# data[].attributes.body
Lupita Luna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric Garner’s Death (Published 2015)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the fatal confrontation with the police on Staten Island was captured on video, the focus on an officer’s chokehold left many questions unexplored.

# data[].attributes.body
By Joseph Stringer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
But it has also spurred fierce opposition under banners like All Lives Matter, White Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter (proffered by the supporters of police officers). On Sunday in Houston, for example, a White Lives Matter rally drew 20 people clutching Confederate flags and white supremacist symbols outside the N.A.A.C.P.'s headquarters to denounce attacks on police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La.

In the report on race and social media, Mr. Rainie and his colleagues, led by Monica Anderson and Paul Hitlin, retraced the rise of #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter over a period of nearly 1,000 days, from July 12, 2013, to March 31, 2016.

The #AllLivesMatter hashtag generally tracked the ups and downs of its counterpart, but at a small fraction of the intensity, as shown in the chart below, based on the Pew data obtained using the social analytics software Crimson Hexagon.

The data show that the deaths of Mr. Garner on July 17, 2014, and Mr. Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, marked an early and small turning point for #BlackLivesMatter, but the hashtag didn't enter orbit until later that year.

On Nov. 25, 2014 - three days after a Cleveland police officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice and one day after a grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot Mr. Brown - daily mentions of #BlackLivesMatter spiked drastically to 172,772, according to Pew.

Mentions of the hashtag soared even higher days later. On Dec. 4, one day after a grand jury declined to indict the police officer whose chokehold led to Mr. Garner's death, #BlackLivesMatter appeared 189,210 times on Twitter. It was mentioned 160,810 times the following day, too.

John Donne said "any mans death diminishes me."#BlackLivesMatter
- Chris Hartwell (@PastorChrisH) Dec. 4, 2014

Those events coincided with a lasting spike in the mentions of #BlackLivesMatter. In the three months leading up to Nov. 25, 2014, the hashtag averaged fewer than 1,500 daily mentions. In the three months after, it averaged more than 30,000.

The hashtag enjoyed subsequent spikes, too. It was mentioned more than 120,000 times on the first anniversary of Mr. Brown's shooting and more than 127,000 times on Oct. 14, 2015, one day after Senator Bernie Sanders, then a Democratic presidential contender, defended the movement during a campaign debate.

The Pew study cut off at the end of March of this year, but the team behind the report later conducted a supplemental analysis covering two weeks in July when two black men were separately killed by police and eight police officers were killed in a pair of targeted attacks.

What they found was a tremendous surge in the mentions of #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter.

On the day that Alton B. Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, La. - July 5 - #BlackLivesMatter was mentioned just under 10,000 times on Twitter. The next day, Philando Castile was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Minnesota and the hashtag spiked to more than 250,000 times. On July 7 - the day that Micah Johnson opened an attack on Dallas law enforcement officers, killing five - #BlackLivesMatter appeared more than 850,000 times on Twitter.

By July 8, the hashtag soared to more than 1.1 million mentions. On that same day, #AllLivesMatter appeared 189,000 times on Twitter - matching the record for #BlackLivesMatter during the entire earlier thousand-day study period.

The number of mentions for both hashtags remained high in the days leading up to July 17, when three more officers were fatally shot in Baton Rouge.

The July flurry of activity is notable not only for the level of discussion around the hashtag, but also for how the tone of the conversation changed, according to Pew.

Over the course of the 1,000-day study period, 38 percent of #BlackLivesMatter mentions were positive, compared with 11 percent negative, according to a Pew sentiment analysis. The hashtag was used neutrally 12 percent of the time. (The remaining references fell into an "other" category.)

And in the days leading up to the Dallas shooting, the tone was even more supportive: 87 percent of posts mentioning #BlackLivesMatter did so in a positive light, with just 11 percent of mentions appearing negative from July 5 to July 7.

But that quickly and drastically shifted, with support falling to 28 percent and opposition rising to 39 percent in the 10 days after the Dallas shooting.

"We really saw that shift overnight," Ms. Anderson said. "It really shows you where current events can drive the conversation on social media and also change the tenor of conversation there, as well."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
police brutality  misconduct and shootings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How #BlackLivesMatter Came to Define a Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
But it has also spurred fierce opposition under banners like All Lives Matter, White Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter (proffered by the supporters of police officers). On Sunday in Houston, for example, a White Lives Matter rally drew 20 people clutching Confederate flags and white supremacist symbols outside the N.A.A.C.P.'s headquarters to denounce attacks on police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La.

# data[].attributes.body
Kiana Newman

# data[].attributes.body
Marcel Gilliam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fatal police shooting of Tulsa man - CNN Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed black man, was fatally shot September 16 after officers responded to his car which was left in the middle of the road.

# data[].attributes.body
Kiana Newman

# data[].attributes.body
Erik Drummond

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Saying "All Lives Matter" in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of black people.

"You're watering the house that's not burning, but you're choosing to leave the house that's burning unattended," said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an organizer for the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter. "It's irresponsible."

More to the point: It is a given that all lives matter, said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University.

"That has always been an assumption," she said. "The entire point of Black Lives Matter is to illustrate the extent to which black lives have not mattered in this country."

Judith Butler, a professor in the department of comparative literature and the program of critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a 2015 interview that "if we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, 'all lives matter,' then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of 'all lives.' "

In case you need an explanation of why it should be #BlackLivesMatter instead of #AllLivesMatter. pic.twitter.com/0NOCh18zcJ
- ️ (@iwilIshowyou) July 9, 2016

Many people - even people of color - who have said "All Lives Matter" on social media have faced swift backlash.

Jennifer Lopez deleted a tweet using the #AllLivesMatter hashtag on Tuesday, and a singer at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on Tuesday added the phrase into the Canadian national anthem. His fellow singers disavowed the change and said he'd no longer be performing with them.

Fetty Wap, a rapper, apologized l after he used the #AllLivesMatter hashtag in a tweet last week that he later deleted, saying on Instagram that "I didn't fully understand the hashtag."

Two other singers, Christina Milian and Keke Palmer, also faced fury from fans, causing them to backpedal or delete tweets.

I must not be up to date with the hashtags. And more for praying & conversation. There's no debate here. #BlackLivesMatter I stand by that.
- Christina Milian (@ChristinaMilian) July 14, 2016

Republicans, including Donald J. Trump, frequently use the phrase. Democrats, too, have said it. Hillary Clinton faced intense criticism after she used it in June 2015.

While some who use the phrase may be intentionally slighting Black Lives Matter, or offering a counter-slogan to one they view as divisive, others have seemingly been unaware that anyone would be offended.

When that happens, Ms. Taylor said, "it's important to use this as an opportunity to explain to people, and not just deride them and condemn them for being insensitive."

