User:DraconicDark/Black Lives Matter Portal
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Introduction
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. The movement began in response to the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Rekia Boyd, among others. BLM and its related organizations typically advocate for various policy changes related to black liberation and criminal justice reform. While there are specific organizations that label themselves "Black Lives Matter", such as the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the overall movement is a decentralized network with no formal hierarchy. , there are about 40 chapters in the United States and Canada. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" itself has not been trademarked by any group.
In 2013, activists and friends Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi originated the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two more African Americans, Michael Brown—resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri—and Eric Garner in New York City. Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter activists became involved in the 2016 United States presidential election.
The movement gained international attention during global protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. An estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, making it one of the largest protest movements in the country's history. Despite being characterized by opponents as violent, the overwhelming majority of BLM demonstrations have been peaceful.
The popularity of Black Lives Matter has shifted over time, largely due to changing perceptions among white Americans. In 2020, 67% of adults in the United States expressed support for the movement, declining to 51% of U.S. adults in 2023. Support among people of color has, however, held strong, with 81% of African Americans, 61% of Hispanics and 63% of Asian Americans expressing support for Black Lives Matter as of 2023. (Full article...)
Selected general articles
- Image 1
Civil unrest began in the Uptown district of the U.S. city of Minneapolis on June 3, 2021, as a reaction to news reports that law enforcement officers had killed a wanted suspect during an arrest. The law enforcement killing occurred atop a parking ramp near West Lake Street and Girard Avenue. Police fired several rounds, killing the person at the scene. In an initial statement about the encounter, the U.S. Marshals Service alleged that a person failed to comply with arresting officers and produced a gun. Crowds gathered on West Lake Street near the parking ramp soon afterwards as few details were known about the incident or the deceased person, who was later identified as Winston Boogie Smith, a 32-year-old black American man.
An initial period of civil disorder occurred over four nights along a three-block stretch of West Lake Street. Several business were vandalized during the overnight hours of June 3 and 4, resulting in several arrests. Protests were held over subsequent days with demonstrators periodically occupying a street intersection near where Smith was killed. There was no known video evidence of the police encounter with Smith, and an attorney for the passenger in Smith's car and protesters disputed the law enforcement account of events. The night of June 13, a protester, Deona Marie Knajdek, was killed when a vehicle rammed into a demonstration in the street. Over the next several days, demonstrators attempted to reoccupy a portion of the street and erected makeshift barricades that were removed by Minneapolis police officers. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the state's National Guard on standby orders for possible deployment to Minneapolis. (Full article...) - Image 2On March 23, 2020, Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African-American man, died after being physically restrained by Rochester, New York police officers. Prude had been suffering from a mental health episode after ingesting PCP and was walking naked in the city's streets. The officers put a spit hood over his head after he began spitting. They restrained him face-down on the street for two minutes and fifteen seconds, and he stopped breathing. Prude received CPR on the scene and later died of complications from asphyxia after being taken off life support.
The autopsy report ruled Prude's death a homicide and also included the contributing factors to his death as "excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP". The death first received attention in September 2020 when the police body camera video and written reports were released along with the autopsy report. Following the report's release, protesters demonstrated outside the Rochester police headquarters and many considered the death to be related to Prude's race. The demonstrations were connected to the Black Lives Matter movement and the string of racial justice events of 2020. (Full article...) - Image 3
Many artworks related to the Black Lives Matter movement were created in Portland, Oregon, United States, during local protests over the murder of George Floyd and other Black Americans. Oregon Arts Watch contextualized the artistic works, stating that a "whitewashed pre-COVID lens" on American life, which obscured systemic racism, had been "cracked", and describing artists' response to racial violence being brought into the public eye was a "marathon, not a sprint". (Full article...) - Image 4The United Citizens' Alarm (UCA, formerly the Utah Citizens' Alarm) is an armed right-wing militia group in Utah, United States. Founded in 2020 in opposition to Black Lives Matter (BLM), the group has been considered a part of the U.S. extreme right, with some members being associated with the far-right Proud Boys. (Full article...)
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The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right) is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has been declining since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.
