This
could be the start of something interesting. But I can't help noticing two things:
- That most media-outlets are uncritically associating this with #blacklivesmatter, without differentiating between this and the official Black Lives Matter group.
- That certain phrases such as 'institutional racism'*, and 'white supremacy' seem to be absent.
The page
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/problem/, outlining the apparent problem, doesn't in fact use the word 'race' in any form at all. It talks about police-violence, the fact that most victims were unarmed, and the fact that other countries don't kill civilians the way the US does, without mentioning race
even once. The racial disparity in the deaths is so blatant in the US, that I'd almost suspect the absence of that word as
deliberate.
More than one thousand people are killed by police every year in America
Nearly sixty percent of victims did not have a gun or were involved in activities that should not require police intervention such as harmless "quality of life" behaviors or mental health crises.
This year is no different. There have only been nine days this year when the police have not killed somebody. Last month alone, the police killed 125 people. This must stop. We must end police violence so we can live and feel safe in this country.
We can live in an America where the police do not kill people. Police in England, Germany, Australia, Japan, and even cities like Newark, NJ, and Richmond, CA, demonstrate that public safety can be ensured without killing civilians. By implementing the right policy changes, we can end police killings and other forms of police violence in the United States.
At any rate, the framing does seem quite distinct from that of
official BLM**:
#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our de-humanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.
It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.
When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. How Black poverty and genocide is state violence. How 2.8 million Black people are locked in cages in this country is state violence. How Black women bearing the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families is state violence. How Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence. How 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows. How Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war. How Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.
#BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and love for Black people into creating a political project–taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.
It's almost as if*** we're talking about (at least) two completely different groups, one focused upon practical solutions to police-violence, in the context of race, and the other, looking for some sort of outright revolution (against a patriarchal cis-normative hetero-white supremacy natch). Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that.
I've yet to see what the more official BLM reaction to this effort is**** (interesting timing to release something over a weekend, isn't it ?), but I'm genuinely curious how this will play out, and to what degree the two groups will find common cause or cause for competition.
* Did see 'systemic racism' a few times, and also 'racial' & 'racism' several times.
** Emphasis mine
*** Almost as if all black people don't think the same. I know, who knew, right ?
**** If any -- The attention of the mainstream white media doesn't necessarily mean anything after all.
***** And I didn't even mention MLK or Malcolm X once...Yay me ! /snark.
