Shortly after BTS and Big Hit Entertainment’s donation of $1 million to Black Lives Matter made news, the BTS ARMY, gathered and pledged to match the donation — which happened within 24 hours.
The feat follows a recent effort by K-pop fans to acquire the hashtag #whitelivesmatter, wiping out white-supremacist messages with nonsensical or anti-racist posts, and also flooded the Dallas Police Department’s iWatch Dallas app with K-pop content instead of footage of protestors. These measures demonstrated fans’ immovable social-media power and was met with wide approval online early Wednesday morning.
On the other hand, BTS ARMY has gained a massive global influence and its effort to match the groups $1 million donation was achieved within a day of the news, hitting $1,026,531 with 35,609 donors. The donation project was put forward by One In an Army, a group of volunteers who have stepped forward together to extend help to organizations worldwide uniting in their love of BTS. They have been engaged in setting up monthly charity programs and were able to quickly put together a plan to track donations made by everyone in efforts to #MatchAMillion.
Just like BTS, we were able to donate 1M dollars to help fund:
?bailouts for those arrested for protesting police brutality
?black-led advocacy orgs fighting against systemic injustice
?support for the physical and mental health of the black commmunity— One in an ARMY⁷ Charity Project ? (@OneInAnARMY) June 8, 2020
This noble achievement came into immediate effect after BTS closed out YouTube’s “Dear Class of 2020” special, where the group, alongside the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, consisted of the most featured guests on the program across the globe.
In addition to them, other guests included Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and many more. Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama also appeared which marked the couples’ first time appearing together on the same virtual stage as part of a commencement ceremony.