Dear #AllLivesMatter types... imagine the word "too" appended to #BlackLivesMatter - get it now?
- Craig Mazin (@clmazin) July 13, 2016

There might be some common ground to be found.

In Dallas, people from competing "Black Lives Matter" and "All Lives Matter" protests ended up hugging on Sunday after they came together to talk it out.

A police officer who had been keeping them separate joined a prayer with both groups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why 'All Lives Matter' Is Such a Perilous Phrase

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Saying "All Lives Matter" in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of black people. "You're watering the house that's not burning, but you're choosing to leave the house that's burning unattended," said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an organizer for the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter.

# data[].attributes.body
Joseph Stringer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
licia Garza was in a bar in Oakland, California, drinking bourbon when the verdict came in. It was July 2013 and she had been following the trial of George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, who had shot dead a 17-year-old African-American by the name of Trayvon Martin in February of the preceding year. Martin had been unarmed, on his way back from a 7/11 convenience store where he had just bought himself an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

There had, of course, been shootings of young black men before. But this one had a particular resonance. Garza had a younger brother of a similar height and build to Martin. She felt it could just as easily have been him.

In the bar, Garza, her husband and her two friends had been checking their phones for updates from the trial. The jury had been deliberating for 16 hours on Zimmerman's fate. When the verdict was announced, she learned of it first through Facebook: not guilty of second degree murder and acquitted of manslaughter.

"Everything went quiet, everything and everyone," Garza says now. "And then people started to leave en masse. The one thing I remember from that evening, other than crying myself to sleep that night, was the way in which as a black person, I felt incredibly vulnerable, incredibly exposed and incredibly enraged. Seeing these black people leaving the bar, and it was like we couldn't look at each other. We were carrying this burden around with us every day: of racism and white supremacy. It was a verdict that said: black people are not safe in America."

Garza logged on to Facebook. She wrote an impassioned online message, "essentially a love note to black people", and posted it on her page. It ended with: "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

Garza's close friend, Patrisse Cullors, read the post in a motel room 300 miles away from Oakland that same night. Cullors, also a community organiser working in prison reform, started sharing Garza's words with her friends online. She used a hashtag each time she reposted: #blacklivesmatter. The following day, Garza and Cullors spoke about how they could organise a campaign around these sentiments.

"A call to action," says Garza. "To make sure we are creating a world where black lives actually do matter."

They reached out to Opal Tometi, another activist they knew in the field of immigrant rights. The three women started by setting up Tumblr and Twitter accounts and encouraging users to share stories of why #blacklivesmatter. Garza made protest signs with block capital letters and put them in the window of a local shoe shop. Cullors led a march down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills with a banner emblazoned with the same hashtag. The slogan started gaining traction.

Then, on 9 August 2014, a little over a year after Zimmerman was allowed to walk free from court, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Darren Wilson had fired 12 rounds. Brown had been unarmed.

Protests broke out the day after Brown's shooting. There was some unrest and looting. Cars were vandalised, commercial properties broken into. Police officers in riot gear took to the streets. Watching the drama unfold on TV, Garza had that same sickening feeling she'd had when she heard of Trayvon Martin's death. Along with Cullors and Tometi, she organised a "freedom ride" to Ferguson under the auspices of the #blacklivesmatter campaign. More than 500 people signed up from 18 different cities across America. When they reached Ferguson, Garza was astonished to see her own phrase mirrored back at her on protest banners and shouted in unison by people she had never met.

When a grand jury announced Darren Wilson would face no indictment in the matter of Brown's death, a group of protesters chanting "Black lives matter" shut down a local shopping mall. Later, after a spate of further deaths of unarmed black men, the phrase started appearing on T-shirts and mugs and badges. In December, Hillary Clinton used the phrase in a speech delivered at a human rights gala. It was referred to in television programmes - an episode of Law & Order; the finale of Empire. By January 2015, the American Dialect Society had declared #blacklivesmatter as their "word" of the year.

Alicia Garza in San Francisco, May 2015: 'We have a lot of leaders, just not where you might be looking for them. If you're only looking for the straight black man who is a preacher, you're not going to find it.' Photograph: Kristin Little

In June, following the shooting of nine people by a suspected white supremacist in a church in Charleston, the activist Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole outside the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina and removed the Confederate flag. Her actions were tweeted and retweeted under the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. At a subsequent eulogy for the victims of the church shooting, President Barack Obama paid tribute to black churches for being a place where children were "taught that they matter". There are now over 26 Black Lives Matter chapters across the United States. From one heartfelt Facebook post, it has spawned a new civil rights movement.

Garza has been astonished by the response. "This wasn't something that we - you know..." She pauses. "We didn't have a strategic plan."

Black America is in a state of protest. The 21st-century civil rights movement, exemplified by the action taken by Garza and those like her, is democratic in its aims and agile in its responses. It is fuelled by grief and fury, by righteous rage against injustice and institutionalised racism and by frustration at the endemic brutality of the state against those it deems unworthy.

In almost every area of society, black Americans remain disadvantaged. Education? Forty-two percent of black children are educated in high-poverty schools. Employment? The unemployment rate for black high-school dropouts is 47% (for white high-school dropouts it is 26%). Housing? Although black people make up just 13.2% of the US population, they account for 37% of the homeless. Voters' rights? One in every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised because of a felony conviction - a rate more than four times greater than the rest of the US population. In fact, African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million jail population and are incarcerated nearly six times as often as white people.

Despite the election of America's first black president in 2008, those profound structural fissures remain. But although the challenges might be similar, the new civil rights movement is tackling them in new ways compared to the 20th-century movement. The most notable difference is that, in 2015, there are no leaders in the conventional sense: no Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, no single charismatic voice that claims to speak for the many. Several people I interview insist this is a strength: they make the bleak point that, historically, single leaders of civil rights movements have almost always been assassinated. They have also been male.

"We have a lot of leaders," insists Garza, "just not where you might be looking for them. If you're only looking for the straight black man who is a preacher, you're not going to find it."

Instead, the new civil rights movement combines localised power structures with an inclusive ethos that consciously incorporates women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activists. DeRay Mckesson, one of the most high-profile activists with a Twitter following of 176,000, is a gay man. Garza identifies as queer (her husband is transgender).

The new movement is powerful yet diffuse, linked not by physical closeness or even necessarily by political consensus, but by the mobilising force of social media. A hashtag on Twitter can link the disparate fates of unarmed black men shot down by white police in a way that transcends geographical boundaries and time zones. A shared post on Facebook can organise a protest in a matter of minutes. Documentary photos and videos can be distributed on Tumblr pages and Periscope feeds, through Instagrams and Vines. Power lies in a single image. Previously unseen events become unignorable.

