black lives matter what you need to know

10 things you lot should know about Blackness Lives Matter

The Black Lives Thing Global Network (BLM) volition be awarded the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize in Nov. The Movement for Black Lives, of which BLM is part, has galvanised the earth from California to London to Commonwealth of australia, and #BlackLivesMatter has proven to be a rallying cry for a new chapter in the long Black Freedom struggle. But how much do you really know nigh this of import movement? Here are x things yous should know about its origins, leaders, and purpose.

one. BLM IS ABOUT Dearest

Black Lives Affair started with a love letter.

In 2012, 17-yr-old , unarmedTrayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch who felt Travyon, walking home afterwards buying a pack of Skittles at a nearby service station, was 'out of identify' in the center-class area. Zimmerman was acquitted for all charges.

Alicia Garza retells the feel: "Trayvon could have been my brother. I immediately felt not only enraged, just a deep sense of grief. It was as if we had all been punched in the gut. Yet soon people shrugged, equally if to say: "We knew he was never going to be convicted of killing a black child," and "What did you expect?""

Turning to Facebook, Alicia wrote a 'Dearest Letter to Blackness Folks': "We don't deserve to be killed with impunity. We need to dearest ourselves and fight for a earth where black lives affair. Black people, I honey you. I love us. We matter. Our lives affair."

In a matter of moments, beau community organiser Patrisse Cullors created the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and Opal Tometi created the website and social media platforms that soon connected people across the land. Blackness Lives Thing was born, and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter started spreading like wildfire. A twelvemonth later, it went viral during the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, when people took to the streets with a simple demand: End Killing Us.

"Equally we say 'Black Lives Affair', you run across the light that comes inside of people from Black communities and other communities. People are like, 'I'm going to stand on the side of Black lives.' You lot come across people transforming, and that's a different blazon of work. For me, that is a spiritual work, a healing work. What a swell fourth dimension to be alive."

Patrisse Cullors

This movement was born out of dear, and dearest always wins.

ii. BLM WAS A THING BEFORE IT WENT VIRAL

In 2013, steadily and strategically, the co-founders started to build the scaffolding of a nationwide on-the-footing political network.

Enter Ferguson. On August 9th, 2014, just a few weeks after Eric Garner died in a NYPD officeholder'south chokehold in New York City, Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by twelve law bullets in Ferguson, St Louis. Police left his body in the street for four and a half hours, steps away from his mother's house.

The events that followed Mike Brown'south death have often been described every bit 'the catalyst' for the revolution-like protests that followed. "I tin't exhale" and "easily up, don't shoot", the last words of Eric Garner and Mike Chocolate-brown, were chanted loudly – people young and old mobilised to mourn and protest police brutality and racism. They were met with tanks, riot police and tear gas.

For the Black Lives Matter Global Network, it meant that the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag went viral on social media. Blackness Lives Affair became a slogan that leapt into the streets. Technology accelerated the stride of organising people, and immune the movement to dilate their calls in ways that were impossible before.Over 500 members from across the U.s. joined Patrisse Cullors in a #BlackLivesMatter 'freedom ride' to Ferguson to support the movement in St. Louis.

We were humbled when cultural workers, artists, designers, and techies offered their labor and love to aggrandize #BlackLivesMatter beyond a social media hashtag.

Alicia Garza

For some 'Black Lives Matter' was a wakeup call, for many others the words gave vox to a deep seeded awareness of what it felt like to be black in America.

Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry that captivated the country, galvanising a national movement for nobility, justice and respect.

3. BLM IS Nigh More THAN 'JUST' POLICE BRUTALITY

Blackness Lives Matteris an intervention.

It is an affirmation of the value of Black life, and a condemnation of the racism that devalues it.

On their website, BLM writes:When we say Black Lives Affair, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Blackness people are intentionally left powerless at the easily of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our bones human rights and dignity.

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors says: "Blackness Lives Matter is our telephone call to action, it is about replacing narratives of black criminality with black humanity, a tool to re-imagine a world where black people are costless to be, free to alive, and a tool for our allies to show up for us".

Black Lives Matter demands that American society reconsider how it values black lives by identifying where and how black life is cut brusk, whether in viral videos of constabulary brutality, the self-fulfilling prophecy of the criminal justice system, or in areas where black communities disproportionally face homelessness, poverty and economic disparity.

Black Lives Matter is about structural change. Information technology is nigh sparking dialogue and changing the chat: If it is true that black lives matter, so what does that hateful for police force reform, for our justice systems, for schools, for jobs, for infrastructure, and for economic evolution? If black lives matter, so what needs to alter in politics and in the media?

To steer these conversations, over 50 organisations – including the Black Lives Thing Global Network – united in the Movement for Black Lives to launch "A Vision for Black Lives" in August 2016, ahead of the Presidential ballot. Following a year-long consultation process, a series of 40 policy goals calls for divestment from law enforcement (including ending the death penalty and mass incarceration) and investment in blackness communities through reparations, educational reform, jobs and infrastructure, and increased community control of neighbourhoods.

