Social Justice Research Paper

For the past few years, racial tensions have been on the rise. Although many actions have been taken to prevent these conflicts from occurring, African Americans are still being undervalued by the state. As more African Americans are being turned away with little to no assistance from the American government, anger and the desire for change increased among them. When Trayvon Martin’s murderer George Zimmerman was acquitted for his crime, a great number of Americans were furious at the outcome. Three African American women named Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi expressed their view on a Facebook post titled “A Love Note to Black People” and it ends with “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter” (“Black Lives Matter”). Thus, a new liberation movement for black people was born. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter rapidly spread throughout social media, bringing awareness of the struggles of African Americans. The Black Lives Matter movement is a call to action to eradicate the dehumanization of African Americans that exists in American society. With the constant targeting of African Americans by the police and the unfair treatment in the criminal justice system, the Black Lives Matter movement is a necessity to combat racism.

Aside from being born out of contempt for the Zimmerman acquittal, the movement has become so much more than an outcry for justice. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was created using the words of community activist Alicia Garza who wrote a heartfelt Facebook post that ended with those words. Since then, the movement has moved from social media into the streets, with BLM followers holding peaceful protests around the country to decry racial discrimination.

Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin, Patrisse Cullers retweeted a friend’s Facebook status with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. In collaboration with other friends they shared their experiences and stories on other social media platforms and subsequently created a socio-political campaign. Soon it became a powerful force of hashtag activism that is now an international movement that has more than 26 chapters globally. According to it founders the activist movement follows guiding principles that support “an ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.” It was the emergence of a movement like this that destroyed the newly formed notion of a post-racial America. This notion was heavily influenced by the election of the United States’ first African American president, Barack Obama. Embracing intersectionality, #BlackLivesMatter was started by three black women, two of whom are queer and one who is Nigerian American.

On a day to day basis African-American individuals are diminished on account of prejudicial biases. Therefore, the movement “Black Lives Matter” has been constructed. It is a network of people working together to rebuild the black liberation movement. Black Lives Matter became a hashtag in the summer of 2013, when Alicia Garza posted a Facebook status called “a love letter to black people.” This status was posted as an assertion for a distressed community over George Zimmerman’s exculpation

(Hashtag) #BlackLivesMatter. Black Lives Matter (BLM). This is a phrase, a hashtag, a saying, a declaration, an affirmation of resistance, and most importantly, a calling for change to the American civilization which is unjust in its treatment of black human beings. This is not a moment, this is a movement, and it is truly an unfortunate witness numerous Americans disregard this outcry for justice. Whether it may largely be the purpose of bigoted racism, in which, one is instilled of the opinion that black people are less than or not equal to, seemingly inferior to other cultures. But besides all of these racist principles, a certain ignorance prevails in the misinterpretation of the black lives matter advocated premise. Many tend to interpret

Black Lives Matter. They do, however why is it that Black Lives Matter isn’t “All Lives Matter”? or why aren’t there multiple “Lives Matter” slogans for different races? All legitimate questions. Black Lives Matter, also shortened to BLM, is an civil rights movement campaigning to intervene with police brutality against black people, but why black people specifically? In February 2013, a young boy named Trayvon Martin, at the not-so-ripe age of 17, was shot to death. He was a young black boy. Trayvon was innocent, heading back from a local store, carrying an iced tea and a bag of sweets, when he was killed. Alicia Garza is a black woman. This event has resonated with her as she has a younger brother of similar build and felt it could have been him just as easily. Garza expressed her feeling through a series of tweets on a popular site, twitter.com, with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and so the movement was born, but perhaps the movement gained more attention after the killing of young, and black, Michael Brown. Both these young boys were unarmed and not dangerous to anyone around them.

