Atlanta Anti-Karen

Submission 7,973

Part of a series on Karen. [View Related Entries]

About

Atlanta Anti-Karen refers to a viral video of a white woman yelling from her car about voter suppression at voting in Atlanta, Georgia, where long lines at ballots and faulty voting machines in predominantly black communities led to accusations of voter disenfranchisement.

Origin

On June 9th, 2020, reporter Barmel Lyons tweeted, "BREAKING NEWS: Voters outraged because they can’t vote. @cbs46 Voting machines are down & systems aren’t working all over #Atlanta Some people have left the polls because the line has NOT moved since 6 A.M." They included a video of a woman yelling from her car about her outrage over voter suppression. The video received more than 3 million views, 57,000 likes and 32,000 retweets She yelled:

This is wrong! This is America! Please, God, help us! “I mean it! This is a crisis in our world to make us not exercise our right to vote.

[…]

Everybody, tweet the networks. Everybody, please! Radio stations, everybody. Tweet, everybody. Please, everybody, we cannot tolerate this.

BREAKING NEWS: Voters outraged because they can’t vote. @cbs46 Voting machines are down & systems aren’t working all over #Atlanta Some people have left the polls because the line has NOT moved since 6 A.M. pic.twitter.com/QfJ8fxz5TQ

— Barmel Lyons CBS46 (@BarmelLyonsTV) June 9, 2020

Spread

The video quickly went viral. That day, Redditor ^[1] jigsawmap shared the video in the /r/PublicFreakout subreddit. Redditor^[2] endorphins_ called the woman "The Anti-Karen."

People on Twitter shared the video with politicians, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Jon Ossoff (screenshots below).

Several media outlets covered the video, including BuzzFeed ^[3] and Alternet.^[4]