In 2010, the American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine. His "alternative right" was influenced by earlier forms of American white nationalism, as well as paleoconservatism, the Dark Enlightenment, and the Nouvelle Droite. His term was shortened to "alt-right" and popularized by far-right participants of pol, the politics board of the web forum 4chan. It came to be associated with other white nationalist websites and groups, including Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer, Brad Griffin's Occidental Dissent, and Matthew Heimbach's Traditionalist Worker Party. Following the 2014 Gamergate controversy, the alt-right made increasing use of trolling and online harassment to raise its profile. It attracted broader attention in 2015, particularly through coverage on Steve Bannon's Breitbart News, due to alt-right support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Upon being elected, Trump disavowed the movement. Attempting to transform itself from an online-based movement to a physical one, Spencer and other alt-right figures organized the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to violent clashes with counter-demonstrators and resulted in one death when an alt-right member drove his car through the crowd of counter-demonstrators. The fallout from the rally resulted in a decline of the alt-right. (Full article...) - Image 6Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin is a non-fiction book written by Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin, a teenager whose death by shooting drew nationwide protests against racial violence. (Full article...)
- Image 7On January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, was fatally injured by five black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, and died three days later. The officers, all members of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) SCORPION unit, pulled Nichols from his car before pepper spraying and tasering him. Nichols broke free and ran toward his mother's house, which was less than a mile (1.6 km) away. Five black officers caught up with Nichols near the house, where they punched, kicked and pepper sprayed him, and struck him with a baton. Medics on the scene failed to administer care for 16 minutes after arriving. Nichols was admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
The officers reported that they stopped Nichols for reckless driving. The MPD released four edited video clips from police body cameras and a nearby pole-mounted camera. MPD Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis later stated that the department had reviewed camera footage and could not find any evidence of probable cause for the traffic stop. (Full article...) - Image 8The blue wall of silence, also blue code and blue shield, are terms used to denote the informal code of silence among police officers in the United States not to report on a colleague's errors, misconducts, or crimes, especially as related to police brutality in the United States. If questioned about an incident of alleged misconduct involving another officer (e.g., during the course of an official inquiry), while following the code, the officer being questioned would perjure themselves by feigning ignorance of another officer's wrongdoing. (Full article...)
- Image 9Blackout is a young adult novel written by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. The book contains six interlinked stories about Black teen love during a power outage in New York City. The book was released on June 22, 2021. (Full article...)
- Image 10On 6 April 2019, Lassana Cisse Souleymane, a 42-year-old migrant worker from the Ivory Coast, was killed in a racially-motivated drive-by shooting in Ħal Far, Malta. Two other African migrants were also injured in the attack. In May 2019, the Armed Forces of Malta soldiers Francesco Fenech and Lorin Scicluna were charged with the murder of Cisse and attempted murder of the two others, along with the attempted murder of another migrant in a hit and run attack the previous February. (Full article...)
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The Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, commonly known as the SAFE-T Act, is a state of Illinois statute enacted in 2021 that makes a number of reforms to the criminal justice system, affecting policing, pretrial detention and bail, sentencing, and corrections. The Act's section on pretrial detention, which took effect in full on September 18, 2023, is also known as the Pretrial Fairness Act. (Full article...) - Image 12Campaign Zero is an American police reform campaign launched on August 21, 2015. The plan consists of ten proposals, all of which are aimed at reducing police violence. The campaign's planning team includes Brittany Packnett, Samuel Sinyangwe, DeRay Mckesson, and Johnetta Elzie. The activists who produced the proposals did so in response to critics who asked them to make specific policy proposals. Subsequent critics of Campaign Zero and of their 8 Can't Wait project point out that some of the policies it recommends are already in place as best practice policies at many police departments. Some of these include the Milwaukee policing survey
and the PRIDE act. However, a 2016 study by Campaign Zero found that only three of the eight policy recommendations were adopted by the average police department and that no law enforcement agency had adopted all eight. (Full article...) - Image 13A Terry stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause which is needed for arrest. When police stop and search a pedestrian, this is commonly known as a stop and frisk. When police stop an automobile, this is known as a traffic stop. If the police stop a motor vehicle on minor infringements in order to investigate other suspected criminal activity, this is known as a pretextual stop. Additional rules apply to stops that occur on a bus.
In the United States at the federal level, the Supreme Court has decided many cases that define the intersection between policing and the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. However, Congress has not defined a baseline for police behavior. There has been some state action at both the legislative and judicial levels, and also some cities have passed laws on these issues. (Full article...) - Image 14
DeRay Mckesson (born July 9, 1985) is an American civil rights activist, podcaster, and former school administrator. An early supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, he has been active in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland and on social media outlets such as Twitter and Instagram. He has also written for HuffPost and The Guardian. Along with Johnetta Elzie, Brittany Packnett, and Samuel Sinyangwe, Mckesson launched Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence. He is currently part of Crooked Media and hosts Pod Save the People.
