Category: Black Lives Matter

Origins of the Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013, following the loss of life of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager who was shot whilst walking to a family friend’s residence, and the following acquittal of George Zimmerman, the police officer who shot him. The phrase’ black lives matter’ was first used in a Facebook submission by Garza after Zimmerman was cleared of all charges against him and became the inspiration for the campaign. The movement fast collected tempo, with interest and momentum spiking on every occasion a Black person was killed as a result of an altercation with the police.

In 2014, Black Lives Matter protested against the deaths of numerous Black and African-American people. Each non-violent protest and riot were observed, much of which was completed beneath the banner and hashtag of “Black Lives Matter.” In response, co-founder PatrisseCullorsorganised the Black Life Matters Ride, which gathered a meeting of 600 people and sparked the founding of more localized Black Lives Matter groups and the promulgation of the campaign into a network.

Broadening Scope: From Police Brutality to Social Injustices

The year 2015 noticed another spate of Black people being killed by enforcement officers in the USA, including Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Meagan Hockaday. Black Lives Matter protested against these and many more. They also organized protests to spotlight the injustices and other problems confronted by Black women and Black LGBT communities.

Continued Activism and Expanding Influence

In 2016 Black Lived Matter organized many protests against police brutality directed towards Black people. The ones whose deaths occurred due to police actions in conjunction with Deborah Danner and Alton Sterling. In 2017, Black Lives Matter placed on their first artwork exhibition timed to coincide with Black History Month in Virginia, US. It featured the work of over 30 Black artists and creators.

Rise in Global Awareness and Solidarity

By May 1st, 2018, a study observed that the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was used nearly almost 30 million times on Twitter since the first instance in the year of 2013. In February 2019, the rapper 21 Savage was arrested and detained by the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)in the US. Cullors convened a collection of 60 high-profile stars from the music and entertainment worlds to advocate for his release. In May, a teenager, Isaiah Lewis, was shot by police and killed in Oklahoma. Days later, Black Lives Matter held a 100-sturdy rally in protest of the incident. Major protests were sparked at the end of May, followed by the loss of life of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. Black Lives Matter went on to organize protests around the world.

References:

1. “About Black Lives Matter”. Black Lives Matter. https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
2. McKesson, D. (2016). “On the Road with the Black Lives Matter Movement”. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/de_ray_mckesson_on_the_front_lines_of_the_black_lives_matter_movement
3. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. (n.d.). “Our Herstory”. https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/
4. Burch, A. (2020). “How Black Lives Matter Went Global”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/george-floyd-protests-global.html
5. Cullors, P. (2021). “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir”. St. Martin’s Press.

The Tragic Killing of George Floyd

“On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed by an Officer in the Minneapolis Police Department. The officer used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck to the ground for over eight minutes. As you read, you might think oh, another black man just killed, but no, it’s not. Over the past hundreds of years, black people have been getting killed by the very people we think are here to protect us. Between 1991 and June 2020, at least 437 innocent people died while in police custody, many from violence or neglect.

The Rise of “Black Lives Matter” Movement

It’s police officers killing us, not a gang on the street, not a robber, not a terrorist but police officers. The Police are here to serve and protect the people, but do they consider blacks or other races people? It’s like we’re animals that they’re just shooting; it even has us scared to go for a walk because the Police are giving the citizens the feeling that they can shoot people and not get charged like Travon Martin.

With all this going on, it brought light to a movement that has been taken as a lackluster movement…The Black Lives Matter. “The Black Lives Matter protests for reform in law enforcement and for greater social equality have espoused some tactics which appear to be in direct opposition to one another.” When the George Floyd killing happened, that’s when the height of Black Lives Matter went to an all-time high!!!
News of the killing sparked an immediate protest of policing behavior, with the first protest taking place in Minneapolis on the next day, May 26, 2020.1 The death of George Floyd also sparked widespread protests in large cities nationwide.

A Global Response to Racial Injustice

While many protests were peaceful, some were violent. There were large incidents of looting in cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, as well as smaller cities. It even got to a point where police units started to use force against protesters, including pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. But, the force came after cities put out nightly curfews. But it didn’t stop there!!!

The George Floyd killing caused outrage throughout the world!!! Brazilians filled the streets following the recent killing of a 14-year-old black teenager by Brazilian Police. Protests in London and Amsterdam even brewed out with the support of the U.S. Black Lives Matter and called attention to racism and injustice in Britain and Europe. So this shows you that racism and racial inequality are not in just one place. It is everywhere!!!

There is even racism among the same races. A Lot of black people separate themselves by the shade of their black, and Caucasian people separate themselves by social status or class. So it’s not just a one-race thing or a one-way thing. It is everything. However, blacks and
people of color are treated worse, and we’re tired!!!

George Floyd had three home-going services, and during one of the services, In his eulogy, Reverend Al Sharpton stated, ‘God took the rejected stone and made him the cornerstone of a movement that’s going to change the whole wide world.’ That is true; it took for this man’s life to be taken for the world to realize that we are wrong and it is time for a change, and this election proved that we are ready for change.
Change is what we got.

This Movement has brought America closer than ever. We were in the streets protesting even during a pandemic. People were risking their life and chances of catching a disease that could kill them. It was thousands of people out in the streets posting, but everyone had a mask on. Still, it was during a pandemic, and this showed how committed we were. It wasn’t only black people protesting, it was people of all racist backgrounds, but there still was hate.

On August 25, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse decided to go to a Kenosha city protest and shoot innocent protesters, and he was arrested and unharmed. This goes to show that even after what happened to George Floyd, it is still some injustice that is not equal; this kid shot and killed multiple people and made it out alive, but an innocent black man gets accused of having counterfeit money and gets strangled for it. It is horrific. It goes to show that America has some improvement to do.

“Based on research Acknowledging institutional racism is the first step to addressing it. Indigenous social disadvantage is associated with increased crime, compounded by aggressive and disproportionate punishment, creating a cycle of disadvantage. Closing the gap is easy to say but difficult to achieve. Doctors who can not only provide evidence-based, high-quality care at the bedside but who strive for health justice, advocate for more equitable health policies, and are willing to challenge harmful systemic issues like institutional racism”.

The Need for Reform and Education

At the end of the day, we as a whole are going to have to deal with racism and institutionalism because a lot of people still have to learn and stop being ignorant. Racism is something that ignorant people do. Officer Chauvin was ignorant when he ignored George Floyd’s plea for his life, Zimmerman was ignorant when he shot Trayvon Martin for having a bag of Skittles, Rittenhouse was ignorant for shooting innocent black protestors, and Dylann Roof was ignorant for shooting innocent black churchgoers. All of them were ignorant when they did their acts, and they had no hearts.

That’s why we as a whole should educate ourselves and generations to come about racism in America. We have to stand united and be one for us all to succeed and be prosperous. God loves us all; red, yellow, black, or white. He loves us, and those who believe in the power of God should listen to him, and his word and all come together as one and not be identified by race but as God’s children.

References:

1. “Protests and Demonstrations” – The New York Times. (2020, July 30). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-new-york-los-angeles
2. Ren, J., & Bennett, D. E. (2021). “Did Black Lives Matter? Social Media, Protests, and Demonstrations”. Social Science Quarterly, 102(2), 659-677.
3. “George Floyd’s Killing at the Hands of the Police” – Council on Foreign Relations. (2020, June 4). Retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/george-floyds-killing-hands-police
4. Frankenberg, R. (1993). “White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness”. University of Minnesota Press.
5. Patel, N., & Seyed-Raeisy, I. (2021). “Reconceptualizing Racism as a Public Health Issue: A Critical Review”. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 8(4), 833-840.
6. Keet, A., & Walsh, M. (2020). “The Killing of George Floyd Sparks Global Demonstrations”. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/killing-george-floyd-sparks-global-demonstrations
7. Sofer, M. (2021). “Racial Discrimination as a Social Determinant of Health”. In Social Determinants of Health: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Social Inequality and Wellbeing (pp. 103-116). Springer.
8. Levin, B. (2006). “The violence of hate: Confronting racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of bigotry”. Algora Publishing.