4. BLM IS Nigh A THING Called ORGANISING

Protests are just ane tool in a big toolbox of tactics for alter.

BLM's disruptive deportment and protest strategies are modern and bold, and regularly brand media headlines. But whilst protests may get lots of media attention, organising is what builds sustainable, resourced movements. Organising includes edifice critical communities connections, convening member-led organisations where everyday people can strategise together, and cultivating local leadership. Organising includes creating space to reimagine what a off-white and simply society looks like, and to develop political thinking and ideas. Organising includes finding allies and co-conspirators, and building collective power to demand changes. Organising too means fostering peoples' skills to hold part bearers accountable for their decisions, and creating space for the celebration and humanisation of Blackness lives.

BLM'south persistence and evolvement has breathed new life into the legacy of the blackness liberty struggle, reenergising older activists who are eager to connect with a new generation of organisers.

I identify as an organizer versus an activist because I believe an organizer is the smallest unit that you build your squad around. The organizer is the person who gets the printing together and who builds new leaders, the person who helps to build and launch campaigns, and is the person who decides what the targets will be and how we're going to modify this world.

Our folks accept continued to organize locally, not simply hit the streets. Many of our people are thinking about how to enact a political strategy. How do we build black power in this moment? How do we actually get people in function?

It's non a hashtag that built the motion. Information technology was organizers, activists, educators, artists — people who congenital an actual infrastructure so that a movement tin exist and take life.

Patrisse Cullors

v. BLM IS Non JUST A #HASHTAG, Information technology'S A GLOBAL NETWORK

For Alicia, Patrisse and Opal, #BlackLivesMatter was never meant to be 'just' a hashtag or social media meme. Long earlier the protests that grabbed the world's attention, the Co-Founders started to organise people across the country, encouraging a broader and deeper conversation near what justice and dignity for blackness people might wait like in an era of increasing inequality, mass incarceration and relentless law violence—and how people could join forces and build the power needed to reach information technology.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network at present has over twoscore capacity worldwide, scattered across the US, Canada, the UK and with a growing presence in South African and Australia.

Activists for blackness, brown, and Indigenous rights effectually the world take adopted the Blackness Lives Thing slogan aslope homegrown movements confronting racism and law brutality.

Last month, BLM marked its four-year ceremony and released a report well-nigh its guiding principles, challenges, and plans for the future, along with a snapshot of where its member organisations accept been.

"Four years later, we yet declare with confidence that Blackness Lives Matter everywhere."

Patrisse Cullors

6. BLM IS LEADERFUL

Many people take called Black Lives Matter the civil rights motility of a new generation. There is a smashing deal of nostalgia in comparisons with the ceremonious rights movement of the 1960s, just if it'due south upwardly to the Network, this move will expect very unlike.

The Founders are committed to building a movement that relies less on the establishment voices of a unmarried or few very charismatic, cisgender men. Rather, they nurture a decentralised movement from the bottom-upwardly: A movement that encourages dissimilar voices to sally and shape their leadership based on experiences and needs rooted in the community they organise. The Network is truly a grassroots motility with a delivery to a 'leaderful' structure.

It is in this spirit that the 3 Founders have accustomed the Sydney Peace Prize for the Black Lives Affair Global Network:

The Sydney Peace Prize is an affirmation and reminds united states that we are on a righteous path. Accepting this accolade is about our people on the ground striving for justice every single day. It's truly meaningful to exist recognized in this way. We'll proceed to push forrad until structural racism is dismantled and every Black life matters. It's our duty in times similar this to keep our eyes steadfast on the freedom we deserve.

Opal Tometi, Co-founder Black Lives Matter and Executive Managing director, Black Alliance for Merely Immigration (BAJI)

7. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER

The Blackness Lives Thing Global Network was founded on the values of inclusivity and love.

Blackness Lives Matter ways ALL blackness lives matter and are creators of this space. Queer Black lives, Trans Blackness lives, formerly incarcerated Black lives, differently-abled Black lives, Black women's lives, immigrant black lives, Black elderly and children's lives. We rise together.

The Founders want the faces of this motility to reflect the change they strive towards in their own communities, which is that all blackness lives matter, regardless of their gender, class, sexual orientation, or age. Everyone'southward contribution is valid as long every bit people commit to uphold a number of Guiding Principles. These include working "collectively, lovingly and courageously", making space for queer leadership, respecting diversity, practicing empathy, and working towards an intergenerational network.

Black Lives Matter is committed to "(re)building the Black liberation movement": the Network supports those who were previously on the margins and invisible from the public eye – women, LGBTQIA people, undocumented immigrants, people with disabilities, and people with records – to take centre stage.

eight. BLM DOES NOT SAY THAT Simply BLACK LIVES Affair

When people counter Black Lives Matter's call for justice with the phrase "all lives thing," there is undoubtedly a fallacy is this response.

While all lives should affair, this is a utopia as we practice not currently live in a globe where all lives are equal. The statement "Black lives matter" is not an anti-white proposition. Contained inside the statement is an unspoken but implied "too," as in "black lives matter, too," – it is a statement of inclusion rather than exclusion. Merely when Blackness lives matter will all lives matter. Blackness Lives Matter doesn't mean your life isn't important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation.

