Mass. state lawmaker calls out online trolls in feisty social media video

I'm Lisa Mullins in Boston. State Senator Jo Comerford of Northampton isn't the only politician who gets trolled on social media. But after years of it, she's had enough and posted a video to call out the trolls. Jeff, you called me the dumbest lesbian alive and I need to know, Jeff, was it this green jacket that I wear all the time, Jeff, or was it the fact that I use universally sensible shoes? She lifts her foot up to show off her sneakers. Senator Comerford says the online attacks get in the way of her work as a lawmaker and the comments have different levels of intensity. You should know that I wasn't able to share all of the comments because, well, one, there are too many of them, but two, some of them actually just can't be prime time because they could be triggering. They're not triggering for me. As I say in this post, I have a hide of a rhino. But I know because people have told me, my constituents have told me, Joe, I can't really get on your page anymore because I got name called by some person. Boy, that sets up an alarm for me. And so there are, you have behind you on a whiteboard the names of the people, Phil, and I think people who have said very, very, you know them all by first name. There's also Squirrel Master. And you know them because they tend to write quite a bit. There's one I'd like to play right now from the video. You say this is one of your most prolific contributors on Facebook, a man you say called you a Massachusetts clown and loser 12 times in the past six months. But here's the thing, Phil, and it's keeping me up at night. Sometimes you spell loser, L-O-S-E-R, and Phil, Phil, maybe this is intentional on your part, sometimes you spell it L-O-O-S-E-R. And I'm wondering, Phil, actually my wife is wondering, are you making a play on my virtue? Please be in touch. Was Phil in touch after you said this, Senator? No, he's been back on the page, but not in touch with me directly. I mean, I guess that's part of the question. Like, when you respond to people who are writing terribly insulting, intentionally nasty things, are you responding to them or to everybody else in your audience? Because they probably don't care, right? Yeah, actually a couple of them have commented. A guy named Dave said he was wondering why he wasn't included because he's on the page so much, right? So I said that I was sorry if he felt left out. And I actually thought that was a real exchange. Phil was reached by another reporter, and he said, you know, maybe he had gone too far. You know, I'm both speaking to these folks in a public forum so that I can try to transform their comments and transform the page, and also so that I use the platform I have, the privilege I have, to say, guys, we can do better. Let's do things better together. And I want social media to be one of the places where I can articulate positions, give information, and then receive real accountability, real feedback, because it will help me fine-tune my position on thorny or complex issues. Do you think that by bringing it to the fore in this Instagram post, you might be giving the nastiness more attention and oxygen than it deserves? You know, someone actually said that. So one of the folks who wrote back said, you shouldn't be focused on this. You should be focused on, you know, XYZ. And he's right, except I do think that democracy can die in the corner if my page becomes overtaken by people who are saying profanity, misogyny, body-shaming, homophobic comments. If they don't see me reject those in a way that also respects the folks' humanity, right, asking us all to do better, I worry that then I lose this forum, I lose this channel that I need to talk to people in. Okay. State Senator Jo Comerford of Northampton, thank you. It was a pleasure, Lisa. Thank you.