Black Lives Matter - What is it? How was it created?

BY MORGAN MONTOYA, CLAIRE DAWSON, AND BEN STRICKLER

Simpson Center for the Humanities

We felt the need to write these articles to educate the Coonley community on various Black Lives Matter topics and the struggles Black Americans have faced for generations. We realize hate, bigotry, and racism stem from ignorance and with these articles, we aim to combat that. We strongly urge you to look for ways to help. We stand with the Black members of our community, and around the world.

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The Basics
Black Lives Matter is an organization and movement centered towards ending police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people worldwide. According to the Black Lives Matter website, “Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”

Origins
The Black Lives Matter organization was founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi on July 13th, 2013, in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was created by Alicia Garza and was used infrequently in 2013, but #BLM gained traction in 2014 after the deaths of both Michael Brown and Eric Gardner, along with many other black people, at the hands of police. It was once again taken up in 2015 after numerous killings of more unarmed Black folx (refers to folks, marginalized communities) by police and white supremacists. Back when Black Lives Matter was just a hashtag, it found headway on social media platforms where people started to gather, talk, and start protests. The hashtag informed people about the movement and gained more traction for it. In 2016 protests continued and celebrities such as Colin Kaepernick (a football player who made massive waves by kneeling during the national anthem before a game) brought it attention. In 2017 Black Lives Matter started protesting acquittals and ‘not guilty’ verdicts, and of course police brutality. 2018 marked 5 years of action and with it, a study that showed #BLM had been used 30 million times since its initial use in 2013. Protests continued into 2019, including a 100-day protest for black teen Isaiah Lewis who was shot and killed by police.

Controversy
However, the movement has faced some controversy. BLM has been called “violent, police-hating, Marxist, queer, and a front for George Soros (a billionaire philanthropist known for supporting progressive causes with large amounts of money),” along with multiple other things, according to a Medium article by William Spivey. The organization has also been linked to multiple acts of violence, crime, and rioting, though these incidents have not had any correlation with the organization. In an article The Guardian says, “The vast majority of the thousands of Black Lives Matter protests this summer have been peaceful, with more than 93% involving no serious harm to people or damage to property.” Black Lives Matter is a peaceful movement against the oppression of Black people and hopes to establish that they have no correlation with violence.

Vision
BLM has released “Campaign Zero”. This is a collection of ten different policy changes intended to help stop police brutality in America. The policies include ending broken windows policing, more community oversight, limiting the use of force, independent investigating and prosecuting, community representation, more body cameras, more training, end major funding, demilitarization, and fair police union contracts. Black Lives Matter hopes to draw awareness to the cause of black people being treated unfairly. ​