Events like the arrest of a 43-year-old man named Eric Garner, who was placed in a chokehold for 15 to 19 seconds by a white police officer on the sidewalk of Staten Island, New York, in July 2014. Garner can be heard on mobile phone video footage saying, "I can't breathe" a total of 11 times and was pronounced dead in hospital an hour later. The video went viral. "I can't breathe" became a totemic phrase for protesters. The basketball player LeBron James wore a T-shirt with the words emblazoned across the front and was praised by President Obama for the act.

Events like a pool party in McKinney, Texas in June where a white police officer threw a 14-year-old black girl to the ground, pinning her down for several minutes, before pulling a gun on two teenage boys. A bystander filmed the fracas, posted it on YouTube where it was viewed almost 500,000 times before being picked up by all the major news channels. The officer was suspended and later resigned.

Events like this were happening before - as many activists say, "there's a Mike Brown in every town" - but it is only now that technological advances and digital savvy have ensured the dots are joined.

"Social media's significance is that it is recognising different incidents that might have gone unnoticed and sewing them together as a coherent whole," says Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and the author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection. "And that means we're forced to recognise very serious structural issues."

Social networking sites are used disproportionately by young, black Americans - 96% of African-American internet users aged 18-29 use a social network of some kind. Forty per cent of the same group say they use Twitter - 12% more than the comparable figure for young white people. According to Todd Wolfson, the author of Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left, the new civil rights movement has important precursors in grassroots uprisings such as the Arab spring and Occupy: "The Cyber Left is about flattening hierarchies, flattening governance processes, combined with using the logic of social networks for deep consensus building."

Activist DeRay Mckesson updates his website and posts updates to Twitter from a McDonald's in Ferguson. Photograph: Getty Images

Kwame Rose, a 21-year-old civil rights protester from Baltimore, agrees: "Social media plays a big part in everything. I find out information, I put it on Twitter, it starts trending the more people talk about it and then the institutions start feeling the pressure."

It is no coincidence that the majority of these new digital activists are in their 20s - internet natives, brought up in the online age, versed in the politics of revolution. Mckesson composes his speeches in tweets to ensure the soundbites can be shared in 140 characters. One community organiser I speak to says with a straight face that "a youth activist means up to the age of 35". When I ask another about her attitude towards violence, she replies coolly: "What is violence? Is violence denying people proper access to food, housing and healthcare? If you're referring to rioting, I guess it's a reaction to the system in which we live. The state is violent."

Although #blacklivesmatter was the original call to action, it is only one tributary in a larger, fast-flowing river. Other organisations have sprung from a shared sense of unease, such as the Coalition Against Police Violence, which is run by two female activists, or the Black Youth Project 100, which has chapters across the country and campaigns against the use of racially motivated force, or the Florida-based Dream Defenders, which has mobilised communities against racial profiling and state oppression, and which started before Black Lives Matter. These activists communicate and link up online, minting a solidarity through social media that gives their separate voices mass focus and power.

As a result, says Steven Pargett, the communications director for Dream Defenders: "There are fewer gatekeepers, in terms of being able to tell our own stories." He points out that during the protests in Ferguson, activists could take to Twitter to highlight the contradictions between police reports and eyewitness accounts. So while the TV networks were reporting on incidents of rioting and looting, real-time tweets from protesters on the ground claimed that the police had been firing tear gas and rubber bullets into groups of peaceful protesters.

In April, a similar thing happened in Baltimore. There were protests in the city following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who fell into a coma while in police care and later died of spinal injuries; the full autopsy has yet to be released. On the evening of 28 April, Kwame Rose was watching the coverage on television. He was "riled up" by what he saw: inflammatory language, talk of "riots" and no mention of the community initiative that had taken place earlier that day to try and clean up the streets.

"When the media started saying 'tensions were high', they were lying," he tells me over Skype, peering out from beneath a pristine black baseball cap.

At 9.30pm, he went out with a group of organisers to help get people off the streets in time for the curfew. They asked some police to drop their riot gear and hold hands in prayer. It was, says Rose, "very calm". Then he stumbled across a TV crew from Fox News. They were there to film the mustachioed talkshow host Geraldo Rivera who was attempting to interview a state senator among the crowds. Rose confronted Rivera about Fox News's "biased" account of what was happening.

"You're not here reporting about the boarded-up homes and the homeless people," he said, in an impassioned, impromptu speech caught on video. "You're not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue... you're here for the 'black riots'. You're not here for the death of Freddie Gray."

The clip was shared on Twitter. When Rose woke up on Wednesday morning, the video had been picked up by the World Star Hip Hop aggregating blog.

"That's a big thing," Rose says now, shaking his head. At the time, he had a job as the doorman of a big hotel chain. When he got to work that day, his general manager told him the film was all over the TV. He lost his job as a result of the attention.

When Kwame was growing up, his father, "Big Rose", had taught him about civil rights history. Now, Kwame realised, he was fighting the same fight. He quotes James Baldwin by way of explanation: "To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage."

"I see what's being done and I'm mad about it," he says. "It's an attack on black masculinity. You see it all the time [in the mainstream media]. When Dylan Roof [the suspect in the Charleston church shooting] was arrested, you see all these baby pictures of him. We are the same age. After the Rivera video, I was called every other name than the one my parents gave me. Dylan Roof was 'a lost child'. Mike Brown, at 18, was 'a troubled black man'."

Indeed, when Brown was gunned down, the photo initially used by some of the rightwing media was one taken from below, throwing his face into half-shadow, showing him glowering at the camera making a V sign. It was widely interpreted by conservative pundits as a gang-related gesture. There were other pictures available, including one of Brown as a chubby-cheeked teenager in headphones and a Varsity jacket. Thousands of people took to Twitter to post contrasting images of themselves, posing the question as to which would be chosen if they became the subject of a news report under the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown

"This was a way of saying 'Hey, mainstream media, you're doing something really bad! Here's this pattern, what are you going to do about it?'" says Ethan Zuckerman from MIT. "What's interesting is it didn't get talked about to me. But the newspapers moved away from this problematic image [of Michael Brown]."

It was a perfect example of new civil rights activism: online pressure brought to bear on a single potent issue with high visibility. Similar action ensured the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse in the wake of the Charleston church shooting. Because so many of the new generation of activists are young and smart and technologically engaged, there is a restless, inventive energy to their campaigns, which can be started with little more than an iPhone. With the dissemination of information online, there is greater accountability. The mainstream has fewer places to hide.

Since Brown was killed in the street in Ferguson, several other unarmed African Americans have been the victims of fatal violence at the hands of the police - Tamir Rice in Ohio, Tony Robinson in Wisconsin and Walter Scott in South Carolin a, to name only a few. Online activism has ensured we know the victims' names and that they are linked in our collective mind.

