by Curtis Bunn
Translation: They were prepared to die for the cause.
The Matter of Protests
BLM was ignited by the tragic killings of Black men by white men, either law enforcement, wanna-be law enforcement, or so-called vigilantes. The uprisings were heightened by the death of Black women, Sandra Bland in police custody in Texas, and later by the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, with many others in between. But the vast issues that plague Black life spread about like tributaries flowing from a river.
The movement had multiple layers—police reform at the top to eliminate the blatant disregard for Black life, but also with job equity, the wealth gap, public health, fairness in housing and education—just about every element of life where being Black was a disadvantage, which was every walk of life.
“We primed the ground for a moment when the world is cracked wide open,” said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of the Los Angeles BLM chapter. “We set things up to get folks to reimagine public safety and think beyond policing. I think we’ve ushered in transformative change in many different regards.”
In her best-selling book When They Call You a Terrorist, Khan-Cullors wrote: “In Los Angeles, working primarily with women, many of them students from Cal State, I begin planning what will become the largest march I’ve ever planned up until that point. I put a call out on Facebook for people to come to Saint Elmo’s Village to meet…and Thandisizwe Chimurenga, one of our most beloved local journalists and radio hosts, helps get people to come. She brings Melina Abdullah, who teaches black studies at Cal State, and Melina brings her students, and together we formed the core of what will become the organizing committee for our March, indeed for who we are in LA. It is the beginning of the build-out of our Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles DNA.”
Similar efforts rose across the country. The movement had legs—and critics. The name Black Lives Matter scared and put off some white people, who called the organizers “terrorists,” the participants “radicals,” and the emphasis on Black lives exclusionary.
There were critics of the sexual orientation of the three founders, as if their views on and commitment to protecting all Black lives had anything to do with sexuality.
“I’m not going to entertain it or engage it,” Abdullah said. “That’s not how Black people get free. You know, fifty-seven years ago, they made the same accusations and allegations around Bayard Rustin (who fought for civil and gay rights in the 1960s and was the primary organizer of the 1963 March on Washington) and it’s fifty-seven years ago, a bunch of Black male pastors said, ‘You know what? Bayard Rustin is too important to the movement. Barbara Jordan is too important to the movement.’ All of these queens and trans folk who helped to conceptualize, conceive of and usher forward the movement need to be given priority. And we’re not going to entertain it, certainly. Fifty-seven years later, we should be taking at least that strong of a position.”
She added: “There’s always been homophobic and transphobic people, and those are the people we want to engage. So, you know, it’s our proclamation that all Black lives matter. And anybody who thinks that someone’s Black life doesn’t matter because of sexual orientation or gender identity or class, then [that’s] their problem.”
That dogged perspective permeated the BLM movement. You have a problem with how we do things? Get over yourself.
The confidence in how the leadership went about its work was decisive and unyielding, which created a unified approach, whether the march was in New York or Denver, Detroit or Memphis.
“I am clear, we are clear,” Khan-Cullors wrote, “that the only plan for us, for Black people living in the United States—en masse, if not individually—is all tied up to the architecture of punishment and containment. We are resolute in our call to dismantle it.”
Tacuma Peters, an assistant professor at Michigan State University in the James Madison College, which focuses on politics and social politics and society, said the 1960s efforts led mostly by clergy and the 2020 BLM efforts led mostly by Black women are the same, but different.
“So, there are things that we can point to that have historical precedents,” Peters said. “And then there’s things that are wholly new. So I think that the things that we have seen before is the care that Black communities have for their children and have for their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and their neighbors, and rallying around particular people or particular events as a way to both honor those who have been taken away, but also as a way to really push politically and socially for change that is affecting the supermajority, if not all Black people.
“So, I think there’s a way just to think about how this is different. I think people have pointed out repeatedly how the protests, the initial Black Lives Matter protests, are actually important for understanding our contemporary moment: that something happened five or six years ago that allowed for a particular groundswell of particular individuals.”
Peters said the formulation of BLM in response to Zimmerman’s acquittal for killing Martin set up the power of the 2020 movement. It was a strong, established organization and prepared to mobilize. And for their work, Black Lives Matter was nominated for a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. In Norwegian MP Petter Eide’s official nomination papers, obtained by CNN, he wrote that he nominated the movement “for their struggle against racism and racially motivated violence.” Eide added, “BLM’s call for systemic change [has] spread around the world, forcing other countries to grapple with racism within their own societies.”
Peters said: “If you were to ask me two years ago about the effectiveness of the first iteration of Black Lives Matter, part of it, would it be talking about maybe [laws passed that required police to wear] body cams. But [in 2020], if we want to talk about the impact of Black Lives Matter, it is the fact that that first iteration made the second iteration possible. I always want to think about how the consciousness of people, Black people, but not exclusively Black people, was raised. People were making policy decisions. They came to the center at least for a little bit for a certain discussion. And [in 2020] we [saw] an extension of that with new players, but also some of the same people in a further raising in Black communities, in Latino communities, in larger white America of a certain type of consciousness of death at the hands of the police.