On February 3, 2016, Mckesson announced his candidacy in the 2016 Baltimore mayoral election. He finished with 3,445 votes (2.6%), placing sixth in the Democratic Party primary on April 26. (Full article...) - Image 15The Chicago Police Board voted on October 17, 2019 to dismiss Chicago Police (CPD) Officer Robert Rialmo who fatally shot Quintonio LeGrier and neighbor Bettie Jones on December 26, 2015 while answering a 911 domestic violence call at the LeGrier residence in Chicago. The dismissal capped a "chaotic finish to a high-profile trial" where a judge first announced that the jury found Rialmo unjustified in his shooting of LeGrier, but erased the verdict promptly, after declaring that the jury found Rialmo feared for his life when he shot LeGrier. (Full article...)
- Image 16
Cori Anika Bush (born July 21, 1976) is an American politician, nurse, pastor, and Black Lives Matter activist serving as the U.S. representative for Missouri's 1st congressional district, since 2021. The district includes all of the city of St. Louis and most of northern St. Louis County.
A member of the Democratic Party, on August 4, 2020, Bush defeated 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay in a 2020 U.S. House of Representatives primary election largely viewed as a historic upset, advancing to the November general election in a solidly Democratic congressional district. Bush is the first African-American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri. She previously ran in the Democratic primary for the district in 2018 and the 2016 U.S. Senate election in Missouri. She was featured in the 2019 Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, which covered her first primary challenge to Clay. Bush is a member of The Squad in the House of Representatives. (Full article...) - Image 17On November 4, 2018, Tamla Horsford was discovered dead in the backyard of the Cumming, Georgia, home where she had been attending a slumber party with other "football moms" the night before. The 40-year-old was a mother of five.
The Forsyth County Sheriff department initially ruled the death an accident, stating that the "multiple blunt force injuries" were related to Horsford likely falling from the balcony due to "acute ethanol intoxication". A second autopsy requested by her family revealed further abrasions to her body. The family's attorney also stated that lack of evidence, types of injuries discovered, and mismatched witness accounts strongly suggested homicide. On February 20, 2019, Major Joe Perkins of the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office announced that the case would be closed and that there was no evidence of foul play. (Full article...) - Image 18Deacon Johhny Hollman Sr. was a 62-year-old man killed by Atlanta Police officer Kiran Kimbrough on August 10, 2023. (Full article...)
- Image 19Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge is a photograph of Ieshia Evans, a nurse from Pennsylvania, being arrested by police officers dressed in riot gear during a protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on 9 July 2016. The protest began in the aftermath of the shooting by police of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The image, taken by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, became a viral phenomenon on social media, described by several media organizations as "iconic", with some comparing the image (and Evans) to well-known images of other lone protesters, such as the photograph of "Tank Man" in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. (Full article...)
- Image 20Generation Revolution is a 2016 British documentary film directed by Cassie Quarless and Usayd Younis. It follows the stories of Black and Asian activists in London who aim to change the social and political landscape in the capital. The film preceded the inception of the UK's Black Lives Matter movement.
The film premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest on 14 June 2016. It released on Netflix UK & Ireland on 1 October 2020. (Full article...) - Image 21Chaniece Wallace (1990 − October 22, 2020), a black woman and physician, died at 30 years of age from complications of pregnancy two days after the birth of her daughter. Her death is seen as preventable and is viewed in the context of high rates of maternal mortality in the United States, particularly among the African American population. It is cited as an example in medical and scholarly publications to call for improved health outcomes in the black U.S. population. Wallace died despite several factors seen as protective: she was "highly educated, employed as a health care practitioner, had access to health care, and had a supportive family." Wallace was a fourth year pediatric chief resident at the Indiana University School of Medicine and was working at Riley Children's Health Hospital at the time of her death.
Wallace had headaches that started in early October 2020 and worsened during the month. She was admitted to the hospital for high blood pressure after a previously scheduled appointment on October 20th, 2020. She had an emergency caesarean section that day in the setting of pre-eclampsia. Hypertensive disease of pregnancy (from pre-eclampsia) with liver rupture and kidney damage contributed to her death. Dr. Monique Rainford, an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine, wrote of the cause of Wallace's death in her book Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America. She wrote that "among Dr. Wallace's complications was a 'ruptured liver'—a known, but rare and severe, complication of preeclampsia/eclampsia and/or HELLP syndrome. 'Ruptured liver' can refer to spontaneous rupture of a subcapsular liver hematoma (collection of blood between the liver and a layer of tissue surrounding it) or of the liver itself. It is a rare incident occurring in 1 in 40,000 to 1 in 250,000 deliveries and in about 1% to less than 2% of the cases with HELLP syndrome." Rainford recalled only one similar case in her career, which occurred while she was in training. The woman's life was spared, an outcome which she attributed to both good medicine (including surgery) and divine fortune. (Full article...) - Image 22
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), originally Free Capitol Hill and occasionally the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), was an unlawful occupation protest and self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The zone, originally covering two intersections at the corners of Cal Anderson Park and the roads leading up to them, was established on June 8, 2020 by people protesting the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The zone was cleared of occupants by police on July 1, 2020.