Until now, deaths like these were viewed as a chronic problem, endured by local communities yet largely hidden from broader public consciousness. But the rise of a new generation of digital activists such as Garza, Mckesson, Rose and others, has created a sense of emergency in America. Fatalities at the hands of police are now front-page news. They can no longer be ignored.

Samuel Sinyangwe's earliest experience of racism was at elementary school. He grew up in Orlando, Florida in a predominantly white community and he remembers being beaten up by an older kid and being called the N-word in the playground. He had soccer practice just down the road from where Trayvon Martin was shot.

"I used to go to that same 7/11 [as Martin] every day for a packet of Starburst," he says, talking from his home in San Francisco. "It could have been me. It really could have been anyone who looked like me."

Protesters hold signs during a march and rally for Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. Photograph: Julie Fletcher/AP

When the Ferguson protests erupted, Sinyangwe felt a similar sense of injustice at the fate of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin as many of those who took to the streets. But, he says, there was no comprehensive data available on police shootings "so we couldn't get into the place of having a solutions-driven conversation".

Sinyangwe, a 25-year-old Stanford graduate, data scientist and policy analyst, had the necessary skills-set to fill the gap. He had been following DeRay McKesson's live-tweeting from Ferguson ("Tear gas feels like extreme peppermint tingling" and "Really bad car accident. Looting across from it. Pray for me") and tweeted him. The two of them spoke on the phone. Along with fellow activist, Johnetta Elzie - an important presence in the movement - they set up Mapping Police Violence. The aim was to collate all the necessary statistical information on police killings nationwide, with a particular emphasis on black deaths at the hands of police.

It was a gargantuan task. Sinyangwe set about sourcing the core data from the three largest crowdsourced databases on police killings in the country and then comparing these to social media, police and local newspaper reports in order to identify the race of 91 percent of all victims. Within four months, the site went live.

The results were shocking. Sinyangwe's work claimed that at least 1,149 people were killed by police in 2014, and that 304 of these - 26% - were black. Black people were nearly three times as likely as white people to be killed by police in 2014 and at least 101 of them were unarmed, according to Sinyangwe's record. In March 2015, 36 black people were killed by police - one every 21 hours, and a 71 percent hike in numbers from the previous month.

(When the Guardian launched The Counted, a long-term investigative project, providing the most comprehensive database of officer involved deaths in the US ever published, which includes deaths in police custody and victims hit by vehicles, they found the tally for the same month to be 37 black Americans with 113 deaths across all ethnicities.)

Compiling the data was, says Sinyangwe, deeply depressing. For one of the pages on the site, he posted individual photos of unarmed victims killed by police in 2014, along with their stories. "All of that is incredibly heavy and sobering," he says. "You're reading these stories of people who were chased down for riding a bike in the street. However, it's work that needs to be done.

"We have been holding a mirror up to the nation. And we've shown what has been going on for a very long time: that we are being brutalised. That the state is being violent against us... The nation is now aware of the problem. Whether we can agree on a solution or not is another question but at least they acknowledge something is going on and that's a great first step."

But what happens after that first step? Zuckerman warns that although social media can give the illusion of empowerment, it also runs the risk of diverting attention away from the knottier problems of longer-lasting policy change.

"We're at a moment where trust in our major institutions is at an all-time low," he says. "When you start losing trust in those institutions, you start losing your ability to change things. Social media is a place where people feel they can move the wheel, and they're right - they can change the representation of a gun victim in mainstream media. They can build momentum around removing the Confederate flag. But the fear is that it might be harder to make these much bigger structural changes in education or wage policy or to have a conversation about our gun culture."

Deray Mckesson in a tweeted picture from Selma, Alabama.

Some fear that certain actions are little more than publicity-seeking. When DeRay Mckesson recently visited South Carolina in the wake of the Charleston shooting, wearing the bright blue Patagonia body-warmer he wears to protests, several residents took to Twitter to express their anxiety that his presence would stir up unrest and created the #GoHomeDeray hashtag.

Oprah Winfrey, too, publicly aired her concern in an interview with People magazine at the beginning of the year. "It's wonderful to march and to protest," she said. "What I'm looking for is some kind of leadership to come out of this to say: 'This is what we want. This is what has to change.'" On Twitter, she was condemned as being "out of touch".

It is perhaps inevitable, as a movement gains in ground and size, that divisions will appear, that its focus will become messier. Alicia Garza talks of how #BlackLivesMatter has been appropriated by other, well meaning groups who have tried to adapt the message to state that "All Lives Matter".

"The reality, of course, is that they do," Garza says, "but we live in a world where some lives matter more than others. 'All Lives Matter' effectively neutralises the fact that it's black people who are fighting for their lives right now."

And then there are the inter-generational tensions. Some younger activists are wary of being dubbed "the new civil rights movement" because such a label undermines the traumatic nature of what is being faced in the present moment by black Americans and also because the new movement has not yet had the chance to mature, making any comparison unbalanced. Some resent the reverence accorded men such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte, who, in their eyes, represent a bygone era and who turn up in cities to hold press conferences only after the hard protest work has been done on the ground. They fear that the peaceful protests advocated by these elder statesman have little impact; that change will only be achieved by more assertive action.

Last December, there was a march organised by Sharpton's National Action Network in Washington DC. Johnetta Elzie was one of several younger campaigners who climbed on to the stage, yelling into the microphone "We started this!" In the crowd, someone else held up a sign stating in vivid green letters: "We, the youth, did not elect Al Sharpton our spokesperson. Have a seat."

When I speak to Jesse Jackson, he is sanguine about such incidents.

"Well some of them [the younger generation of campaigners] are respectful and some of them aren't," he says, talking over a crackling phone line just after attending the funeral service for the Charleston Nine. "But you're not protected from racism by age or by class. The fact is, there's no hiding place. We've got to work together.

"There's been nothing more dynamic in America over the last 12 months than these mass marches. There's a backlash. This is a mammoth backlash and it needs to happen."

And there is evidence of real change if you look for it: charges were filed against six Baltimore police officers in May relating to the death of Freddie Gray and it is likely that police reform will be an unavoidable subject in the forthcoming presidential campaign. But Freddie Gray is still dead. So are many more black people who died in police custody this year. That's the real issue.

Back in Oakland, Alicia Garza is reflecting on how much has happened since her original Facebook post, which became the hashtag that launched a thousand protests. Progress has been made, she says, and yet there is so much further left to travel.

"I have to be honest," she says. "I feel like I live in a constant state of rage and I think a lot of black people do... It's more than depressing to me. It makes me angry, particularly when people try to deny it's happening."