Black Lives Matter: The Over-Criminalization of Black Individuals

In recent years there has been a lot of scrutiny about the injustices that exist in the justice system; one of the major injustices is the over-criminalization of black men and women. Black men are six times more likely to get incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails than white men. This statistic had increased since 1960, when black men were five times as likely as whites to be incarcerated. In 1972 the United States had a prison population of 300,00. Today, we have a prison population of 2.3 million. President Barrack Obama said in one of his speeches, “So, let’s look at the statistics. The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners.” The likelihood of a black man getting locked up during his lifetime is 1 in 3. The lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for a white man is 1 in 17. Why are black men getting incarcerated at an alarmingly high rate over white men? The Nixon and Reagan era was the start of mass incarceration for poor people of color.

Nixon’s Appeal and the “War on Drugs”

“America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” – Richard Nixon. During the presidential race, Richard Nixon used his “get tough on crime” to help persuade poor working-class whites to join the Republican party. Nixon was able to speak to the poor white working class by speaking in subtle, non-racist terms. He would use the rise in the crime rate, law and order, and other subtle racist hints to appeal to whites.

The Expansion and Implications of Nixon’s Initiatives

In June 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs. A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s led President Nixon to focus on targeting substance abuse. President Nixon increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures as part of the War on Drugs initiative. Nixon started mandatory prison sentencing for drug crimes. He also created the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP). Then in 1973, Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA is responsible for tackling drug use and smuggling into the United States. In the beginning, the DEA was given a budget of $74 million and 1,470 special agents. Now the DEA has a budget of $2.03 billion and over 5,000 special agents.

The Ehrlichman Revelation and the Impact on Incarceration Rates

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” – John Ehrlichman, Nixon Advisor.

Nixon`s war on drugs did work on incarcerating blacks. During the nearly 50-year period between 1925 and the early 1970s, the male incarceration rate was remarkably stable at about 200 men per 100,000 population. By 1986 a decade after the War on Drugs started locking up drug users and dealers in cages, the male incarceration rate doubled to about 400 per 100,000 population. Then after another decade, the male incarceration rate doubled again to more than 800. It hit its peak in 2008, reaching 956 men per 100,00 population were getting locked up. The War on Drugs had a significantly much greater negative effect on blacks and Hispanics than whites. The War on Drugs had a more devastating and disproportionate adverse effect on America`s most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.

President Nixon was the first one to start the term “A War on Drugs,” but President Ronald Reagan turned that rhetorical war into a literal one. Ronald Reagan started the modern war on drugs in 1982. The popular opinion polls of the day show that drugs were not an issue for most people in the United States at the time. President Reagan was determined to convince everyone the War on Drugs should be put on his agenda. Reagan even used his wife to help support his War on Drugs by having her start the “Just Say No” campaign. Most people supported the War on Drugs by supporting the “just say no “campaign. The “Just Say No” campaign was not about locking people up. It was about educating people and talking about prevention.

In the mid-1980s, they already started to embark on a war on drugs, then all of a sudden, a new drug came along, crack cocaine. This drug could be marketed in small doses, relatively inexpensively. Crack cocaine started taking over communities, particularly African American communities. In almost record time, Congress established a mandatory sentencing penalty for crack that was harsher than those for powder cocaine. You would get the same amount of time in prison for 100 ounces of powdered cocaine that you would get for 1 ounce of crack cocaine. Even though crack cocaine and powder cocaine are the same drug, the only difference is how you take it; the mandatory sentences are longer for crack cocaine.

And even though white people used and sold crack more than black, somehow, it was black people who went to prison. The people who were usually getting these longer sentences for possession of crack cocaine were black or Hispanic, or Latino. If you were black with crack cocaine, you were going to prison for basically the rest of your life, but if you were white, you just got a slap on the wrist. The media ignored the actual problems to this day, and crack is still talked about as a black problem. The black communities would get raided by police while the big-time bankers openly used coke with impunity.

Over the next year, the United States’ spending on drug law enforcement tripled from 1981. It looked like a tornado went through black communities cutting off men from their families as they disappeared into prisons for long periods of time. These types of disparities in the Reagan era quickly exploded into the era of mass incarceration. President Reagan ultimately took the problem of economic inequality of hyper segregation in American cities and the drug abuse problem and criminalized all of that in the form of the war on drugs. Looking back on how crack cocaine and powder cocaine were treated, most people believe that they should have treated the drugs the same. Treating crack cocaine more harshly, even though it was the same drug as powder cocaine, put an enormous burden on the black community, but it also fundamentally violated a sense of core fairness.

When crack cocaine hit in the early 1980s, there were a lot of politicians who thought this was a real threat and wanted to crack down on it. Mayor Rengel was one of the guys who were pushing for stronger sentencing. At the time, it seemed like a good effective idea, but looking back, it did not work out as effectively as they thought it would. The rhetorical war was announced as part of a political strategy by President Richard Nixon, which then turned into a literal war by President Ronald Reagan. Then it began to turn into something that began to feel like nearly genocidal in many poorer communities of color. President Nixon`s Southern strategy was implemented right after the Civil Rights Movement. In 1891 soon-to-be President Reagan`s campaign strategist, Lee Atwater, explained what the Southern Strategy was.

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So, you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Nixon played on the fears of crime and law and order to win the election. President Reagan promised tax cuts to the rich and to throw all the crack cocaine users in jail for long amounts of time to keep the streets safe. Both of which devastated communities of color but were very effective in getting the southern votes. You cannot understand American political culture without race at the center of it. In many ways, the so-called “war on drugs: was a war on communities of color; black and Latino communities had devastating impacts.

We have more African Americans under criminal supervision than all the slaves back in the 1850s. The Prison industrial complex is modern-day slavery because it relies historically on the inheritances of slavery. Once you have been convicted of a crime, you basically lose all your rights as a citizen and, in essence, become a slave of the state. Since the beginning of the United States’ history, blacks have been repeatedly controlled by systems of social and racial control. Social and racial control never dies. They are reborn in a new form to the needs and constraints of the time.

Once slavery ended, a new system was born, and it was “convict leasing,” which was a new form of slavery. Once convict leasing was done, a new system was born, which was the Jim Crow system. The Jim Crow system regulated blacks to a permanent second-class status. Decades later, after the Jim Crow system collapsed again, a new system was born in America, the system of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration strips millions of poor people, most poor people of color, of the very rights they won in the civil rights movement.

There are thousands of people sitting in jail right at this very moment only because they are too poor to get out. The criminal system treats you better if you`re rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Most American think the criminal system is about judges and juries because of all the courtroom dramas they’ve seen when, in reality, that is not the case at all. They cannot have everyone go to trial. If they did, the whole system would shut down. What normally happens is the prosecutors pressure them into taking a deal by saying you can take this deal, and we will give you the minimum amount of time, or You can take your chance and go to court, and we will give you 30 years.

Most people from poverty do not make it to trial. 97% of the people in jail right now have taken the plea deal. Plea bargaining is one of the worst violations of human rights that can happen within the justice system. People are pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit because the mandatory minimums for the crime are so unbearable. What people do not realize is that if you exercise your right and if you are convicted, you will get punished 10x worse than if you just took the deal.

