How To Support Elizabeth Warren On FB

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren as she attempted to read aloud a letter by civil rights activist Coretta Scott King. If you want to protest the rebuke, you can change your Facebook profile picture to support Elizabeth Warren. It’s a small, simple way to show that women speaking out for equality won’t be shushed.

ICYMI, Warren read King’s letter yesterday during a Senate debate over the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to the position of attorney general. In the 1986 letter, King argued against Sessions’ then-nomination to a federal judgeship on the grounds that his record on civil rights did not make him fit for the job. McConnell brought Warren’s speech to a halt by invoking the rarely-used Rule XIX, which stipulates that one senator may not impugn the character of another. Warren was forced to stop speaking, and she will not be allowed to participate in further debates regarding Sessions’ nomination.

The idea that Warren was somehow being inappropriate by reading a letter written by King years before Sessions was a member of the Senate is highly questionable. (Notably, a number of other senators read sections of the letter during the debate without issue, though not the same sections choses by Warren). Furthermore, as a number of people have pointed out, other senators have gotten away with worse offenses in the past, including Senator Ted Cruz, who called Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor in 2015, without being silenced or punished.

In defending the decision to silence Warren under Rule 19, McConnell gifted feminists with a shiny new rallying cry: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Unsurprisingly, variations of the quote have already started cropping up on t-shirts, mugs, and Facebook profile images.

If you want in on the Facebook action, you can find overlays in support of Warren on sites like Twibbon and iSupportCause. Here’s how you do it: (I’m using Twibbon as an example, but iSupportCause is fairly similar and easy to use):

1. Choose an image.

If you search “persist” on Twibbon, a few different options will pop up. I’m using this one.

2. Log in and edit your image.

Click on “Add to Facebook.” You’ll provide your log-in info, and a new box will pop up in which to edit your photo. Your current Facebook profile image will appear automatically, but you can also upload other photos if you’d like.

3. Hit “Add the Twibbon to Facebook.”

The image will automatically be uploaded to a Facebook album titled “Twibbon Photos.” From there, you can set the photo as your profile pic.