "criminal opportunists" piggybacking on the anger surrounding the Irizarry case.
However, Mann, in the concluding remarks of the open letter, wrote: "How can we stand idly by as they continue to paint Dayjia as the perpetrator when she was merely holding up a mirror to Philadelphia so that it could see its ugly reflection?"
Mann and Blackwell did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.