An example of a poor black man fighting back at the justice system and exercising his right to a trial is the story of Kalief Browder. Kalief Browder was accused of a petty crime that he did not even commit. He was accused of stealing a backpack. Kalief realized that if he pleaded guilty to this crime, it would completely change his life in the worst way possible. He would have a felon on his record for the rest of his life. Kalief`s older brother had a record, and he saw how he struggled to get a decent-paying job and how hard it was to restart his life. He refused to ruin his clean record for a crime he did not commit, so taking the plea deal was never in the picture. His mom was too poor to afford bail, so he sat in Rikers Island as a 16-year-old awaiting his trial. If he had taken his plea deal, he would have only been in jail for one year, but he ended up being at Rikers Island for three years.

The Tragic Story of Kalief Browder

Browder spent nearly two years in solitary confinement to keep him protected from the inmates and correction officers who would continually beat up the 16-year-old. Browder eventually got broken down and started giving up hope about getting released from Rikers Island; he even started considering taking the plea deal, so he could get out of prison faster. He was released when the prosecutors were found to be lacking any evidence against Kalief, and the case’s main witness left the United States without communication with the prosecutors in years. The court basically punished Browder for having the bravery to not take the plea deal and want to go to trial. In that time, in those three years, Kalief Browder was sitting in jail waiting for his trial and not being charged for anything; his when mental health started to deteriorate, and he started getting into fights. Two years after his release from prison, Browder committed suicide.

The Prison Industrial Complex and the Cycle of Incarceration

The Prison Industrial Complex is a beast, and it eats up black and Latino people for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Jail dehumanizes and sensory deprives people; humans are not meant to be locked up in cages. The conditions people live through, you would not even think to keep your pets in those kinds of conditions that we keep people in. The way prisons and jails are set up not only do they deprive you of your liberty, but they punish you too. Once somebody is locked up, they`re basically gone. Everyone stops caring and thinking about them. That is one of the problems with the prison system.

They`re basically all in the dark, and no one knows what happens within them. In many ways, it is much easier to send people to jail than society is able to forget about them. We have too many laws that are locking up too many people up for too many things and giving them sentences that are too harsh. We are putting them in prison for long periods of time, doing none to very little rehabilitation, so when they re-enter society, they get shunned, and then they go back into the prison system, and it is a never-ending cycle. Why is it easier for inmates to go back into the prison system than to be able to restart their life?

The Lasting Mark of a Felony: A New Form of Discrimination

A question that appears on job applications is, “Have you been convicted of a felony.” When you have a felon on your record, you basically become a slave. You lose all your rights. In some cases, you cannot get student loans; you cannot get many business licenses, food stamps, private rentals in regard to housing, or life insurance. Felon is the scarlet letter that follows you around for the rest of your life in this country. Once you do commit a crime and do time, you should be able to move past it, but in the US, you can never move past your past. In many ways, the old Jim Crow laws are legal again once you’ve been branded a felon. It seems in America, we have not ended racism but just redesigned it.

If we leave it up to our politicians, they might tamper with the system because we are at the point in history where it is politically right to make a change within the justice system. They are not going to change the prison system like we need to see to get the United States out of this mess. They are most definitely not going to go backward and fix the mess they made because they are not ready to make that change. As a country, we have never been able to own up to the fact that we have steamrolled through entire generations and communities with things like slavery and Jim Crow laws and all the other systems of oppression we have created to keep black people at a disadvantage and led us to where we are today.

The black lives matter movement is really about everybody’s life mattering, including the people who enter the criminal justice system. It’s not just about black lives. It’s about changing the way this country understands human dignity. The black lives matter movement highlights the idea of whose life we recognize as valuable. The movement is about rehumanizing everyone as people, not just blacks but all of us. We ended the KKK, but when you see black kids still getting locked up and shot down, you realize the image of a black man has not changed. Society still views blacks as dangerous criminals; society still does not value the life of a black man. People of color are still getting locked up and shot down by police while the white man can walk away unharmed and get a prison sentence not as harsh as a black man would, even when they commit such horrific crimes as mass murder.

When slavery ended, they called it Jubilee; blacks thought it was done. Then you had 100 years of Jim Crow and lynching and terror. Then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came, and we got bills passed to vote, and then they broke out, then handcuffs. Now they label you a felon, and you cannot vote or even get a decent-paying job. The system of mass incarceration has grown and has an appetite that is eating up people of color communities. People always say I do not understand how people could have lived through slavery and been okay with that. How can people go to a lynching and participate in segregation? How can people stand by while others are getting mistreated for only one reason the color of their skin? Well, the crazy thing is we are living during a time when blacks are being mistreated within the prison system, and most people are turning their backs on it and tolerating it.

References:

1. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139-167.
2. Collins, P. H. (2016). Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41, 1-20.
3. Tucker, M. J., Berg, C. J., Callaghan, W. M., Hsia, J., & Barfield, W. D. (2007). Black-white disparities in pregnancy-related mortality in the United States. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 197(5), 409-e1.
4. Creanga, A. A., Syverson, C., Seed, K., & Callaghan, W. M. (2015). Pregnancy-related mortality in the United States, 2011–2013. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 125(1), 5-12.
5. Williams, D. R., & Mohammad, S. A. (2008). Discrimination and racial disparities in health: Evidence and needed research. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 32(1), 20-47.
6. Crenshaw, K., Ocen, P., & Nanda, J. (2015). Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected. Columbia Law School, Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies.

The black lives movement with the #blacklivesmatter has greatly influenced the action as a democracy acts. The influential movement’s goal is to pave the way for african american freedom from modern systematic dehumanization. BLM has transformed the way we talk about police violence among minorities and has succeeded in transforming how Americans talk about, think about, and organize for justified freedom. The organizations of the movement include Assata’s Daughters, Black Youth Project 100, the St. Louis Action Council, the Dream Defenders, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle. One of the most notable actions taken by the movement is its work on police corruption. Groups working together helped the U.S department of criminal justice release four reports. These reports confirm These reports are resulting, in a five-year movement that has succeeded in transforming and evolving how Americans talk and perceived freedom for minorities. Black lives matter foundation is a human rights movement more so than a civil rights movement. Rather than changing laws, their goal is to free them from the dehumanization system that currently exists.

Participation in the group happens around the country. Over the past five years, the participation level has not stagnated. Looking into the foreseeable future BLM movement’s work certainly settles for the status quo. Students on the ground in Missouri, as part of the #ConcernedStudent1950 movement, helped lead to the resignation of the University of Missouri president over his failure to deal with racism on campus. Also, BLM compelled Democrats to restructure their national platform to include issues such as criminal justice reform, and the movement contributed to the election of Black leftist organizers to public offices, such as activist Chokwe Lumumba to the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.

Over the past few months, I’ve been paying close attention to the news out of Ferguson, Missouri. Almost five years ago, 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed by a white police officer. The officer was found not guilty, which caused protests, riots, and the start of the “hands up don’t shoot” movement. In these five years, six men, who like Evans were active members in the community and a part of the Ferguson protests have died. One by one. The Black Lives Matter organization has to be one of the most misunderstood groups, with their message getting misconstrued by people who just don’t want to listen. The most recent death to come out of Ferguson was that of protestor Bassem Masri (31 years old) in November. The Palestinian American was found on a bus and his cause of death was a heart attack from a fentanyl overdose. The activist was known in the community for live-streaming protests and demonstrations throughout Ferguson.

Beginning activists have called for “the end of modern policing in America”. The term would not be used if not for the work they have done. Ironically, many of the political and social debates that have come to define the age of Trump, such as the immigration debate, are arguably indirectly influenced by BLM. Even though they are not a main catalyst in the media as much as they still make an impact on the country’s biggest issues. A notable example of this, is recently, congressional Democrats have ordered an abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which in turn has been violating the rights of undocumented immigrants. An issue that has been missing in much of the mainstream coverage of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement debate is an acknowledgment of how the Democratic left’s radicalization would not have been possible without the efforts of Black radical grassroots social movements, such as BLM. We have seen a shift in the country’s overall opinion of the democratic party since the rise of free speech in social media. As the country is now pushing for peace and equality the efforts of standing up for what you believe in is the fundamental part in both the democratic system and rooted deep in what #blacklives matter preaches. The overall radicalization of the left party is largely in part to the uprising #blacklivesmatter has caused in society.

