North Carolina's Newest U.S. Senator Accused of Cyberbullying

On the morning of Friday, Nov. 14, Bibi Bowman of Raleigh, North Carolina, who won’t give her real name out of fear of retaliation, got a call on her cell phone from the North Carolina police. Officer Francisco “Frank” Flores told Bowman to take down a status update she had posted to Facebook about House Speaker Thom Tillis, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in the midterms ten days earlier. Flores claimed Bowman’s post could be perceived as threatening. The post in question read:

“Dear baby Jesus, you taught us to pray for our enemies, so here goes: I know you have to let people die every day, and I'd like to offer a few suggestions. Please take Thom Tillis. And also, if it can be very uncomfortable, baby Jesus, like a single-car v. tree, or possibly a stray bullet from a .22 that circles inside his skull and out one eye, then may your will be done. Amen”

Bowman insists the post wasn’t meant as a threat to Tillis, as she isn’t religious and doesn’t even pray. She adds the “Dear baby Jesus” part of the status update was a reference to one of Will Ferrell’s lines in the movie "Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby."

“I’m kind of a humorous person. One of my brothers is a comedy producer in Hollywood, and was a writer for Family Guy for the first two seasons. I don’t normally put a lot of thought into these things,” Bowman said.“The fact that [Flores] said ‘take it down’ or accused me of writing a threat or a near-threat is enough to frighten me. I’m allowed to say what I think and feel.”

As a frequent participant in many Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina State Capitol, including an arrest for civil disobedience on June 3 of this year, Bowman is an outspoken opponent of Tillis’s policies. A North Carolina native and descendant of both Native American and European settlers of the state, Bowman says she dislikes the divisive partisan atmosphere Republican leaders like Tillis have created in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United decision.

“We’ve always had leaders who have taken interest in the whole state, not just their party. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore,” Bowman said, citing Tillis’s cutting of school funding by almost $500 million, defunding unemployment aid, curbing voting rights and greenlighting fracking across the state.

“I didn’t go and protest because I personally needed anything, I protested because these policies were hurting people I cared about,” she said.

Thom Tillis became House Speaker after Republicans took over North Carolina’s legislature in 2010, largely due to the financial backing of multi-billionaire retail magnate Art Pope, who was later appointed budget director by the Republicans he funded. In 2011, Tillis was named Legislator of the Year by ALEC, the corporate bill mill in which Republican legislators and corporate lobbyists write model legislation behind closed doors.

Since then, Tillis has forced through a bevy of ALEC bills that redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich by raising taxes for one and cutting taxes for the other, loosened environmental regulations for polluting industries, and decimated public education while paving the way for privately-owned, for-profit schools to take their place.

“It just became so obvious that there was so much public money going into rich people’s pockets, and it made me mad,” Bowman said.

Accusations of Cyber-Bullying

When Officer Flores called Bowman about her status update, she said Flores asked for “Bibi Bowman,” which is her Facebook alias and maiden name, not her current legal name, leading her to believe he got her name off of Facebook. However, Bowman’s post was set to “friends only” rather than “public,” meaning Flores wouldn’t have been able to see the post under normal circumstances.

Bowman said the fact that Flores called Bowman on her cell and told her to take down a post he didn’t technically have the ability to see is an invasion of her privacy and a thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate her into silence.

“[Flores] mentioned Thom Tillis’s name numerous times, which tells me it was Thom Tillis who told him to call. And that tells me that Thom Tillis is stalking my page, or has his flying monkeys doing it,” Bowman said. “I remember he said, ‘We take our job very seriously, and our job is to protect the safety of the legislators.’ And I said, ‘Isn’t your job to protect everybody?' Why is Thom Tillis sending his flying monkeys over here, telling me what I can say and think and feel?”

Bowman said Tillis’s new position as U.S. Senator could lead to further intimidation of dissenting voices as Tillis’s access to more surveillance tools will only increase. She emphasized her hesitation to give her full name for publication in this article was due to fears about potential harassment in the future.

“I don’t want to get railroaded or sent off to Guantanamo,” Bowman said. “Is this gonna turn into Moscow, with KGB people running around telling us what we can think and say?”

Interview requests sent to Tillis’s spokeswoman and to Officer Francisco Flores were not returned. As of Nov. 19, the post in question is still up on Bowman’s Facebook page.