Politics take centre stage at MTV Video Music Awards
From Charlottesville to Trump’s transgender ban, nothing was off limits for speakers at the VMAs
From the very first prize presented Sunday, and even before the show began, politics took a starring role in MTV’s Video Music Awards.
Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed during the violence earlier this month in Charlottesville, Virginia, was set to present an award Sunday: Best Fight Against the System, created this year to recognise music videos that embody activism and social justice.
“I’m here to speak for my child. She’s not allowed to speak now except through me, so I’m going to speak for social justice; I’m going to speak for being outraged and paying attention; I’m going to speak for positive action,” Bro told The Associated Press as she made her way into the ceremony at the Forum in Inglewood, California. “We are launching her foundation tonight as a way to make her death count, and that’s very important to me. I don’t willingly give up a child, but if I’m going to, we’re going to make something useful out of it.”
“I call on all of us with privilege and power to confront racism and white supremacy head-on" - Robert Lee IV #VMAs pic.twitter.com/ko4SM9VnaU— MTV (@MTV) August 28, 2017
Bro said it would “please my daughter tremendously” that she was appearing on the Video Music Awards with a message of social justice. “I’m just so deeply pleased. This is like a magnifying of Heather’s voice, a magnification of what she would have done.”
Paris Jackson was the first presenter to take the stage, and the first thing she did was decry hate.
“We must show these Nazi white supremacist jerks in Charlottesville, and all over the country, that as a nation with liberty as our slogan, we have zero tolerance for their violence and their hatred and their discrimination,” Michael Jackson’s eldest daughter said before presenting the best pop video award to Fifth Harmony. “We must resist.”