“Part of the newness from the perspective of larger white, but not only white America, is a visceral reaction to particular deaths…visceral reaction that we didn’t see three, five, six years ago. That is part of the newness. Another part of this is the way in which calls for defunding police and the calls for abolition, calls for really dismantling…the police state are gaining more traction in places within the Black community and outside of the Black community where they were never given any credence. That is very important because there has been a shift [in] understanding that what needs to happen is a radical dismantling of a whole system that captures many Americans in its maws, and that there needs to be some radical change on the local level that is not going to be just ‘reform.’ And I think that’s a pretty big change.”
Black Lives Matter, Peters said, “confounded people” because it energized a base that had been tired of being marginalized, especially in the aftermath of the killing of Black people in suspect circumstances.
Law enforcement, on the other hand, was hardly energized by BLM. Rather, there was a tangible contempt for the organization and what it represented, evident by its aggressive posture and its persistent counter-message of “Blue Lives Matter.”
Often in riot gear and contentious, police and, in some cases, the National Guard aggressively confronted BLM protesters and used physical tactics, including clubs, shields, pepper spray, and rubber bullets to assert their authority.
Additionally, the intimidation factor was omnipresent. There were countless images of officers pointing weapons at unarmed protesters, including women and children, marchers knocked to the ground, choking on tear gas, getting pushed back, run over and arrested. Army tanks traveled up Pen
nsylvania Avenue in D.C. during the BLM march following George Floyd’s killing.
“As we were fighting police brutality, we’re also experiencing police brutality,” Melina Abdullah said.
“I didn’t feel safe with the police wearing riot gear, holding automatic weapons and tasers just feet away from me,” said Samantha Myers, who participated in the BLM protests in Washington, D.C., where there was a significant show of force. “I felt uncomfortable in the presence of the police, in fear that I or a loved one would be injured while demanding justice for Black lives and the end of systemic oppression.”
Jordan Sims, a high school student in Atlanta, was pepper-sprayed in the face at a protest in Georgia’s capital city. “I was on the front line,” Sims recounted. “We were chanting. Everything was fine. Then the police officers got agitated and started pushing us back. And it turned into chaos, and someone pulled out the pepper spray and got me—for no reason.”
A Black woman, Leslie Furcron of San Diego, was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet during a Black Lives Matter demonstration on May 30, 2020, after she tossed an empty Red Bull can several feet away from the line of police officers dressed in riot gear, with weapons aimed at protesters. The officer who permanently blinded Furcron in one eye was never brought up on charges.
In Minneapolis, 650 people, mostly Black, were arrested during a march on a highway that had been peaceful—until state troopers surrounded the demonstrators and ordered everyone to sit on the ground. A nineteen-year-old was charged with felony riot. Her offense? She shone a laser pointer in the eyes of a police officer.
Officers in riot gear disrupted a solemn violin vigil on a lawn for a Black man who had died during a police arrest in the Denver suburb of Aurora. They gushed pepper spray at families with kids, sending them scurrying.
Those are only a handful of the countless uses of force around the country against BLM marchers, unprovoked acts against Black people that were magnified by the contrast of law enforcement’s reaction on January 6, 2021, to the mob of largely white Donald Trump supporters who marched to and commandeered the U.S. Capitol. Many believed that Trump had incited the crowd at a rally, exhorting his followers, many of whom were connected to white supremacist and conspiracy theorists’ groups, to march to the Capitol and to be “strong” in their actions.
With little resistance from Capitol Police, the gang—wearing Trump paraphernalia, carrying Confederate flags and weapons, and spewing nonsensical gibberish about America being “their” country—stormed a building that was supposed to be one of the most secure in the world. Capitol Police, overrun and understaffed, essentially played matador, stepping aside to let them bull-rush the hallowed building constructed by enslaved Black people beginning in 1793. The National Guard was called in much too late to stop the mob.
The magnitude of the invasion was monumental. People knocked over barricades, scaled the walls like wild squirrels, and broke windows, a breach of the Capitol unmatched since the British burned the building during the War of 1812. It was not enough to illegally enter the structure. The terrorists deposited feces in the hallways, ransacked offices, smoked marijuana, and stole lawmakers’ property. Their thwarted intent was to abduct and harm lawmakers.
Members of the mob mounted statues and posed for photos, took seats at politicians’ desks, and set up a makeshift hanging post with a noose at the entrance—an egregious but telling act.
A Capitol Police officer died, and many others were beaten and injured in the insurrection that forced many Trump sycophants to distance themselves from the disgraced president. Four others died as well, including a woman shot by a Capitol Police officer, and three others with medical emergencies.
Remarkably, when done with their carnage, the invaders/terrorists strolled out of the building, after more than three hours of occupying and plundering offices, as if they were enjoying a fine afternoon in the park.
There was no distress on their faces or concern in their gait that there would be repercussions for their treasonous crimes.