When she was younger, Garza wanted to be an architect. She liked the idea of "figuring out how to create something from nothing". And, in truth, she and her two friends have ended up doing just that. Not by building a house, but by building a movement from the foundations up.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#BlackLivesMatter: the birth of a new civil rights movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How a new generation of tech-savvy activists made violence against African Americans into global headline news

# data[].attributes.body
Erik Drummond

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is the 50th anniversary of the Black Panthers. This week, the British website Spiked published an article in which Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party, said, quote, "Black Lives Matter has a plantation mentality." She added, quote, "The next wave of young people running out here, who are complaining and protesting about the murders of young black men and women by the police all over the country, they will protest but they will not rise up in an organized fashion, with an agenda, to create revolutionary change. ... We advocated community self-defense organizations to be formed, so that we would not be assaulted by the police, so that we would bear arms and assume our human rights." Your response to Elaine Brown's critique, and then the trajectory from Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter?

When Elaine got involved in the Black Panther Party, it was about two years old. And that's where we are in the Black Lives Matter movement, as well. And so, I think some of what she did was she evaluated the totality of the Black Panther Party and all that it accomplished in 10 years, and compared it to where we are right now in year two. And so, it's an unfair comparison to say where we are in year two compared to where the Black Panther Party was in year two. Two years in, it literally only had 4,000 or 5,000 people, the Black Panther Party, that were committed to it, to its practices. And it was still trying to determine where it went and what it would do. And so, I think if you look at where we are now versus where the Black Panther Party was at this same time, I think we're doing well.

I understand her criticism saying, you know, what are they doing compared to what they accomplished. But even some of us look at the dangers of what happened to Black Panther leaders, from targeted assassinations to COINTELPRO, and some of the lessons that we learned from them has caused us to change our methods. And so, the Black Lives Matter movement is not a carbon copy of what the Black Panther Party did. How we do what we do will be uniquely different. Our time is different. So, I respect her, revere her and admire her, but I was disappointed to read some of what she said.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And more importantly, the Black Panther Party was an organization, Black Lives Matter is a movement, which has come up, really, in a spontaneous fashion from all around the country, whereas the Panthers started in one place as a disciplined organization. It's a very different form of attempting to achieve social change.

So, Shaun King, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Black Lives Matter activist, senior justice writer for the New York Daily News. And we will link to your columns at democracynow.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shaun King: Black Lives Matter is Not a Carbon Copy of Black Panther Party, Our Time is Different

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, some are comparing the party to the Black Lives Matter movement. We get response from Shaun King, a Black Lives Matter activist and senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, who has recently spent time with the party's co-founder, Bobby Seale.

# data[].attributes.body
Marcel Gilliam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CLOSE

Some people are tired of the hashtag #alllivesmatter.

The #alllivesmatter hashtag, which recently has been used alongside #blacklivesmatter is "erasing the vulnerability of and dehumanization of black people," said Carla Shedd, assistant professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Unequal City.

In other words, "all lives matter" can actually be interpreted as racist.

While the intentions of saying "all lives matter" is often meant to be about a "shared humanity," it is the opposite, Shedd said.

Joe Feagin, professor of sociology at Texas A&M University, said in an email white people are using the "all lives matter" phrase to ignore the black lives movement, which is "already about liberty and justice for all."

Some are simply uncomfortable saying racism still exists, Doug Meyer said.

Meyer, a professor at University of Virginia who's written about racism against queer people, said "all lives matter" is a part of bigger conversation about how some think "talking about race is a form of racism."

Tuesday, a Canadian singing quartet changed a lyric in its nation anthem during a pregame performance in San Diego from "With glowing hearts we see thee rise. The True North strong and free" to "We're all brothers and sisters. All lives matter to the great." Many fans criticized the decision, saying it was disrespectful. The group since issued an apology and said the group member responsible for the change "will not be performing with The Tenors until further notice."

Celebrities including J.Lo and Fetty Wap have used the #alllivesmatter hashtag and later deleted tweets because of backlash. Fetty Wap tweeted "My kids are Mixed... #AllLivesMatter" on July 7. Then, apologized saying he didn't understand the meaning of the hashtag.

Several people have taken to the internet to try and explain the problem with the term.

Chainsawsuit drew a graphic of a house fire to explain it.

Peace House presented the controversy in a restaurant setting - showing how "all plates matter."

Grey Griffin painted a picture of an emergency room visit.

Others pointed out how the popularity of #alllivesmatter grew after #blacklivesmatter started.

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/29CbN0r

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#AllLivesMatter hashtag is racist, critics say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CLOSE Some people are tired of the hashtag #alllivesmatter. The #alllivesmatter hashtag, which recently has been used alongside #blacklivesmatter is "erasing the vulnerability of and dehumanization of black people," said Carla Shedd, assistant professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Unequal City .

# data[].attributes.body
By Marcel Gilliam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Black Lives Matter activists have released a 10 point plan to address abuses by US police forces after critics said that the group has lacked direction.

The plan, called "Campaign Zero", urges policy changes and proposes laws on federal, state and local levels.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently met with activists and urged practical steps.

Pressed for her solutions, she called on the group for a plan instead.

"I don't believe you change hearts, I believe you change laws," she said.

The Black Lives Matter movement was originally formed after George Zimmerman, an Hispanic man in Florida, was acquitted in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.

It grew to greater prominence after a white policeman killed Michael Brown - an unarmed black teenager - in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

The plans calls for:

Ending "broken windows" policing, which aggressively polices minor crimes in an attempt to stop larger ones

using community oversight for misconduct rather than having police decide what consequences officers face

making standards for reporting police use of deadly force

independently investigating and prosecuting police misconduct

having the racial makeup of police departments reflect the communities they serve

requiring officers to wear body cameras

providing more training for police officers

ending for-profit policing practices

ending the police use of military equipment

implementing police union contracts that hold officers accountable for misconduct

"Campaign Zero was informed by the demands of protestors nationwide, research and input from many folks," tweeted DeRay Mckesson, an organiser with the Black Lives Matter movement.

The protest movement has continued to gain strength over the past year after several controversial police-involved deaths of black people including those of Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland.

In recent weeks, Black Lives Matters protesters have interrupted campaign events of several presidential candidates, calling for more focus on racial and criminal justice issues among the hopefuls.

On the plan's website, scorecards for the 2016 US presidential candidates, including Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump, encourage people to track candidates' proposed agendas to fight police aggression according to the group's 10 action points.

Jeb Bush and Donald Trump are listed as having no policing agenda at all. Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton's policy agendas trail behind those of Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley.

In 1994 Ms Clinton lobbied for one of the largest crime bills in US history, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which provided billions for prisons. The law also introduced the "three strikes" policy, which called for mandatory life imprisonment without parole for federal offenders with three or more felony or drug trafficking convictions.

Mrs Clinton has changed her position since she has been on the campaign trail, calling for the end of mass incarceration and expressing her concern over police violence and black people.

