Dear friends,

Your amazing participation in this campaign has been invaluable. At last check, the petition was at 678 signatures ... and it's just going up. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's so heartening that so many good people care about others.

The fact is, Twitter has been completely inept at mitigating the spread of problematic accounts on its own platform, and white supremacists have taken advantage of that. These bigots see Rittenhouse as a model for their own malfeasance; to them, he is a saintly hero, and they've latched on to the court decision finding him not guilty as a green light to target black, Jewish, LGBT and other groups with hate speech, harassment and threats of violence on social media without being restricted by the law.

Twitter's incompetence at moderating the spread of white supremacy; deleting tweets that violate rules that the company itself laid out; and suspending accounts disseminating racism, antisemitism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice is egregious. The platform's support teams don't have the training, expertise, time or resources that would enable them to effectively address hateful and other abusive tweets.

This is unacceptable.

Twitter must take action to stem the tide of white supremacy, and one significant way to do so would be to remove accounts that these bigots deem bastions of their cause. All the more reason for the site to suspend Rittenhouse's account. He killed two people and wounded another in Kenosha, Wis. - violence that white supremacists revel in. Twitter's own terms of service forbid the celebration and advocacy of violence.

See, Rittenhouse isn't just symbolic to white supremacists. To this contingent, he's aspirational. So Twitter must act to address this.

I've counted on you remarkable individuals to help call attention to this. You've responded. I ask again that you continue to respond - to sign, tweet and share this petition. And I'm grateful to you.

I will continue to update as progress continues. I'm adding the link here.