Today much of society is making the claim that the black lives matter movement is on the decline. This statement is very much so false. The levels of participation have remained static throughout the past five years. The truth is that all of Donald Trump’s personal and political news are currently dominating media news. Even though the cameras are not showing their efforts being made it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. If you were to ask the average american citizen what they knew about black lives matter they would most likely solely know the large efforts such as the riots of Ferguson, Travon Martin, and Erik Garner. These are the events that the media loves to cover but much of the small and nitty-gritty work is being done in many communities across the country to slowly change the status quo of human rights. 

The Black Lives Matter movement started gaining nationwide attention for police brutality during the mid to late 2010s. However, people brutality has been a major problem for almost 100 years with many examples occurring from the 1950s to today. There are three major examples of police brutality that I will touch on in this section. The first two (John Derrick and Jessie Roberts) are from before 1965 and show the beginnings of social movements against police brutality. The latter example (Eric Garner) shows the effect of social media and technology on the spread of information regarding police brutality.

John Derrick was an army veteran who had been wounded in Korea and released from active duty in December of 1950. Due to his injury, he had been rewarded with a large settlement and decided to go to a bar with some of his friends. Derrick decided to buy his friends some alcoholic beverages while not partaking in the alcohol himself. On the way home from the bar, Derrick and his friends were stopped by two patrolmen. The patrolmen asked Derrick and his friends to raise their hands in the air. Without hesitation, the two patrolmen opened fire on Derrick and his friends. Derrick, unfortunately, took a bullet to the heart and ultimately passed away. According to Taylor, ‘Stunned by the shooting Milline asked, ‘Why? Why did they do it? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” (205). Police later claimed they believed Derrick has a gun on him but that was never proven to be true. The New York district attorney ruled that the patrolmen were within their rights and no charges came from this act of violence. The findings of this greatly upset the Harlem community and began a major protest movement, one of the first that gained the support of famous figures at the time. A rally, scheduled for January 5th, 1951, was formed by the New York Amsterdam News. According to Taylor, ‘New York Senator Jacob Javits, Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., labor leader A. Phillip Randolph, baseball great Jackie Robinson, and boxing sensation Sugar Ray Robinson agreed to attend the event’ (205). This was one of the first movements against police brutality that featured prominent social figures the common man would recognize.

Jessie Roberts reported that his car had been stolen at his local police precinct on November 7th, 1963. Roberts had told the precinct that he suspected Richard Warme had stolen his car but had no interest in pressing charges against the teenager. Roberts simply wanted his car to be returned. Roberts waited for an extended period with no update, so he decided to return to his automobile repair shop. Upon return, Roberts found three police detectives inside the auto repair shop. These detectives claimed to find a large bag of marijuana that Roberts had never seen before. The detectives refused to believe this and physically assaulted him before arresting him. When returning to the precinct, Roberts was interrogated about gun possession and other things which were not truthful. Policemen then stage a fake crucifixion with Roberts inside the detention pen. Roberts continued to be physically assaulted while in this position sustaining several broken ribs and other injuries.

Following this incident, Roberts went to the Congress of Racial Equality located in the Bronx to describe the traumatic events he had recently endured. The Congress of Racial Equality found several unusual aspects of Roberts’ arrest including the fact that the police had no warrant for Roberts’ auto-repair shop. Following these discoveries, the district attorney of the County of the Bronx opened an investigation into these irregularities and presented the case to a grand jury. Unfortunately, the case was poorly put together and the jury did not allow for all of Roberts’ testimonies to be heard. This led to no indictment on the policemen’s behalf and an eventual drug charge for Roberts. This drug charge was eventually suspended by a judge. Following this, Roberts received many phone calls from the New York Police Department threatening him to leave the Bronx. Roberts’ landlord also received several letters asking for the eviction of Roberts’ automobile repair shop.

Eric Garner was a father of six children from Staten Island, New York. Before his death, Garner was stopped by police on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes, which is a small offense in the state of New York. Police accuse Garner of resisting arrest and eventually place him in a chokehold while tackling him to the ground. Garner eventually passed away because of the chokehold which had been banned by the New York Police Department. This death led to a large outcry due to the technological advances made before this death. The events leader to Eric Garner’s death were caught on camera by bystanders. According to Marcus, ‘In the end, Eric Garner cried out to the officer who had him in a choke hold ‘I can’t breathe’ eleven times before his heart gave out, which would lead to his death an hour later’ (55). The ‘Black Lives Matter’ used Eric Garner’s last words as their slogan for changes when it comes to police violence. ‘I can’t breathe’ has been used throughout African American society with various artists using those words as lyrics for songs asking for change. Numerous teams from the National Basketball Association wore shirts with those words on them in support of the African American community.

Several organizations have been formed over the past century to bring light to racial injustices throughout every aspect of society. Sit-ins were one of the most influential in the early days of the civil rights movement. One of the most notorious was the ‘Black Power’ started by the Black Panthers. However, none of these had the widespread media attention that the ‘Black Lives Matter movement has gained in the 10 years it has been formed. The Black Lives Matter movement was originally a social media movement in which people used hashtags to show their support for change in police brutality occurrences. However, as more unfortunate events began to occur, the Black Lives Matter movement began to organize protests and social movements to call for change.

The Black Lives Matter movement gained national attention following the tragic death of Trayvon Martin on February 26th, 2012. Martin was an African American teenager who was walking around the neighborhood of George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was the head of the neighborhood watch and felt it necessary to call the police because Martin was suspicious of Zimmerman. The police told Zimmerman to not engage the teen and wait until the police arrived. Zimmerman ignored these requests and began to follow Martin. Eventually, there was an argument that occurred between Zimmerman and Martin which led to the firing of Zimmerman’s weapon. Martin was struck by the bullets and passed away soon after. According to Kovera, ‘Zimmerman was not charged with Martin’s murder because he claimed to be acting in self-defense Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder but acquitted by a six-person jury that contained only one person of color’ (1139). Following this outcome, the Black Lives Matter movement began to hold active rallies and cry out for justice through social media on an unprecedented scale. Hundreds of cities began holding protests to gain the attention of policymakers to change the power struggle between African Americans and police forces. This seemed to work as President Obama and other high-level politicians released several statements condemning the actions of Zimmerman and promising change. However, these changes were meniscal and did not prevent more lives from being taken through police brutality.

As mentioned previously, the Black Lives Matter movement had its beginnings during the George Zimmerman case. The Black Lives Matter movement had been working for almost 2 years at this point to find justice for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Tensions were high as the movement demanded something to be done about the power police officers have and the non-existent repercussions of their actions. The movement then reached a climax during the Michael Brown case in August 2014. Michael Brown was walking with one of his friends when they were stopped by police officer Darren Wilson. A struggle ensued leading to Officer Wilson discharging his weapon towards Brown but missing. Wilson and his friend then fled on foot to escape Wilson. Officer Wilson pursued Brown and eventually caught up to him. Brown was then shot several times and passed away shortly after. The Black Lives Matter movement first expressed outrage at the number of times Brown had been shot. Wilson provided a statement on this which further outraged the African American community. According to Francis and Wright-Rigueur, ‘Officer Wilson explained, ‘At this point, it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him” (452). Wilson was not indicted on any charges because he testified that he feared for his life in the moments before murdering Brown. The Black Lives Matter movement took the extreme issue to this as Wilson and Brown were of similar build and Wilson was armed at the time. This incident took place in Ferguson, Missouri which is obviously a smaller sample size than New York City. However, this example can show the power of repeated protests by the Black Lives Matter Movement. The United States Justice Department launched investigations into the incident, with one investigation finding major racial bias. According to the report, found on the BBC’s website, ‘Police were quick to escalate force and when they did, African-Americans accounted for 90% of the officers’ use of force’ (‘Ferguson unrest: From shooting to nationwide protests’). The findings go on to highlight racial differences when communicating with the court as well as the court’s overuse of arrest warrants on African American citizens. Following the investigation, multiple officers from the Ferguson Police Department were released including the police chief at the time.