"We must end police violence so we can live and feel safe in this country," the group writes on the "Vision Zero" site. "We can live in a world where the police don't kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions and ensuring accountability."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Black Lives Matter activists have released a 10 point plan to address abuses by US police forces after critics said that the group has lacked direction. The plan, called "Campaign Zero", urges policy changes and proposes laws on federal, state and local levels. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently met with activists and urged practical steps.

# data[].attributes.body
Erik Drummond

# data[].attributes.body
"All Lives Matter" Ignorance
Samantha Bauer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I bet I have your attention now. And if you're pissed, trust me when I say I don't mean what you think I mean. Let me explain.

The basic premise behind "All Lives Matter" = we should not highlight that black lives matter because all lives matter.

As it turns out, you're not wrong: all lives do matter. But the problem with this premise lies in what goes unaddressed in your line of thinking.

See, "Black Lives Matter" is trying to highlight that there is demonstrable evidence that black lives matter less than white lives to the criminal justice system (and the American government as a whole).

Trying to communicate this to you is tricky. Because of this very system, you haven't been exposed to this sociocultural divide. You haven't had to witness firsthand the different forms it takes. You literally do not see the disparity in how your racial group is treated compared with others. You might not have noticed, for instance, the inherent biases of news media, such as the language used in coverage of different racial groups.

You may be saying to yourself, "I don't agree with the idea that the government treats racial groups differently." But the thing is, you are absolutely, categorically wrong. Don't take my word for it, read last year's National Book Award Winner, Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which might begin to give you a sense of the bigger picture here.

If you subscribe to the premise of "All Lives Matter," it's likely that you live in a predominantly white area and the majority of your social group is white.

Don't you think it's interesting how I can be so sure that it's only white people saying "All Lives Matter"? How can I make such sweeping generalizations?

Basic logic. It's reasonable to expect that if you'd had to witness the gross injustices committed against those in non-white communities, you would understand why "All Lives Matter" is so harmful. You would understand that it is in fact you who is missing the point.

Before I go any further, please understand: I'm not judging you for where you live or who you socialize with; that's your choice. Admittedly, I led with a salty title. I've been doing that lately because nobody can seem to get through to you. I come from conservative Northeast Florida. Many of the people I see espousing "All Lives Matter" rhetoric are people I know to have good hearts, people who work hard and love their families, people who want to see good triumph in the world. Ultimately I'm trying to appeal to that goodness, in hopes that people like those from suburban Jacksonville can open their hearts beyond fear or pride and think about the bigger forces at play and put that innate desire for goodness to use.

I'm also not defending murders of police, like the recent events in Dallas. I am against murder and injustice across the board. Full stop.

What I am trying to do is indicate how maybe you haven't had the best seat in the house for the centuries-long movie called "America's Treatment of Black People."

In fact, you weren't even in the theater.

Let me put it this way: I don't watch hockey. So why should anybody listen to my opinion about hockey? I'm allowed to have one, sure, but isn't, say, Wayne Gretzky's a lot more valuable? If put in a room with Wayne and yours truly, wouldn't you think it wise to listen to his ideas over mine? Couldn't I too learn a lot about hockey by listening to Wayne Gretzky?

By that same logic, it stands to reason that White America should be doing extra work to listen and understand. In doing this, it becomes apparent that "Black Lives Matter" is trying to say what you're saying: that all lives matter equally. You're just missing the (many) ways in which our country is not standing by this principle. When you say "All Lives Matter," you're drawing attention away from a movement that would help push the country toward the version of itself where all lives actually do matter. In other words, when you say "All Lives Matter," you are perpetuating toxic racism and in fact causing harm. Because when you do, you're making it harder for the rest of the country to bring about positive change. You're broadcasting to others that change isn't necessary when it very much is.

Here's the awesome thing. You can totally stop being an ignorant racist right now. This instant. You don't even have to lift a finger. All you have to do is learn. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it is never a bad thing to learn. I love looking back at all the ways I've learned and grown into a better person. It takes courage and humility to acknowledge the ways we've been wrong or incorrect, but that's nothing compared to the feeling of personal growth and betterment you have on the other side.

Anyway, go check out Campaign Zero and/or get schooled by this 14-year-old boy:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Every Time You Say "All Lives Matter" You Are Being an Accidental Racist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I bet I have your attention now. And if you're pissed, trust me when I say I don't mean what you think I mean. Let me explain. The basic premise behind "All Lives Matter" = we should not highlight that black lives matter because all lives matter.

# data[].attributes.body
Obama for #BLM
Samantha Bauer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During a visit to Spain early Sunday morning, President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement and the right of activists to demonstrate in cities across the United States, following a long night of ongoing protests over the highly public deaths last week of two black men at the hands of police.

"One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power," Mr. Obama told reporters in Madrid. "And that is sometimes messy and controversial but because of that ability to protest and engage in free speech, America over time has gotten better. We've all benefited from that."

The president pointed to sometimes contentious demonstrations in American history -- spawned by abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights activists, and others -- that faced criticisms similar to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"There were times when activists engaged in rhetoric that was overheated and occasionally counterproductive," Mr. Obama conceded, "but the point was to raise issues... I think what you're seeing now is part of that long standing tradition."

President Obama: U.S. still united despite recent shootings

"I don't think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for everything that is uttered at a protest site," he continued. "This week people felt hurt and angry and so some of this is just venting, but I think that the overwhelming majority of people who are involved in the Black Lives Matter movement -- what they really want to see is a better relationship between the police and the community so they can feel that it's serving them."

In the wake of the violent slayings of police officers in Dallas, however, the president also cautioned that if any BLM sympathizers attack law enforcement -- both in their rhetoric and in their actions -- they are "doing a disservice to the cause."

"Any violence to police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted," Mr. Obama said. "But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric does not recognize that, then we're going to lose allies in the reform cause."

"Maintaining a truthful and serious and respectful tone is going to help mobilize American society to bring about real change -- and that is our ultimate objective," he said.

While in Madrid, the president declined once more to comment on the recently closed Justice Department investigation into the private email server use of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats' presumptive White House nominee.

He lauded FBI Director James Comey for taking "the extraordinary step of explaining in methodical fashion how they arrived at their conclusion" not to prosecute Clinton and noted that it was "inappropriate" to second guess or comment extensively about the matter.

The president is expected to cut his trip to Europe short after the unrest in Dallas. He will return to Washington, D.C. Sunday evening before heading to Dallas at the invitation of Mayor Mike Rawlings on Tuesday. Mr. Obama will deliver remarks at an interfaith memorial service while in Texas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Obama defends Black Lives Matter movement as protests heat up

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During a visit to Spain early Sunday morning, President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement and the right of activists to demonstrate in cities across the United States, following a long night of ongoing protests over the highly public deaths last week of two black men at the hands of police.

