Blog 4: Black Lives Matter

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Back in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement began to slowly emerge in the Black community as a hashtag on Twitter to bring attention and promote online discussion on racial profiling and police brutality against Black Americans. Police brutality comes in part from the misconception that a police officer's authority allows brutal conducts without being held accountable for such actions, a belief reinforced by mild disciplinary actions such as being suspended, or even exonerations as in several high-profile cases such as Michael Brown's in Ferguson, Missouri. These notorious cases of Black people being killed by police force propelled #BlackLivesMatter from social media to its development into a broader offline social movement, when the hashtag began to be used to organize protests.

After George Floyd, a Black person who did not resist arrest, died under the callous choke restraint of a police officer, Black Lives Matter has been at the center of the most widespread and persistent protests in the United States. In occasions, violence explodes in the middle of a protest, a situation that has given the authorities the perfect excuse to have militarized police in peaceful marches of Black Lives Matter. Armed and dressed in combat gear, the militarized police presence at demonstrations stand for their power and control over others more vulnerable that should be protected, their uniform minimizes their social responsibility and justifies their actions, and their masks or anything that covers their faces shield them in anonymity to liberate the worst of themselves. Adding to all these, the contribution of someone in the highest power with igniting words such as "thugs" intended to tarnish the protesters, definitely blurs lines between good and evil.

Then, the militarized police reacts in a way that suppresses people's freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, and freedom to petition to the government by attacking peaceful protesters with pepper spray, attacking and arresting demonstrators and journalists, firing rubber bullets and tear gas against the crowd. In order to employ militarized police, there should be a clear and present danger of violence, otherwise, its presence creates a chilling effect which means deterring people's freedom of speech and assembly protected by the First Amendment. In seven years, Black Lives Matter gained the support of a majority of American people while the anti-racist protests spread calling for defunding police departments.
Image: https://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/screen_shot_2019-03-28_at_11.58.13_pm.png
Sources:
  • https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1512/black-lives-matter
  • https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/nation/2020/05/28/protests-break-out-around-us-following-death-george-floyd/5278673002/
  • https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-black-lives-matter-movement-went-mainstream/2020/06/09/201bd6e6-a9c6-11ea-9063-e69bd6520940_story.html
  • https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/

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