Recently, the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement have not been in vain. Reforms have begun to be put in place that could limit the occurrence of police brutality. The first instance of this is the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to keep officers accountable. The ability to have recorded footage of officers gives the public ease of mind. According to Lum et al., ‘BWCs were intended to document interactions between police and citizens to increase the transparency and accountability of these interactions, especially during investigations of police misconduct’ (4). Regarding protesting, there had been a history of violence between police officers and those protesting. Tactics would be used by the police to trap the protestors and arrest them or even physically abuse them. One example of this is called kettling. Kettling is the act of corralling protestors or even peaceful bystanders, and keeping them in an hour for several hours. Often, this is done to keep people in an area that is easy for police to arrest people and collect documents or other personal details. One example of this comes from when the G8 summit was hosted. Protests broke out and police used the kettling tactic to control the crowd. According to Rosie and Gorringe, corralled protestors and bystanders for several hours without water or toilets photos showed police shoving onlookers with shields and raising batons against protestors (2009). These same tactics were used on Black Lives Matters protestors in New York City. Following these events, Letitia James demanded an end to the use of excessive force against peaceful protestors. The Black Lives Matter movement has been a social reform tool that has changed major aspects of life for African Americans since its inception in 2012. While there is clearly still work to be done, the movement has inspired change in many aspects of life that did not seem possible. However, this would not be possible without the protests of early incidents of police brutality in the post-Cold War era. As strides are continuing to be made, the Black Lives Matter movement must continue to look at its early history for examples and advice on the proper ways to advocate for social reform. Hopefully, peaceful protests can continue, and reform will continue to happen on a nationwide stage as it has for the previous decade.

In this essay, I am going to discuss Jonathan Bachman, taking in Baton Rouge a press photograph from a Black Lives Matter protest in 2015. 

This photo shows a woman -named Leshia Evans a nurse from New York- calmly standing in a long summer in the middle of the road confronting the police who are all wearing full riot gear. Two officers are running up to her to arrester her with zip ties – the police use zip ties so they can restrain multiple people-. This image has become the main leading image of the Black Lives Matter protest and won multiple awards from the world press Photo and LensCulture. Black Lives Matter started in 2013 George Zimmerman shot seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin and started with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter and then the movement grew after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michel Brown in 2014 and focuses on the aggressive and violent acts of the police towards people of color. The police look like they are in disbelief. Leshia Evans traveled from New York to Louisiana on the ninth of July to protest police brutality after the murder of Alton Sterling an African American who was shot to death by the police during an incident in Baton Rouge -Louisiana- on the fifth of July. The police were called because someone had called the police saying a black was selling CDs and threatened him with a gun. The shooting was captured on video and was videoed by an unknown witness causing the protests In Baton Rouge. The video shows two police officers approach him and one of the police officers tackled him over the bonnet of his car allegedly restraining him down on the ground, at one point in the video you can hear in the background someone shouting that ‘he’s got a gun and then there were gunshots, but the owner of a shop nearby said he never saw Alton reach for a gun. He was a father of 5 and sold DVDs and CDs in the car park where he died.

The photographer who took this was called Jonathan Bachman this was the first protest he had ever covered, and he took around 1200 photographs that day. He dropped out of college to pursue photography.

Leshia Evans spent 24 hours in jail. The police claimed after her arrest that she was arrested for obstruction of a highway. They took her stuff and fingerprinted her they also stripped and searched her even as far as making her squat and cough. They were treating her like a dangerous criminal. The irony was those police officers processing her were African American women. Leshia Evans has spoken about how she was a symbol and how people just assumed what she was like, and how when people get to know her, she does not live up to there.

‘I’m not against protesting peacefully, and I’m not pro-violence, but I’m definitely in favor of defending yourself. When people hear the way I speak, they’re usually like, ‘Uhh, this is not what I thought. We thought you were just about peace and holding hands!” (Leisha Evans, 2018)

This image shows that individual actions matter.

Bibliography

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3. Jones, J. (2016) ‘Sistine perfection or pissed-up Manchester street scene? Let’s put things in perspective ‘, The Guardian, 4 January. Available at: https:www.theguardian.comartanddesignjonathanjonesblog2016jan04manchester-street-scene-perspective-sistine-photo-new-year-renaissance-painting (Assessed: 27 March 2021).Briggs, B. (2020) ‘Golden Dawn and the killing of Pavlos Fyssas’, The Ferret, 5 October. Available at: https: the ferret.scotgolden-dawn-forensic-architecture-pavlos-fyssas (Assessed: 27 March 2021).
4. Coleman, L. (2021) ‘ Scene of famous New Year’s Eve photo very different this year in Tier 4 lockdown’, The Mirror, 1 January. Available at: https:www.mirror.co.uknewsuk-newsscene-famous-new-years-eve-23248496 (Assessed: 27 March 2021).Safi, M. (2016) ‘Like a beautiful painting’: the image of New Year’s mayhem in Manchester goes viral, The Guardian, 3 January. Available at:https:www.theguardian.comuk-news2016jan03like-a-beautiful-painting-image-of-new-years-mayhem-in-manchester-goes-viral (Assessed: 27 March 2021).
5. Fares, M. (2016) ‘Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge’, Reuters, 12 July. Available at: https:www.reuters.comarticleus-usa-police-ieshiaevans-photographer-idUSKCN0ZS00D (Assessed: 27 March 2021).Evans, L. (2016) ‘I wasn’t afraid. I took a stand in Baton Rouge because enough is enough, The Guardian, 22 July. Available at:https:www.theguardian.comcommentisfree2016jul22i-wasnt-afraid-i-took-a-stand-in-baton-rouge-because-enough-is-enough (Assessed: 27 March 2021).
6. Jones, J, (2018) ‘2 Years After Going Viral, Ieshia Evans Reflects On Her Iconic Protest Photo’, Huffpost, 6 July. Available at:https:www.huffpost.comentrytwo-years-after-going-viral-ieshia-evans-reflects-on-her-iconic-protest-photo_n_5b3bbefde4b09e4a8b28129f (Assessed: 27 March 2021).
7. Chan, M. (2016) ‘What to Know About Alton Sterling’s Police Shooting Death in Baton Rouge’, Time, 6 July. Available at: https: time.com4395459alton-sterling-baton-rouge-police-shooting (Assessed: 27 March 2021).Bachman, J. (2016) ‘Unrest in Baton Rouge’, Lens Culture, Available at https:www.lensculture.comarticlesjonathan-bachman-unrest-in-baton-rouge(Assessed: 27 March 2021).
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Minneapolis has been engulfed by protest this week Over The Killing of an unarmed black man on May 25, 2020 Geroge Floyd died after a white officer pinned him down kneeling on his neck, in the video he can be heard repeatedly “ I Can’t breath” over the night protester threw fireworks at police and set a police building on fire. The government requested reinforcements from the National Guard. the prostate has spread to New York, Denver, phoenix in Columbus Ohio, menstruates tried to enter the statehouse. In Los Angeles members of the movement “Black Lives Matter” gathered outside the hall of justice for the phrase I Can’t Breath Hawks back to an incident that galvanized the movement in 2014 black lives matter had momentum and real cultural currency it felt like their calls for semantic change might be answered the protests are a reminder of the anger behind the movement hasn’t diminished even if it might see the movement itself has

So the phrase I can’t breathe we heard in Minneapolis is very similar to what we heard in 2014 when the man Eric Garner was choked to death by a policeman

he was saying I can’t breathe phrase and the phrase became a phrase that was used by black lives matter to complain about police brutality and the freedom from the killing of African American men by the place.