All this occurred at the U.S. Capitol, where in 2013, a Black woman, Miriam Carey, with her thirteen-month-old daughter in the backseat, was shot multiple times and killed by the same Capitol Police that did little or not enough to stop—and, in fact, in some cases invited in—a white mob with bad intentions. Carey had made a U-turn at the White House and initiated a police chase for a quarter mile up Pennsylvania Avenue. The lethal forced used against the young Black mother, who was suffering from postpartum depression and other mental health issues, her sister said, was symptomatic of the concerns of Black Lives Matter protesters who peacefully demonstrated.
What happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, displays the tale of dueling Americas: one in which Black peaceful demonstrators are intimidated and physically handled by an abundance of law enforcement, and the other America in which a violent, angry white mob can seize the U.S. Capitol against understaffed police, abuse and cause the death of officers, wreck a government building, and walk out without concern of suffering consequences.
Responses to the blatant differences were swift and carried the same theme: hypocrisy.
Black Lives Matter posted on Twitter: “When Black people protest for our lives, we are met by National Guard troops or police equipped with assault rifles, tear gas and battle helmets. When white people attempt a coup, they are met by an underwhelming number of law enforcement personnel who act powerless to intervene.
“Make no mistake, if the protesters were Black, we would have been tear gassed, battered, and perhaps shot.”
Americans from all walks of life, all races and political affiliations, made the obvious comparison. It was undeniable.
“The events [at the Capitol showed us] that there have always been multiple Americas,” Garza, the BLM co-founder, said. “There’s been an America that we read about in history books—a romantic America that is made of fairy tales. And then there’s America that some of us live in—an America where the rules have been rigged against us for a very long time.
“It’s an America where the rules around race and gender and class are fundamental, and they shape and impact people’s everyday lives. It’s also an America where we function under a particular sense of amnesia.”
When it comes to law enforcement, Black people were not looking for equal violence toward whites. Rather, as a cogent meme on Instagram expressed: “We’re not asking you to shoot them like you shoot us. We’re asking you to not shoot us like you don’t shoot them.”
“The Talk” Intensifies
The trust of law enforcement, which had been precarious at best, vaporized in 2020 with the seemingly endless stream of Black deaths at the hands of white officers or vigilantes keen on taking the law into their own hands. It reached an explosive tipping point when Floyd’s horrifying death played out on televisions, computers, and cell phones. The world rebelled. For Black parents, it was a clarion call to rally their kids.
Floyd’s death, amplified by twenty-five-year-old Ahmaud Arbery’s senseless slaying in Georgia a few months earlier on February 23 by a shotgun-toting civilian son and his father, put into alarming context the struggle and fear Black parents have for their children.
“It’s an insidious form of racial profiling,” Rodney Coates, a sociologist and professor of critical race and ethnic studies at the University of Miami of Ohio, said.
“I’m terrified that my son might go to prison or get killed just by being Black,” said Jeri Byrom, a teacher in Nairobi, Kenya, who said she was excited about her son, Adam, starting college at Howard University a few years ago. That excitement, though, was laced with concern he would fall victim to a targeted attack.
“I live in this constant fear,” she said. “Young freshmen do stupid things, and young Black men cannot afford to make one mistake. I happened to call him on Halloween during his freshman year. Good thing I did, because he and his friend were about to go trick-or-treating in an affluent area of D.C.
“I frea
ked out and started yelling: ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I could imagine what could happen to a group of Black boys, with or without costumes, going to a white neighborhood. Again, we had ‘The Talk’: ‘You can’t do things like that. You are a target. You don’t have to do anything at all, and you can still be shot or arrested or attacked. Please don’t go.’ Thankfully, they didn’t.”
New York native Carlton Riddick, an information technology specialist, recalled the talk he had with his mother before he left to attend Johnson C. Smith University in 1988 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“She told me to avoid being considered a criminal by watching whom I would associate with, so I would not be arrested,” he said.
Before his oldest son departed for college, Riddick had a different talk. “I said, ‘Son, the police are not your friends.’ I wanted him to fully understand what it means to walk out of the safety of his home into a world that would see him as a suspect just because he was walking down the street. This admonishment also included being cautious and suspicious of those of other cultures, many of whom now seem emboldened to take matters into their own hands.”
A miffed Riddick added: “What kind of world do we live in when a parent has to have these types of conversations with their children? What pained me the most is here I am a father basically instilling a level of trepidation in my sons. All they hear normally from me is that they can be anything they want to be if they work for it. I had to add a caveat: even in a world that only sees you as a suspect.”
Hauntingly, Samar Moseley, thirty-seven, of Minneapolis, said he lives in fear that an officer will kill him. He said he leaves social events early to avoid the potential for confrontations that often come at the end of the night. The area has been the scene of so much Black pain, including the deaths of Floyd, Jamar Clark in 2015, and Philando Castile in 2016, across the bridge in St. Paul.
“I feel like I could be next,” he said. “It’s that bad. Black men in this city feel like targets,” said Moseley, who was so disturbed by killings of Black men by cops that in 2019 he wrote and released a music video on YouTube called “When They Gonna Stop?”