They Were Laughed At For Their #FreeBritney Activism. Not Anymore

It used to be that friends and family laughed when Leanne Simmons told them about her #FreeBritney activism. They'd tell her to grow up, that she wasn't 9 years old anymore. Why would anyone care so much about Britney Spears, anyway? Embarrassed, Simmons would find comfort online, talking on Britney message boards and to friends on social media.

These days, people don't laugh as much. But it wouldn't matter to Simmons either way.

"This is not a joke. This is very serious," Simmons says. "And if people want to make fun of me, I don't care, because I'm fighting for what's right."

Simmons runs freebritney.army and is just one of a growing number of people advocating for California courts to release pop star Britney Spears from her conservatorship, under the banner #FreeBritney. It's a fluid, grassroots movement in which members share and analyze court documents, help one another understand the ins and outs of guardianship law, organize in-person rallies around the world, and get the word out about Spears' story.

"It does feel vindicating"

"When the movement started, we were painted as conspiracy theorists and really dismissed," says Kevin Wu, co-founder of the FreeBritneyLA accounts on Twitter and Instagram. Even though their sourcing was often based on court documents, Wu says it felt like they were never given any credibility. "It was frustrating that it took as long as it did, but it does feel vindicating that the movement and our concerns are finally being taken seriously."

That changed in part thanks to Framing Britney Spears, the documentary from The New York Times and FX that helped bring wider attention to the pop star's story. But the major shifts in Spears' legal fight in the past few weeks have been proof enough that these true believers were onto something, even getting a shoutout from the pop star herself.

Of course, many #FreeBritney activists started as Britney Spears fans from back in the day. Some have gotten used to being dismissed. "I felt like even before the conservatorship, we had to defend ourselves for liking her," Simmons says. She was used to pushing back against music snobs who dinged Spears for lip-syncing or viewed her as just a pop star, who was manufactured by the machinery of the music industry. "It was kind of a smooth transition from defending why I'm a Britney fan to defending her human rights," says Simmons.

But even more casual fans were so shocked by the details of Spears' story that they felt compelled to do something about it. Pilar Vigneaux is a #FreeBritney supporter based in Papudo, Chile. She says she liked Spears enough but didn't obsess over knowing all her songs or even owning all of her albums. But as she read deeper into the oddity of Spears being in a conservatorship at all, her kids being taken away from her and her father spending all her money, Vigneaux felt a growing urge.

"If you are really able to put yourself in her shoes for three seconds, you can't just not get involved," she says. She emailed Wu and asked whether FreeBritneyLA was sending out press releases. Wu said no, so she volunteered to put her skills from her day job at a communications company to use.

An anonymous source inspires momentum

But while numerous #FreeBritney activists are lifers who had been paying attention ever since Spears was put in a conservatorship, many point to a particular episode from 2019 of the podcast Britney's Gram as the true impetus of the movement. In it, hosts Tess Barker and Babs Gray, who up until then hosted a more jokey and irreverent show overanalyzing Spears' Instagram account, played an anonymous tip from a credible source revealing some details about Spears' conservatorship and her relationship with her father, Jamie Spears. Now the two host a new podcast, Toxic: The Britney Spears Story, a more produced and reported examination of Spears' conservatorship.

"We're just really grateful for the people who took it seriously and took on #FreeBritney as a part of a cause," she said. "I feel like they really helped keep the momentum going."

That momentum is already going beyond Britney Spears. Go to any #FreeBritney rally and you're bound to hear the names of others stuck in guardianships, both famous and not. "I see very real potential with the visibility that they're bringing to the issue," says Rick Black, director of the Center for Estate Administration Reform, which advocates for victims of predatory guardianships. "Not only for Britney, but for future and current victims that don't have a face, don't have a voice, would never be known."

Black says the biggest asset the #FreeBritney movement has is its natural leverage of social media. "They're touching millions more people than a bunch of gray hairs like me are going to touch."

That work already has started to see fruit. Last week, two bipartisan U.S. representatives proposed a bill in the House known as the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act (FREE Act), which would allow people in guardianships the right to petition the court to have their private guardian or conservator replaced with a public one.

Movements like #FreeBritney are large and multi-opinionated, and some supporters don't think the bill goes far enough. But that's just regular business for any growing movement — especially one looking to have a lasting impact. [Copyright 2021 NPR]