Black Lives Matter marks 10th anniversary with new calls for justice

Trayvon Martin was 17 years old when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. His death, and the subsequent acquittal of Zimmerman, sparked the birth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

On Thursday, the movement recognized its 10th anniversary, a moment when activists acknowledged progress over the last decade but also the amount of work that needs to be done.

“We have the duty to carry on this movement and our mission will always be rooted in dismantling white supremacy and systems of oppression,” D’Zhane Parker, a board member for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (GNF), told The Hill.

BLM organizations will commemorate the decade with in-person and virtual events, issuing renewed calls to reallocate money from police departments and into Black communities that have suffered from police brutality, unequal treatment in criminal justice systems and mass incarceration, according to The Associated Press.

Though more white people have been killed by police, Black people are disproportionately impacted. Data from the NAACP finds that while white people make up a little more than 60 percent of the population, they make up about 41 percent of fatal police shootings. Black people make up only about 13.4 percent of the population and 22 percent of fatal police shootings. That means Black people are about twice as likely as white people to be shot and killed by police officers.

In 2022, at least 1,192 people were killed by police, the highest number ever recorded, according to the Mapping Police Violence database. Of those people, 100 were unarmed. Black people were three times more likely than white people to be killed, and they were also more likely to be unarmed.

“The reason why we say Black lives matter is not because we’re saying our lives are more valuable than other lives, but we’re saying we live we live in a country, in a world, where our lives do not matter and the system continues to show us that every single day by allowing cops to get away with wrongful murders and wrongful death and by allowing the systems of oppression to continue,” Parker said.

Since the BLM movement’s founding by organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, Twitter users have posted more than 44 million tweets with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, according to the Pew Research Center.

Black social media users are more likely to post or share their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, with 43 percent saying social media is an extremely or very effective way of bringing attention to the issue of police brutality.

The movement has survived a backlash since its beginnings.

Former President Trump in 2020 called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” while his former attorney Rudy Giuliani accused BLM activists of being killers and terrorists who “hate white people” in an interview on Fox News.

Meanwhile, phrases like “blue lives matter,” in support of police, along with “all lives matter” and “white lives matter” cropped up on social media and in political rhetoric as a way of combating the BLM message.

Shalomyah Bowers, a Black Lives Matter GNF board member, called the backlash a “whitelash.”

“When Black people have tried to express themselves, have made gains in society, have sort of tried to take a stand in response to movements, there is always a reaction, and that reaction is typically with violence,” Bowers said. “That reaction is typically in the form of policy or trying to discredit Black people, Black organizers, Black work as a way to push back on any gains that Black people are trying to make in society.”

The decade has seen activists with the group move into positions of political leadership.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was a Black Lives Matter activist in Missouri, where Michael Brown was killed by a law enforcement officer, before her election as the first Black woman to represent Missouri.

It has also seen efforts at federal legislation fall short.

In 2021, then-Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) introduced the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a sweeping police reform bill that would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, end qualified immunity and prohibit racial and religious profiling by law enforcement officers.

Qualified immunity, established by the Supreme Court in 1967, keeps police officers from being put on trial for unlawful conduct — including the use of excessive or deadly force — unless the person suing proves both that the conduct was unlawful and that the officers knew they were violating “clearly established” law.

The bill passed the then-Democratic House but talks for a compromise fell apart in the GOP-led Senate.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) reintroduced legislation this year to end qualified immunity.

“We have to listen to the families who have been tragically impacted, who have been robbed of their loved ones … at the hands of law enforcement, of police, people who have taken an oath to protect and to serve,” Pressley said.

“Black Lives Matter is more than statement T-shirts and hashtags and plazas artfully painted,” she added. “It’s about codifying the value of Black lives in our budgets and in our policies. And it’s about advancing policies that seek to undo centuries of harm and to turn a different path forward.”

Even as federal policy has stalled in Congress, there have been some changes at the state level. 

More than 30 states have passed 140 oversight and reform laws on local police since the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

Some of these laws restricted tactics such as no-knock warrants, which led to the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. — another touchstone event from 2020. Others ban the use of neck restraints — like what officers used against Floyd — and mandated the use of body cameras.

“I know there can never really be justice,” Pressley said. “Justice would mean that their loved ones will still be here. But there must be accountability.”

Minneapolis voted to shift nearly $8 million from police funding to services like violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams after Floyd’s killing.

In June 2020, Boston reallocated $12 million of its police overtime budget — about 20 percent — to instead invest in community programs such as trauma and counseling services.

And in 2021, Los Angeles approved Measure J, which allocates 10 percent of the county’s revenue to community investment and alternatives to incarceration.

The work continues this weekend.

On Saturday, the “#BLMTurns10 People’s Justice Festival” will be held in Leimert Park in Los Angeles. The neighborhood, for many, is considered a cultural hub for Black Los Angelenos.

The festival, according to the AP, will include a pop-up garden dedicated to families of people killed by police and white supremacist violence. Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, was invited to speak along with and scholar and activist Cornel West, who is running for U.S. president as a third-party candidate.

Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation will launch a new campaign titled Defund the Police Week of Action. The organization is encouraging supporters to ask elected officials to introduce a proclamation that establishes July 13 as “Black Lives Matter Day.”

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