Similar to what happened in Minneapolis how has black lives matter been responding to this incident

I think we haven’t seen as much use of the term black lives matter a couple of months ago, in fact, we’re seeing the same thing it’s where ordinary African Americans absolutely outraged by the behavior of the police and the bad training that they have and they’re furious and they demand so that is serious to prevent this from happening in greater numbers so this is resident of what happened in the past few years and the fact that we’re heading in the warm summer months when more of these things seem to happen could suggest more protest more incidents to fuel a fire

But BLM seems to have faded from public view somewhat in the past few years what’s been happening in the meantime

What is interesting is to look back on the last few years and ask what happened to BLM because in some ways it has faded as a present as a force. If you look at the interest online for BLM in the weeks and the years before these latest police killings actually had to decline a great deal if you were to look at the individuals, who are involved in BLM they haven’t been able to substance the same level of high profile discussion and media attention that they once did among the various founders and activist in BLM they have said that after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 their phone calls went dead no longer did tv produces and others want to have them on their shows the interest from the mass media in BLM seen drift away since about 2016 BLM has gone into a more duel phase

But yet hasn’t disappeared altogether what do think are the structural issues that have led to that evidence of decline or at least slipping out of view

One of the problems with BLM is that it decided to form this nonhigh radical structure for the organization so they wouldn’t pick a single cosmetic leader to be the frontman or the frontwoman of the organization they consciously say they don’t want anyone to have a leader such as Martian Luther King who could be identified as the face of the organization members of the group say for example they don’t want to have one leader who could then be assassinated or taken out and therefore to weaken the organization but the problem with lacking a single cosmetic leader is it makes it harder for followers for donors, partners to see someone who they can feel intoned with and decide they want the support and you look at the situations such as now with coronavirus where African Americans are being killed at a rate two in a half times greater than white Americans BLM has not emerged as a powerful voice to speak up on that issue it’s not being nimble enough to really find ways to speak up on the issues beyond the violence committed by police and by white pigeon auntie

but that’s not to say that all of the foot soldiers of the movements have been idle during this time I mean what have they been doing

So there are other ways in which BLM has had a great impact and if you speak to other people’s one activist I spoke to in Los Angeles says that the real impact of the charter of the movement is being at a local level so you look at black lives matter in Los Angeles in Chicago in Washington DC and you see where activist turn out to local meetings Vance weather has the greatest impact it’s not online is not in the mass media is the foot soldiers it’s the local activist who actually makes a difference to persuade the police to behave differently this is a sentiment echoed by Patrice trees colors who is a co-founder one of the three co-founders of black lives matter when The Economist spoke to her back in 2018

Local work always impacts the nation so many of our chapters are working on bail reform many of our chapters are working on diverting money from law enforcement into Community responses to violence this is very powerful work that’s happening around the country

but it means it’s the thing that was striking about black lives matter when it was more in the news was the degree to which the sentiment was actually shared across divides of class and color what happened to that

“One of the big reasons black lives matter had an impact in the mass media and online and white liberals who agreed that that was a great problem to be solved and yet some of these have drifted away so I spoke to Melina Abdullah and co-founded black lives matter the local chapter in Los Angeles and she told me about long black folks having the privilege of being able to feel an exhausted story and maybe take up an interest in something else”

And so what’s your view that in light of all that about the degree to which Black lives matter we’ll get a little bit of a boost to grab more attention in light of the events this week

I think sadly these grim events are going to happen again they’ll be more of them we see that in summer months we get more violence and the police get more involved in stopping and searching people so I feel that we may have other reasons to speaking again about such misbehavior by the police and there for black lives matter has the opportunity to speak up and be noticed again that said I haven’t seen any evidence that the organization its restructuring or it’s finding a ready dynamic leader to be a strong voice to speak out on these issues to grab the attention so far I think the movement is caught between two stools is neither dominating in the way that it did back in 2014 but nor has it completely disappeared so I think it will sustain its self but it won’t be as dominant as it was

The police are one particular pipeline in the social infrastructure—a large one. The United States depends on the police to address homelessness, domestic violence, stranded cats, missing property, and much more. This particular pipeline was established to seek social stability. And just as the Fed seeks economic and financial stability through preservation, the police forces in this country work to establish social stability through preservation. In so doing, the police have preserved the systemic racism built into the fabric of this country.

Recognizing this, the BLM movement has coalesced around the idea of defunding the police and, in so doing, dismantling this particular piece of U.S. social infrastructure—eliminating the force designed to preserve a social arrangement characterized by systemic racism, because some things aren’t worth preserving. Replace it with new social infrastructure, a set of pipes and conduits that allow citizens to relate in ways that don’t preserve, but rather improve, our society. Defunding the police entails taking responsibilities and powers away from the police force that is more appropriately and more effectively executed by others: social workers, mental health facilities, educators, job creators, and the like. There are lessons from the BLM movement for the U.S. economy, where monetary policy infrastructure is dominated by private financial institutions. Consider the Fed’s coronavirus response.

The Fed is fighting the current economic crisis with all the tools in its arsenal. Every action it takes, every time it injects funds into the economy, goes via the financial system. Scholars have referred to this fact as the infrastructural power of the financial sector. Take one example: The Fed is working to support the Small Business Administration’s efforts to get loans out to small businesses. To do so, the Fed has purchased those loans on the secondary market, thereby (hopefully) incentivizing banks to make more such loans, but inevitably enriching any financial actors involved in buying or selling them. Meanwhile, out of urgency on the part of the Fed to get the banks to lend to small businesses, the central bank has temporarily reduced regulations on Wells Fargo that were originally implemented because of “widespread compliance and operational breakdowns that resulted in harm to consumers.” In other words, the Fed is easing up regulations meant to make Wells Fargo less predatory in hopes that Wells Fargo will, in turn, help those in need. All because the Fed itself cannot make those loans directly. The channels, and the infrastructure, that are required to forge a better economy simply aren’t there. The pandemic has again exposed a range of troubling inequalities, most of them long-standing. As the national discussion continues, it is critical to remember that equity includes access to education, work, and economic opportunity. I am reminded that Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, just a few short blocks from the Federal Reserve, at a rally whose full title was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Currently, both American policing and American monetary policy are designed to preserve, not progress. And in both cases, the country is holding on to something not worth preserving. We don’t need to identify the perfect future in order to let go of a rotten past; we just need to establish the infrastructure that will allow things to get better.

Police brutality (particularly against African Americans) is definitely not the a new topic in the United States, yet the ongoing shootings of youthful people of color by cops in urban areas around the US has transformed it into an intriguing issue later than when it started. There have been various protests and destruction because of cops not getting the fair judgement for slaughtering unarmed people of color, and with these fights another social development was shaped that began as a twitter hashtag that is entitled #BlackLivesMatter. Despite the fact that a civil right development is the same old thing to America, this specific development comes when America considers itself to be a ‘visually challenged’ or ‘post-racial’ society. This implies that everyone of individuals living in America accept that they are not bigot and that they don’t think about the shade of an individual’s skin. The visually challenged philosophy that is pervasive in the post-Social liberties period, that America is as of now in, believes everybody to be nonracial or not having a place with any race (Van Cleve and Mayes 2015).