The formation of the zone was preceded by tense interactions between protesters and police in riot gear which began on June 1, 2020. The situation escalated on June 7 after a man drove his vehicle toward a crowd near 11th Avenue and Pine Street and shot a protester who tried to stop him. Tear gas, flashbangs and pepper spray were used by police in the densely populated residential neighborhood. On June 7, the SPD reported that protesters were throwing rocks, bottles, and fireworks, and were shining green lasers into officers' eyes. The next day, the SPD vacated and boarded up its East Precinct building in an effort to de-escalate the situation. After the SPD had vacated the East Precinct station, protesters moved into the Capitol Hill area. They repositioned street barricades in a one-block radius around the station and declared the area "Free Capitol Hill". The protest area was later renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). (Full article...) - Image 23Whose Streets? is a 2017 American documentary film about the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson uprising. Directed by Sabaah Folayan and co-directed by Damon Davis, Whose Streets? premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, then was released theatrically in August, 2017, for the anniversary of Brown's death. It was a nominee for Critics' Choice and Gotham Independent Film awards. (Full article...)
- Image 24
The death of Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali-Canadian, occurred on July 24, 2016, in the neighbourhood of Hintonburg in Ottawa, Ontario. Abdi died in an incident with the Ottawa Police Service. (Full article...) - Image 25Police misconduct is inappropriate conduct and illegal actions taken by police officers in connection with their official duties. Types of misconduct include among others: sexual offences, coerced false confession, intimidation, false arrest, false imprisonment, falsification of evidence, spoliation of evidence, police perjury, witness tampering, police brutality, police corruption, racial profiling, unwarranted surveillance, unwarranted searches, and unwarranted seizure of property. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that Arkansas legislator Denise Jones Ennett took part in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the Arkansas State Capitol?
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Selected images
- Image 1A demonstrator raising awareness of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, April 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 2Protests in May 2020 after George Floyd's death (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 3"Black Lives Matter" on the facade of the Washington National Cathedral, June 10, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 4A Black Lives Matter die-in over rail tracks, protesting alleged police brutality in Saint Paul, Minnesota (September 20, 2015) (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 5Black Lives Matter demonstration in Oakland, California, December 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 8Black Lives Matter protest on September 20, 2015, against police brutality in St. Paul, Minnesota (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 9Demonstration at Christiansborg Slotsplads, Copenhagen, June 7, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 10George Floyd protests at Lafayette Square, Washington D.C., May 30, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 11The empty pedestal of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Subject to increasing controversy since the 1990s, when his prior reputation as a philanthropist came under scrutiny due to a growing awareness of his slave trading, in June 2020 the statue was toppled, defaced and pushed into Bristol Harbour. (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 12Black Lives Matter protester at Macy's Herald Square, November 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 13Map depicting rates of police killings by state in the United States in 2018 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 14An activist holds a "Black Lives Matter" sign outside the Minneapolis Police Fourth Precinct building following the officer-involved killing of Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 15Protest march in response to the killing of Philando Castile, St. Paul, Minnesota, July 7, 2016 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 16Protest in response to the Alton Sterling killing, San Francisco, California, July 8, 2016 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 17Black Lives Matter protest against St. Paul police brutality at Metro Green Line, September 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 18Protest march in response to the Jamar Clark killing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 21Black Lives Matter protest in Aotea Square, Auckland, June 14, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 22Vehicle with a BLM sticker, September 18, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 23Black Lives Matter protest at Herald Square, Manhattan, November 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 24Al Sharpton led the Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 25"What happened to 'All Lives Matter'?" sign at a protest against Donald Trump, January 29, 2017 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 26A Black Lives Matter protest of police brutality in the rotunda of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, in December 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 27Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter activists in Westlake Park, Seattle, August 8, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 28Protest outside the U.S. Embassy in London, June 7, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 30Ferguson, Missouri, August 17, 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 31One-year commemoration of the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson unrest at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, August 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
- Image 34Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., as seen from space on June 8, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
In the news
- 16 May 2024 – Murder of Garrett Foster
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing a man at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. (The New York Times)
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