The disappearance of Mollie Tibbetts garnered national attention for weeks. Politicians spoke up and declared their undying support in the efforts to bring her home. Her body was eventually found in a field and her murderer, Christian Rivera, was arrested. The fact that Rivera is an undocumented immigrant kept Tibbetts’ name in the spotlight, but it was not to send condolences to her family for their loss. It was to use her as a talking point and a political pawn for Republican lawmakers to use in their arguments for stricter immigration laws.
In the weeks following her murder, there seemed to be no end to the comments on immigration in her name. Former Trump campaign manager, Chris Lewandowski, writes in a tweet “We MUST stop illegals from coming to our country and killing innocent people — this is non-negotiable.” The White House put out a statement on twitter talking about how Tibbetts’ murder is a “reminder that we must urgently fix our broken immigration laws.”
It takes a special kind of despicable person to try and capitalize on someone’s death. This is especially true when there is no information to back up the statements being made. Studies have shown that immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans do, as some would suggest.
It is especially horrendous that there are those who would try and politicize Tibbetts’ death while her family specifically requested that it not be. Family members have come out on social media to denounce the use of her murder as a political talking point. One relative writes that “you do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative now that she is no longer with us.” In an op-ed in the Des Moines Register, her father writes about how her accused murderer “is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people” and asks that people “do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist.”
And then, of course, there’s those who decide she’s no longer a suitable person to use as a political pawn once they looked at her twitter and saw her liberal bias and instead tell her to “enjoy hell.”
There’s only one issue that Mollie Tibbetts’ murder should bring into the spotlight, and that certainly isn’t immigration. It’s the fact that men, no matter where they’re from, seem to think that they’re entitled to a woman’s time and her body. 43% of women have been harassed while out for a jog, which is precisely what Tibbetts was doing before she was murdered. Women are attacked and killed time and time again for saying no to men. A quick google search brings up dozens of instances. High schoolers being killed for saying no to a prom date. Women being killed for refusing a proposal. And yet, many lawmakers turn a blind eye to this and refuse to look at legislation that may help with this, such as the Violence Against Women Act, which is set to expire at the end of this month.
We should remember Mollie Tibbets’, not her murderer or her murderer’s identity, but the way she was misogynistically treated right before she died. Raising awareness for the way we’ve raised our young girls into a culture of always saying yes, even when they really mean no.