The movement Black Lives Matter was launched by three African American women : Alicia Garza, ¨Patrisse Cullors and Opral Tometi, the latter director of an advocacy group for immigrants in New York, the group named Black Alliance for Just immigration.
As of February 2015, according to Patricia Cullors , there are 23 chapters of Black Lives Matters in United States, Canada and Ghana including. The movement gained momentum following the death of black citizens during police control, for instance :
Eric Garner in New-York who was screaming many times to the police « I can't breathe », a sentence which will be used as a slogan at events that follow, Freddie Gray in Baltimore... The Black Lives Matter movement was originally formed after George Zimmerman, an Hispanic man in Florida, was acquitted in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin. The movement grew to greater prominence after a white policeman killed Michael Brown , an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, 2 years ago.
Here we will discuss about some important points people should know about the movement :
Goal, Vision
Many people still think, the #BlackLivesMatters is just a group of protesters with no goal other than yelling and disturbing the peace and lives of white people.
It is more than that, behind the protesting events there are many goals to achieve.
Although it may seems like the movement has been given a lot of focus on police brutality during the latest protesting events, the #BlackLivesMatters movement is also working on many other issues such as the failing system of public education. Furthermore the movement is working for a world where black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for disappearance.
Alicia Garza « We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilence in the face of deadly oppression... »
The Movement hates white people
The statement « Black Lives Matter » is not an anti-white proposition, matter of fact it should have been called « Black Lives Matter too » which will mean that if white lives matter, black lives should matter at the same level as well. Even if certain white people continue to affirm the opposite.
The difference of the mentality between those white people and The Black Lives Matter movement is that the Black lives matters demands to the country to affirm the value of black life in practical and pragmatic ways. For instance, it fights to address an decrease racial wealth gap, fix public schools that are failing, combat issues of housing inequality and gentrification that continue to push black people out of communities they have lived in for years, and dismantling the prison industrial complex. None of this is about hatred for white life.
BlackLivesMatter hates the police
At the end of the day the police officers still regular people who only do their jobs to make a living for their families and go home safe after work. But that doesn't mean that police officers should view black people as unsafe and dangerous and treat our people with bad behaviour and be more aggressive than usual.
This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore it is not an anti-police-officer movement so the respect of each individual should go on both ways.
In conclusion we can say, the movement is about acknowledging that the system already treats white lives as if they have more value, as if they are more worthy of protection, safety, education, and a good quality of life than black lives are. It must change. And that's what #TheBlackLivesMatters is willing to do, to help us much know where we come from and make sure to support what black people are doing from our community.
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