Historical Brief of Black Lives Matter Movement

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  Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi (center) and Alicia Garza (right)
  courtesy of madamenoire.com

  Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded #BlackLivesMatter in 2012, after George Zimmerman, responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted for his crime. Trayvon Martin was posthumously charged for his own death.

• These women moved the hashtag from social media into the streets, holding conference calls, connecting people across the country striving to end forms of injustice affecting black people.

• Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded #BlackLivesMatter in 2012, after George Zimmerman, responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted for his crime. Trayvon Martin was posthumously charged for his own death.
• Structure: formed in chapters around the nation.

• Request:  Asking for us not just to stand in solidarity but scrutinize the ways in which anti-black racism is perpetuated in our communities.

• BLM is specifically geared toward affirming those Black lives that are particularly marginalized, Black queer and trans folk, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.

“When we deploy ‘All Lives Matter’ as to correct an intervention specifically created to address anti-blackness, we lose the ways in which the state apparatus has built a program of genocide and repression mostly on the back of Black people- beginning with the theft of millions of people for free labor- and then adapted it to control, murder, and profit off of other communities of color and immigrant communities.” -Alicia Garza

Sources: Black Lives Matter Herstory
Black Lives Matter “About”

Compiled by Nikki Pyle