The Black Lives Matter Development happened after the passing of Trayvon Martin and kept on developing with the passing of Michael Earthy colored. Both of these children were black, unarmed, and were shot and slaughtered. Martin was a seventeen year old person of color that was visiting his father in Florida when he was shot and executed by George Zimmerman in February of 2012 (Graff 2015). Zimmerman was a local watch commander of a gated network that was attempted and seen not a guilty for the homicide of Trayvon Martin. Michael Earthy colored was a African American young person that was shot and executed by a white cop Darren Wilson in August of 2014 (Graff 2015).

The Black Lives Matter Development began in light of these passings and was planned to be a celebration and refinement of people of color. It plans to be a political and philosophical mediation in a general public where people of color are deliberately and purposefully executed. Its will probably remake the Dark freedom development. The Black Lives Matter movement is attempting to move the attitude of those in America away from ‘us versus them’ and in doing so genuinely liberate people of color from imbalance. In the event that America has genuinely arrived at a post-racial society why is such a development expected to affirm what Americans definitely know? Numerous individuals have been moving the focal point of this development by saying that it’s not simply People of color that issue, all day to day routines mater and all lives are significant.

A few people in America are utilizing the All Lives Matter issue proclamation to turn the Some individuals in America are using the All Lives Matter statement to twist the Black Lives Matter Development into being against white rather than supportive of the black community. By doing this and zeroing in on the black community a piece of the Black Lives Matter Development, they are not genuinely hearing the worries that are being voiced. Indeed, all lives obviously matter, however there is a motivation behind why individuals are referring to people of color matter. On the off chance that the explanation that people of color matter isn’t accurate, at that point America is sending the message that people of color are not really lives and hence they can be discarded, murdered or lost.

Moreover, history mirrors that people of color were viewed similar to a small amount of a human life during servitude. In Southern states where slavery was present, slaves were considered 3/5 of an individual when checking populace. A genuine post-racial society has not been reached, so for what reason are a few people in the US dismissing this new social equality movement and affirming that all lives matter? It is being said that the development (Black Lives Matter) is a conspicuous one, however this undeniable movement hasn’t been reflected in history or current American culture.

Since the start of America Black lives have been dealt as though they don’t make a difference. Individuals of color were subjugated and mistreated due to the shade of their skin and other qualities. At the point when slavery finished, people of color were as STILL oppressed because of the shade of their skin. It was worthy to segregate dependent on skin tone in the pre-Social equality time, yet in the post-Common Right time things changed. The transcendent type of bigotry is not, at this point unmistakable or dependent on different attributes. It is an unobtrusive type of bigotry known as partially blind racism that has impacted different areas of American culture including the criminal justice system. The all lives matter rebuttal is a result of the partially blind racism in society. It is utilized to attempt to stop the Black Lives Matter Development and end any discussion about race.

The Black Lives Matter Movement is another social equality development to battle against this new type of prejudice. It’s expressing that race matters in a general public where race is viewed as irrelevant. The Black Lives Matter Development is attempting to move away from partial blindness to shading cognizance. It’s not disregarding that bigotry is as yet an issue in the US.

The Black Lives Matter development needs to keep on developing as a social development. It should attempt to try not to turn into a civil rights lawyer drove developments like the Civil Rights Development during the 1960s where the leaders separated themselves from the individuals they were upholding for. The Black Lives Matter Development has neighborhood local chapters that the US that can be utilized to address bigotry at the nearby level. The Black Lives Matter Development should zero in on aiding and instructing their system about partially blind racism. There additionally should be lawful difficulties and new laws and approaches to aid in decreased racism especially in the criminal justice system that cause racial inconsistencies. The approaches at each degree of the criminal justice system should guarantee that they aren’t more harmful to one race over the others.

These new policies are far way off for the Black Lives Matter Development. The main thing the Black Lives Matter Development can do next is instruct America about visually challenged racism, change general assessment and increase support. Race does make a difference, people of color matter and it will take a principal move in the general population to accept that they matter to change the criminal justice system and American culture.

1. Graff, G. (2015). Redesigning Racial Caste in America via Mass Incarceration. The Journal of Psychohistory., 43(2), 120–133.
2. Van Cleve, N. G., & Mayes, L. (2015). Criminal Justice Through “Colorblind” Lenses: A Call to Examine the Mutual Constitution of Race and Criminal Justice. Law & Social Inquiry, 40(2), 406–432.

The purpose of the Black Lives Matter website is to campaign to seek justice and working vigorously for freedom for Black people and by extension, all people to have. The Black lives matter Campaign also strives for freedom and world acceptance of Black lives matter, regardless of actual or supposed sexual identity, gender identity, gender representation, economic status, religious disbeliefs, disability, immigration status, ability, or location and police brutality. The organisation bases the website on their mission statement ’We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centres those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise. We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation’.

The BLM targets is reduce the number of black people who are killed in racially charged situations and from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities.

The reader is encouraged to act on the campaign for BLM by “DONATE” or you can read under the words “TAKE ACTION” and you can take action by joining the global movement by signing up. As well taking action you can donate or become a member, however you also could help by buying a shirt with the words BLM on it or looking under “Help by Sharing” or “Follow BLMs” on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Their logo has the words “Black Lives Matter” in black to support that and indicate to Black Lives that they really do matter, and this is for them, as well there’s three bold yellow lines under BLM or can the background for the letters of BLM, the yellow is bold, strong, militant, and carries strength and tone. This shows that we all need to come together and take appropriate action. I am confronted with photos and videos discussing and show the issue at hand, all while being promoted to “TAKE ACTION”. I feel I should take action on this issue, but there was so much that I was not aware of, I feel ashamed and guilty. Though when reading on, I have a sense of support in the way of the number of people the campaign has coming together, it is empowering to know so many people are fighting for justice. It is a long-standing organisation and they will fight to achieve the justice and freedom for the black lives and are proud of the accomplishments they had made during the years although they will continue till they get the right justice for the Black Lives. As someone that has a white privilege it makes me feel honoured to be able in ways to help and support black lives.

The website is tidy and clear, accessible even. It is easy to navigate with a darker picture running across the top with highlights their options to read about such as News, About, Program, Global Actions, Watch + Listen and shop in white letters. They also have three bold words in yellow that are other options that are What Matters, Take Action and Resources. In a box of a bright blue which against the dark background draws the attention to the Donate button. Here I may give a donation there options to give a donation of from 25 to 1,000 or other box to choose your ideal amount, once you choose it takes you to payment where you can choose to pay monthly or a one-off donation, which make this step very simple and easy. Back on the home page I can click and scroll down and read on how to take action and the achievement there making and many more options it offers to look at including visual options such as the videos they make. This has an impression that there really dedicated to supporting and help fight along with the black people, as well having facts and views backed up with pictures, stats, and people power.

The overall construction of the website is well created, the significance on “Black Live Matter” throughout the website brings a feeling of importance, bold statement, power, and that it feels true and right. The obligation to help in anyway is always shown and you are reminded on every page. There is a strong present example for future progress in winning the campaign, the use of dot points to support the work already achieved adds to the feeling of wanting to get involved. As you cross through tabs Watch and listen and What Matters, you come across facts which are backed up by videos of black people themselves explain what it like and what they strive to accomplish and photos and hyperlinks to the murder stats of black lives, which supports the statements being made. The legitimacy of the site which you are urged to only deepen the reliability of the site, while the use of pictures and videos outstanding here where you are witness to people talking about the issues and brutality they receive from police just form the colour of their skin, even videos and pictures of police killing and being to rough and not caring, seeing police lean on their neck as they beg for breath, it instantly brings anger, sadness, shame and what can we do to stop this, this the most powerful form of text they used. Once viewing the whole site the essential voice from this site screaming “Lives Matter” campaign for justice for black lives, donate, sign up or sign a petition all really persuade somebody to take action, they have addressed the right and wrong , this makes people aware of the injustices that the coloured people suffer, including what the damaged this has caused, it also provides many ways you can get involved and help out, the website makes people feel helpful and honoured to defend the black lives and fight for the justices they deserve instead and making the world more aware. The website lets you know that together we can make a difference so it makes you want to help out cause more the better and more people will hear.

