Understanding the movement: What is Black Lives Matter?

The phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been constantly repeated this summer: streets, murals, clothing and signs proudly proclaiming this message. Although these words have been heard, seen, and felt these past months many people still do not know what they mean.

BLM is an acronym, representing the Black Lives Matter organization. This movement has always been around but the organization wasn’t founded until 2013 by three women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.

These women created the project #blacklivesmatter, after the killer of Trayvon Martin was acquitted in 2013. After news of the acquittal garnered attention, many people across the nation called for action.

The BLM movement is very important to many, especially to the people who were affected by these injustices personally. It is also important to the people who are not (especially white Americans) affected, but understand that their privilege exists, taking a stand for the people this does affect. Impactful to all, this movement is a paveway to what many think, an understanding of culture and the struggles black Americans have to go through to simply be themselves.

Unlike the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, there isn’t a sole speaker or person to look up to. Instead there are individuals, people who are taking stands to get themselves out there and create protests and rallies to get this message across, to go out in the public and have this movement not forgotten by changing leaves or a new trend.

Senior Zoe Boyd speaks on this, talking about why she protests.

“The principles of the Black Lives Matter movement have been important for a while now but I think there was a time over the summer when it became important to many people including myself so I felt the need to support my friends and everybody in the black community by doing what I could to support them” Boyd says.

BLM has been a strong movement, they have been for years, but after the passing of George Floyd the movement really was brought back into the forefront of public consciousness. This death and the many others of black men, women and children was shown to the public this summer and since then the protests have not stopped.

Messages and information about the movement has been passed around through social media; Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat and Twitter are some of the most common apps that had information about what happened and also culture and really taking the time to care about something during a state of panic through the coronavirus and lockdown.
Recently, however, there has been a halt in what people are sharing. Whether it be stories leading to the mainstream media or even the importance of sharing experiences.

Junior Jazmin Brown talks about the struggles she sees with social media now.

“People have stopped posting about [BLM] because they considered it a moment, I know people who have deleted their posts about BLM and everytime it twists my stomach because people really don’t understand the purpose of how much a movement this big could affect a single person. People seem to be ashamed to put these on their feed” Brown says.