The movement continued its encounter beyond racial police violence to make sure change. “Because of social media we reach people in the smallest corners of America. We are plucking at a cord that has not been plucked forever. There is a network and a hashtag to gather around. It is powerful to be in alignment with our own people.” (De Choudhury et al., 2015) ‘Reformist and Revolutionary’ is a social action that fits in with the Black Lives Matter movement. Reformist regularly pursue to help bring about change without challenging the limitations of legal systems however it is often that the motivation is the legal change. Revolutionary disputes that change can’t happen unless there is a change within the legal system for instance; social, political and economic. This backs up the movement as the Black Lives matter movement aims to make sure that change occurs within the judicial system. There aiming for a new social direction. The main focus is to change the political system and the American Districts perspective on viewing police officers who use excessive force, which is leading to the deaths of black

Originating in 2012, the political movement known under the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has exploded in size and renown. This movement, which was initially inspired after a police officer was acquitted of all charges after fatally shooting an African American individual, seeks to diminish police brutality against African American individuals and systemic racism particularly in the United States. Sweeping the nation, Black Lives Matter has become an international movement and its influence has only increased with time. On the movement’s official website, the following was written regarding the history of the hashtag-inspired entourage, “#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.” (http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/). The #BlackLivesMatter movement asserts that racism is still prevalent in modern society and exists not only in passive forms. Instead, racism apparently can be both overt and implicit.

For example, one in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001 and today African Americans comprise of nearly “1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” and are imprisoned at “six times the rate of whites” (“About the BLM Network”). If current trends continue and the population of the African Americans increase, “one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime” (“About the BLM Network”). This happens to be the very example of what led to the start of the BLM movement and the uproar of the black population. After 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by murder George Zimmerman and was “posthumously placed on trial for his own murder,” only for Zimmerman to be acquitted, #Blacklivesmatter was created in 2012 (King). Social media allowed participants to generate “new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership,” especially when users could easily share the hashtag along with his or her own views and ideas in a tweet or an Instagram caption (Duhigg 87). This hashtag subsequently was formed into a protest and then ultimately a full-fledged movement: a movement uniting all black people to resist their dehumanization in America and creating a voice for its members through social media.

After hearing the news story that George Zimmerman had been acquitted, Opal Tometi was inspired to build a movement to prevent this from happening again. She read a Facebook post by Alicia Garza arguing that the anger people felt was justified and that "black lives matter." Inspired by Garza 's post, Patrisse Cullors put a hashtag on that crucial phrase and began posting it on social media. Tometi then called Garza and Cullors and said the movement needed “its own platforms.” They searched for ways to have other people interact with their message and also share the work that they 're doing to ensure black lives are relevant.

In a desperate situation, a phenomenon is rising strongly in our society: Black Lives Matter (BLM). If people are using any kind of social media, they might have seen a lot of #BlackLivesMatter. It’s an international movement against violence towards black people. The hashtag is being used widely on social media after several deaths of African

Before we can delve deep into the core of this young movement we have to go to the beginning were it was just a #."#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime” (Cullors,

The Black Lives Matter movement has swept across America. It 's branched out with chapters in over 31 cities and held rallies and boycotts across the United States(Sidner). The Black Lives Matter movement started with the outrage of the death of a young man. It continues to take over headlines and raise awareness on police brutality and inequality. However, the movement has met resistance from the All Lives Matter group. This group thinks that Black Lives Matter is a movement to express hatred towards other races. However, statistics, the views of fellow citizens, and the overall purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement, can prove that the movement wasn 't meant to express hate on other races and that we need to support the movement instead of going against it.

From slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, the African American community has faced hardships, discrimination and prejudice based on their position in the racial hierarchy in the United States. Although the melting pot called the American population has learned to coexist in the twenty first century, the African American community continues to face these problem even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by Congress prohibiting discrimination of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, not to mention the countless lives that were sacrificed during civil rights demonstrations for those natural rights every human being should have. We now see the African American community facing another similar problem: its youth, especially young black men, have been shot or harmed by “police and vigilantes” (Garza) all over the United States for reasons that seem to be less than bullet proof. The outrage that surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin and the controversy around it sparked the “birth of a new civil rights movement” (Day) ‒ the Black Lives Matter Movement. This movement is rather different and certainly unique when compared to its its precursors in its message, purpose, and tactics. This movement has used various tactics to encourage support for their cause through the use of direct action, political slogans, and social media.

Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag. Garza along with Tometi and Cullors, moved the black lives matter from a hashtag to the streets. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement. The movement has done something all too rare in our time: it’s escaped the control of the ruling establishment. Neither police repression nor Democrats have been able to stop the movement. which has confounded the politicians and the news media, accustomed as they are to using the same old scripts to discuss race and protest without challenge (Petersen-Smith, 201). According to the founders, Black Lives Matter, addresses the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence. It