To compare both logos from Black Lives Matter and the Amnesty International websites, they are about standing up for something and doing the right thing, and what there all about can be found in their mission statements of both Amnesty and BLM website. BLM has their donate tab standing out in a different colour in the same way Amnesty has done to its donate tab, both promoting an eye-catching colour. They also both have a “TAKE ACTION” button across the top of the page. Just like the Amnesty website, the BLM give a powerful intro to their organisation letting you know they want your attention. The Amnesty advocates for human rights, where the BLM alike advocates for the Black lives, all the things with out a voice and fighting the government. Just like BLM the Amnesty also works across social media platforms.

Amnesty International is a long-standing organisation which started in 1961 to defend human rights all around the world. Their message is clear, with a well-knowledgeable website where you can find an array of information on the most up to date topics. It is easy to join and even easier to donate. It all stands up for people with out a voice and this website gives them a voice to be heard. The BLM also has a well-standing organisation which started 8 years ago, they stand up against the government on the issue relating to the Black Lives, they have a message up front that is clear and you don’t have to look for what there about, and signing up is easy and so is the Donate function, it’s all straight up and forward functions.

The Black Lives Matter homepage feels calm and I am tempted to watch the videos as instead of being drowned and only little bit moved with the words seeing the videos of them talking and see how it affects and destroys some lives I see the emotions and fear in there voices and it plays with my feelings and can take time to take in the information, compared to the Amnesty homepage, I feel rushed and distressed and overwhelmed, as to much is going on at one time, there so much pictures cluttered all over the place my mind doesn’t know where to go first and it gives me and overwhelming feel, while the BLM is neat and goes from one thing to the other when im ready to move on the next video or picture. Which lets me see what I want to know. The donation button for BLM is a nice lighter but dominate blue almost tempting me click it. However the donate button on the Amnesty site is yellow which blends in as most of the site is yellow based. Compared with BLM the Amnesty sites guide tabs have an overhelming choice of topics to choose to click on. The two sites are different in the sense you may scroll a little down the BLM, and then straight off I know who they and whats happen and how BLM is helping get justice and do the right thing. All the lastest information on progress with the campaign are easily accessible, compared to having to scroll a far way down the Amnesty page to find out about what they do.

From my point of view, I believe the Black Lives Matter has achived it aim better, however I think that Amnesty International still has conveyed a its point. The Amnesty International does have 8 million supporters and members, so there not wrong but, the website is confusing and opposing for someone who only knows little about these issues happening, there are too many options to choose from so I got a little overwhelmed and I got lost within the site, and had no idea what I even was spouse to be doing. Where when looking at the Black Lives Matter campaign, I found it easy to navigate were the things I what to know or even needed to know about, it still had the same big problems like seeking justice for people, and fighting the government on what’s right, but they had it more simplified process to help, and having the bold letters help me know exactly what I what to see. Where Amnesty lettering was all the same and it got lost in the colour and it got me lost.

Question:

Select an activist or activist organisation from the list below, describe their agenda and evaluate how their digital and non-digital methods of campaigning contribute to identifiable social change.

During the reading of “The Tipping Point” – How little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Gladwell depicts how to look at social change. “any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do.” (Gladwell 2000, 7) The Black Likes Matter social movement has changed the world politically, having their main focus on racial, justice, police accountability and their larger goal of keeping a man who is sympathetic to white nationalists out of the Oval Office. With the community growing, over 3 million hashtags #BlackLivesMatter used and over 300 thousand followers on multiple social medias they are not stopping. “All may seem like they have nothing in common, but they share a basic, underlying pattern. First, they are clear examples of contagious behaviour”. (Gladwel 2000,7) The Black Lives Matter movement relies on digital methods to help support their cause through social media and attention while also acting on their cause with protests through non-digital methods.  insert Thesis Here

Sociologist define social change as changes that form when human interactions change cultural and social institutions. They can often occur overtime and can result in long-term consequences for society. “Positive social change results in the improvement of human and social conditions and in the betterment of society. Such change can occur at many levels, including individuals, families, communities, organizations, and governments.” (Dunfey 2019 1) A very famous positive social change movement called The Montgomery Bus Boycott from December 5 1995 – 20th December 1996, took place when a Black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested when refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a White man. The movement was a huge success thanks to a key person named Martin Luther King junior. What the Montgomery Bus Boycott wanted to seek from the government was total desegregation on public busses. Martin Luther king led the campaign and through the many speeches he made that year and with it, they successfully achieved their goal and discrimination on public transport towards Blacks was no more.” MLK sits next to Reverend Glenn Smiley of Texas on a Montgomery bus, symbolizing the victory.” (Carson 2005, 14) King was inspired by a man named Gandhi who was born on 2nd of October 1869 because of his well-known status of nonviolence social change. “His prominent role in India’s freedom struggle fetched him the title of Bapu (Father of the Nation.)” Gandhi also received the name “the dater of non-violence” because he raised nonviolence to a level never achieved which created a nonviolent social change.

One of the most important campaigning techniques used by the Black Lives Matter’s movement toady is Digital methods. In a research article called “Scaling Social Movements Through Social Media: The Case of Black Lives Matter by Marcia Mundt, Karen Ros, and Charla M Burnett, their research found social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can help out an activist or activist organisation by providing opportunities for activist groups to broaden their movement impact. “social media creates participation opportunities—such as boosting protest turnout or supporting fundraising campaigns—that broaden mobilization, thus helping scale movement endeavours” (Mundt, Ross, Burnett 2018, 1) Also study shows that the creation of support networking movement expanding, specifically by enabling local BLM groups to collaborate together to amplify and disseminate discourses about police brutality and Black liberation. Black Lives Matter use many different digital campaigning methods that are successful. For example, from 2013-2020 BLM have a huge following on social medias, Facebook with 344 thousand followers, Instagram with 298 thousand followers and Twitter with 327 thousand followers. They have a website that shares important information about what BLM is about and any upcoming news or events. You can also purchase merchandise off the website to help fund their campaign to create a positive social change.

After one of the recent famous protests on 21st July 2018 When 100 BLM protestors interrupted Hilary Clinton at a campaign rally in Atlanta Georgia about discrimination an associate professor of politics named Deva Woodly said “ The movement is growing, it’s influences on American politics is growing,” signifying that the movement through digital and non-digital methods is creating a significance in the USA and could increase effectiveness of their cause via members joining or by pushing their cause further. One famous Protest that occurred was in 2014 when a Black man named Eric Garner was choked to death while being arrest by White police officers. Just days after his death rallies were held in 5 cities looking for Justice. “I believe in justice” Ganer’s daughter said during an interview published in January of 2017. Statistics show that in the last 2,107 days, there have been at least 2,825 protests or demonstrations that have been held across America. Other ways BLM Spread their cause is through books. Many different books have been published, some targeting adults and others targeting children and teens. Some examples of these books are “#BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation”, “The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea”, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” and “The Hate U Give.” These books have been given positive reviews some even becoming movies.

Through evidence collected and studied by Marcia Mundt, Karen Ros and Charla M Burnett, digital methods do have an impact on social change by created opportunities for those who are involved to help support the activist by broadening their movement impact as well as social media creating opportunities such as boosting protest turnout or supporting fundraising campaigns that help scale movement endeavours.