# data[].attributes.headline
If Black Lives Matter, prove it – #ThisIsOurSelma and voting rights in North Carolina

# data[].attributes.subject
If Black Lives Matter, prove it – #ThisIsOurSelma and voting rights in North Carolina

# data[].attributes.body
Daniela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Groundswell MULTIFAITH SOCIAL ACTION TO HEAL AND REPAIR THE WORLD Groundswell is an online community of people who believe faith can be a force for good in the world. ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Lives Matter leader: 'The police continue to kill people’

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Lives Matter leader: 'The police continue to kill people’

# data[].attributes.body
Daniela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A key Black Lives Matter activist said on Monday that the racial justice movement only exists because "police continue to kill people without any accountability."

"I urge all activists and all organizers to be mindful about the rhetoric that they use and especially the impact that it has," DeRay Mckesson told MSNBC's Kristen Welker Monday. "There is no rhetoric in the movement that matches the damage inflicted by the police as they kill people across the country."

Mckesson said the reason "there is any type of rhetoric at all" is because "the police continue to kill people without any accountability."

"That is really the issue at hand."

Mckesson said Black Lives Matter is a last resort from a community tired of being abused by law enforcement.

"We should not have to protest," he said. "We should not be in the streets. The movement didn't cause anything."

"The police killing people is what caused all of this," Mckesson added. "The movement has been a response to violence in communities.

"People have been organizing ... for a long time because we know our communities can be safer than they are. The safety of our communities is not predicated on the presence of police."

Mckesson added, however, that words matter, saying that "the way we talk about thing often changes the way we think about them."

"But I also want to be clear that the police killing people has to stop," he said. "I urge the police to be as reflective as they want the citizens to be. That's the only way we'll get to a point where the trauma ends in communities."

Mckesson was released from jail in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday following his arrest there the night before. Police arrested Mckesson late last Saturday during a protest over the death of Alton Sterling.

Sterling, 37, was shot and killed last week by authorities responding to a call at a Baton Rouge convenience store.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Lives Matter leader: 'The police continue to kill people'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A key Black Lives Matter activist said on Monday that the racial justice movement only exists because "police continue to kill people without any accountability." "I urge all activists and all organizers to be mindful about the rhetoric that they use and especially the impact that it has," DeRay Mckesson told MSNBC's Kristen Welker Monday.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest

# data[].attributes.body
Daniela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Library Research Guides: Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest: Statistics, Maps, & Images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Library Research Guides: Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest: Statistics, Maps, & Images

# data[].attributes.body
Lupita Luna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bettie Jones and Quintonio LeGrier, shot by Chicago police on Christmas weekend. Sandra Bland found hanged in a Texas jail cell last summer following an arrest. Nine killed in a mass shooting at a Charleston church in June. Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore while in police custody in April 2015. Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by police in Chicago in late 2014.

All the incidents involved African American victims and were followed by protests and allegations of injustice.

Black History Month in 2016 comes at a time of escalated violence against African Americans - much of it involving police - that recalls the troubled times of the late 1960s.

Activists and scholars say the current spurt of violence isn't greater than a half century ago, nor is it surprising. They say periodic bouts of violence against African Americans by white supremacists and heavy-handed police have occurred since at least the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, and tend to happen following a period of civil rights gains coupled with times of economic uncertainty.

"You get an uprising of white violence against communities of color when white folks think they are losing their power," said Judy Richardson, a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activist and producer of PBS' Eyes on the Prize series, which is being shown again this month on WORLD channel.

People run from tear gas after police dispersed a crowd Aug. 17, 2014, during a protest for Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer last Saturday in Ferguson, Mo. (Photo: Charlie Riedel, AP)

Insecurity among whites who fear progress by blacks will cost them economic status and political power is to blame, Richardson said. She pointed to lynchings and stepped-up efforts to deny voting rights after black veterans returned from World War II, and Southern lawmakers' actions to retain segregated schools after the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ordered integration.
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Richardson said violent acts against blacks have never stopped. She lived in New York in 1986, when white youths beat and then chased Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old man from Trinidad who was fatally struck by a car in Howard Beach while running away. There was the 1982 death of Willie Turks, pulled from a car in Brooklyn by an angry white mob, and Yusef Hawkins, shot to death in 1989 after being attacked by a crowd of whites in New York.

The failure of a grand jury to indict a New York police officer in Eric Garner's chokehold death reminded Richardson of a New York state judge's 1985 dismissal of an indictment against an officer for shooting to death Eleanor Bumpurs, a diabetic 66-year-old Bronx woman, during an argument over her impending eviction.

UCLA sociology professor Joshua Bloom said violence against blacks seems more frequent now because of two things 1960s activists lacked: cellphones and social media. When police in Ferguson, Mo., used tanks and tear gas against protesters following the 2014 shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown by a white police officer, cellphone video and images went viral. "It was so flagrant," Bloom said.

The current Black Lives Matter movement needs to take a page from the civil rights movement and "find ways of making business as usual impossible" for those who perpetuate such violence against blacks, he said.

CLOSE

Bloom, author of Black against Empire, a history of the Black Panther Party, said the Panthers launched their own investigation into the shooting deaths of Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police in 1969, and galvanized public opinion against the police. He contrasted that with protests for details in Garner's death, which he said were not as effective.

Bree Newsome, 30, an artist and civil rights activist in Charlotte, N.C., said she and others in the Black Lives Matter movement were spurred to action by the July 2013 verdict that found George Zimmerman not guilty in the shooting death of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Aggressive police tactics against protesters in Ferguson were a turning point for activists who had attended rallies recalling the spirit, but not the danger, of 1960s-era demonstrations. "It was the first time we realized that you could still die from doing this work." Newsome said.

The Charleston shooting deaths of Pastor Clementa Pinckney and eight others in the basement of Emanuel AME Church by a white supremacist has parallels to the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Newsome said she removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse flagpole in response to galvanize people "to really show defiance to that kind of terror." The State legislature later voted to remove the flag permanently.

Rev. William Barber II, architect of North Carolina's Moral Monday rallies and author of the book The Third Reconstruction, said the type of multiracial coalition that elected President Obama is needed to push the country toward longer lasting gains for all.

"We have to build an indigenously led, bottom-up, deeply moral and constitutional, pro-justice transformative movement," Barber said.

Richardson expressed optimism that such a coalition will emerge from the Black Lives Matter movement and will be a lasting force for positive change. "What's amazing about this movement is that it's black, white, Latino, Asian kids who are really getting together on this," she said.

Veteran activists who experienced the violence of the 1960s shouldn't give up their work, Richardson added. "We're going to walk this road together."