Therefore, to say "all lives thing" in response to Black people maxim "Black lives thing" is really maxim that Blackness lives don't matter.

"Only we're a group that'south looking at the totality of anti-black racism and its effects on communities of color," Cullors says.

Blackness Lives Matter sprang from a place of love, and inclusivity is at the very heart of their important work. A common misconception is that Black Lives Matter is only a trendy hashtag or that it only fights police brutality or vigilante violence against blackness people. BLM is not about saying yes to one identity, but virtually looking at how all marginalised people are impacted by Trump and his government. BLM looks at the totality of anti-blackness racism and its effects on communities of color, collaborates with other progressive coalitions (sometimes under the banner of 'The Majority') and supports other minority groups. For example, they have stood in solidarity with the Water Protectors at Continuing Stone, and were amid the first to gather at airports to protest President Trump's Muslim ban, declaring:

"We must ascension in solidarity whenever and wherever necessary. (…) We know that these attacks exercise non alive in a vacuum and that our issues are connected. This fight is for all who believe in justice."

9. BLACK LIVES MATTER FIGHTS WHITE SUPREMACY EVERY 24-hour interval

White supremacy, both the visible and more insidious invisible incantations of it, is live and well beyond the world. The ascent of Trump in the US saw the emboldening of detest groups across the United states. To garner votes and stoke anti-establishment flames, Trump latched on to the ideology of white supremacy and incentivised violence on the campaign trail, promising his supporters — some of whom carried the banners of Nazism and Klansmanship — he would "pay for the legal fees" of anyone who got trigger-happy with anti-Trump protesters.

While Trump can certainly be credited with fanning the flames of white supremacy, it is undeniable that fierce racial inequality is woven into the very fabric of the American story (equally is the example here in Australia). The sickening violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, fabricated visible structural imbalances and privileges that take historical roots and keep to divide a nation and drive inequality. It is clear that white supremacy is not on the fringes of our society – it is in the White House and in Trump's Cabinet, but also in our work places, living next door to us, and serving us our morning lattes.

"To exist shocked really means folks have an ahistorical analysis of this country. What we saw in Charlottesville, and what we'll keep to see across the country as white nationalist groups rise up and accept to the streets, is that this is very much the fabric of American culture."

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors

Black Lives Thing is working across geographical and issue areas to phone call attention to white supremacy and build sustainable, resourced movements to significantly reduce it. Organisers are taking the fight to their own backyards, organising people in local communities, having courageous conversations with people who would not otherwise have mettlesome conversations with us, or encouraging our allies to have those conversations in our stead.

10. BLM RESONATES Here IN Australia

Nosotros can't talk most Blackness Lives Matter without looking at our own backyard.

Racism and systemic discrimination is all to prevalent in Commonwealth of australia. Whilst the struggles are different in many ways, various communities experience a strong resonance with the Black Lives Matter motility in the US.

Every bit BLM Co-Founder Alicia Garza, who in 2016 spoke with Stan Grant at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, says:People in Australia tend to highlight how large BLM is in the States, merely Commonwealth of australia has some serious, serious bug around Blackness lives mattering."

Commonwealth of australia struggles to come to terms with its past and fails to right ongoing wrongs. Australia's First Peoples have fought for justice and nobility for decades, very few people know about Australia's by of slavery or 'blackbirding' of which our S Body of water Islander community is still feeling the repercussions, and Australia'southward treatment of refugees and migrants, whether on Australian soil or in overseas detention centres, reeks of racism and discrimination.

The Black Lives Affair Global Network declared "we receive this award with tremendous gratitude and in solidarity with organizers throughout Australia who, in the face of egregious oppression, fightback against the state and proclaim that all Black Lives Affair."

Particularly Australia's Beginning Peoples continue to suffer systemic inter-generational injustice and trauma.

Most of the 339 recommendations from the Purple Committee into Aboriginal Deaths accept been gathering dust for years, yet imprisonment rates for Ethnic Australians are at an all-time loftier. In the Northern Territory and Western Australia more than than eighty percent of the prison house population is Indigenous, and the number of deaths in custody is increasing. In Western Australia, Indigenous suicides are eight times the national charge per unit, and children equally young every bit eight years old are suiciding. Since Kevin Rudd'due south Apology, children take been removed from their families four times as often than during the Stolen Generations.

When Ms Dhu died after being jailed for unpaid fines, and when Elijah Doughty's killer was found non guilty of manslaughter, communities effectually the country used 'Black Lives Thing' to demand justice for all Black victims.

Senator Patrick Dodson, 2008 Sydney Peace Prize Laureate, strongly supported the choice of the Jury:"This move resonates around the globe and here in Commonwealth of australia, where we have become inured to the loftier incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It's equally if their lives do non matter. When there is ignorance, hostility, discrimination or racism, and they are immune to reign unchecked, and so we are all diminished."

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Source: https://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/10-things-know-black-lives-matter/