In the decade since it began, #BlackLivesMatter has shifted the nation’s collective consciousness, whether we wanted it shifted or not.
Every generation of Americans lives through a moment that captures history in hindsight, a moment so indelible—the JFK assassination, 9/11—people can describe exactly where they were and what they were doing when it happened.
Melina Abdullah remembers exactly what her brother said as George Zimmerman was being tried for the murder of Trayvon Martin.
“He’s getting off and they’re giving him his gun back.”
Abdullah, like many, said she felt “jarred and outraged” following Zimmerman’s acquittal on July 13, 2013. It was a verdict that hit close to home.
The People’s Justice Festival, July 15, 2023
On a hot summer Saturday this past week, Black Lives Matter celebrated its tenth anniversary with a sprawling celebration in the Leimert Park Village, now called AfricaTown, in Central Los Angeles.
On Saturday July 15, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles celebrated its 10th anniversary with the People’s Justice Festival in Leimert Park.
According to BLMLA organizers, the advocacy group was “birthed July 13, 2013 in Leimert Park to build ‘a movement, not a moment’ to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people in the wake of the acquittal of #TrayvonMartin’s murderer.”
A decade ago, following George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the homicide of Trayvon Martin, the first protest in the name of BLM took to the streets of Los Angeles
Minneapolis officers prosecuted, local reforms adopted in some states, but national overhaul of policing falls short.
Dr. Melina Abdullah, Director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots offers painful revelations steeped in facts and uncomfortable truths.
The street protests that flooded American cities have largely ended, and a new administration is settling in in Washington, but the Black Lives Matter movement that regained national attention last summer in response to a series of police killings last summer has not gone away.
What started as a poignant hashtag has come to define a generation. In seven years, Black Lives Matter has become a multichapter organization that has changed the very framework with which the nation talks about race.
Black Lives Matter has always been more of a human rights movement rather than a civil rights movement. BLM’s focus has been less about changing specific laws and more about fighting for a fundamental reordering of society wherein Black lives are free from systematic dehumanization. Still, the movement’s measurable impact on the political and legal landscape is undeniable.