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1XbzVdK

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Violence against blacks recalls civil-rights era

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bettie Jones and Quintonio LeGrier, shot by Chicago police on Christmas weekend. Sandra Bland found hanged in a Texas jail cell last summer following an arrest. Nine killed in a mass shooting at a Charleston church in June. Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore while in police custody in April 2015.

# data[].attributes.body
Lupita Luna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This piece was published in partnership with the Influence.

On Friday morning, I woke up and deactivated my Facebook account, frustrated by the highly charged rhetoric coming from friends and activists on opposing sides of the Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter divide. Over the weekend, in the wake of the Dallas shootings, I watched along with the rest of the country as renewed protests and hundreds of arrests took place. The stark exposure of our national fault lines is distressing, and while there is hope, you have to search hard to find it.

I'm a retired police professional, a 20-year veteran of California law enforcement. I'm also a criminal justice reform activist, a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). So the diversity of my social media friends reflects my values-values that now appear to be at war with each other.

I greatly fear that the violence of this past week will further exacerbate the deep divides in our society. The loss of five police officers protecting Black Lives Matter protesters in Dallas can now be added to the losses of the scores of people of color, including Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Minnesota, who have recently fallen victim to the troubling state of police-community relations in America-and yes, in too many cases, to law enforcement strategies based on structural racism. Every one of these deaths is not only tragic in itself, but also further poisons relations and entrenches opinions.

At this point, I'm emotionally drained from trying to explain to friends, allies, opponents, and interviewers how I can be both pro-law enforcement and pro-Black Lives Matter.

I'm exhausted from continually having to explain why it's not President Obama's fault that officers lost their lives; that there is no statistical basis for a so-called war on the police; that Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that police lives don't matter; that most police officers are not racist.

Not that I'm looking for sympathy. I chose this fight through my work at LEAP. The deep divisions in our country that make such explanations necessary have resulted from many problems, including both overt and structural racism. Post-Ferguson in 2014, I wrote about how the war on drugs has poisoned community policing and shifted us away from policing by consent. I largely blame our inability to admit to our policing failures, to accept that whether or not we intended to damage or marginalize communities of color, that's what has occurred.

The formation of Black Lives Matter is a direct outcome of our poorly designed criminal justice and economic policies. One of my graduate school professors, Elliott Currie, wrote in his book Crime and Punishment in America that our overemphasis on punishment, above all else, is just "an attempt to sweep the problem of America's poorest communities under the rug."

In addition to the undoubted failings of law enforcement itself, it's clear that the police have also been given an insurmountable challenge, a task that, like Sisyphus with his boulder, we will never be able to complete. That's because law enforcement cannot change the many socioeconomic issues that contribute to crime.

We put pressure on law enforcement agencies to produce lower crime rates, something we take as an indicator of a healthy community. Yet we ignore the fact that law enforcement budgets compete with funding for other badly needed programs, such as education, mental health services, community after-school programs, and the creation of jobs and infrastructure. Together, these programs have been shown to prevent crime and to make a community safer far more effectively than an emphasis on law enforcement alone.

For example, according to a 2008 report by the organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids*, researchers estimated that three out of 10 high school students drop out of high school, or to fail to graduate on time. By increasing that high-school graduation rate by 10 percent nationally, the researchers predicted we could prevent more than 3,000 murders and nearly 175,000 aggravated assaults in the United States annually.

Recognizing that public safety is a multifaceted challenge-and therefore the responsibility of not just the police but a whole range of agencies and services-will require a significant shift in police culture and management. If law enforcement truly understood that our role should simply be to limit negative community interventions, improve community interactions and be accountable to our constituents, we could reduce the violence that impacts both communities of color and the police.

The war of words about whose lives matter more serves no useful purpose. But that doesn't mean initial responsibility for putting things right should fall equally on everyone. Instead, I believe it's down to us, the members of the law enforcement profession, to start the reconciliation process-because we're the ones in the position of power.

In the current climate, it may be surprising to hear that many of us have already taken steps to do so, embracing reform rather than rejecting it. In a cruel irony, Dallas police chief David Brown, who has worked hard and effectively around civil rights, community relations, violence reduction, and transparency, is an example of what professional policing can aspire to be. His leadership has seen a dramatic reduction in excessive force complaints, and the publication of information about (increasingly rare) officer-involved shootings in Dallas-the kind of openness that can help reestablish trust.

"Police officers are guardians of this great democracy," he said during a news conference on Friday morning. "The freedom to protest, the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression-all freedoms we fight for, with our lives. It's what makes us who we are as Americans. And so we risk our lives for those rights. So we won't militarize our policing standards, but we will do it in a much safer way every time, like we chose to do it this time."

"We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity," the Spanish musician Pablo Casals once wrote. "We cannot live without the others, without the tree."

Reflecting on these words after the tragic events of last week, I tried to focus on potential solutions, rather than the divisive language and anger-understandable though much of it is.

I found hope in some sane, unifying voices. For example, in this article by Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, he argues that "despite their very different perspectives, participants in both movements [Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter] have essentially the same concerns."

And Van Jones, the activist, attorney and author, explained in this CNN video that both law enforcement and Black Lives Matter share many of the same feelings, including that it's open season on people like them.

Comedian Trevor Noah made a similar point recently when he said, "If you're pro-Black Lives Matter, you're assumed to be anti-police. And if you're pro-police, then you surely hate black people. When in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be."

These voices of moderation and understanding should be celebrated. We as law enforcement professionals have an opportunity-as well as the responsibility-to find the common ground necessary to reconcile, to listen, and to change policing for the better. It won't be easy, but we have to do this to heal our country's wounds and save lives.

Lieutenant Commander Diane Goldstein (retired) is a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials opposed to the war on drugs. Follow her on Twitter.

A version of this article was originally published by the Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow the Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I'm a White Cop and I Support Black Lives Matter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This piece was published in partnership with the Influence. On Friday morning, I woke up and deactivated my Facebook account, frustrated by the highly charged rhetoric coming from friends and activists on opposing sides of the Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter divide.

# data[].attributes.body
Lupita Luna

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Black Lives Matter"Yes, we do. Period. In its simplest definition, to matter means to be of importance, significance, and consequence. And for many in the African-American community, saying "Black Lives Matter" is our way of declaring that we are important, our issues are important, and neither we as individuals, nor the issues that impact us, will be discarded, overshadowed, treated as nonsense, or accused of "playing the race card" anymore. No. We matter.

Saying " Black Lives Matter" is neither separatist nor racist. It is not anti-white, and, contrary to what some in the media may say, it is definitely not anti-police. It does not denote, promote, or support hatred of or violence against any ethnic group. Let me say that again: it does not promote or support hatred or violence against any group. It is about promoting the love of self and African-American rights to equal justice and fairness.

In no way does valuing the lives of black people in America and the global diaspora mean de-valuing the lives of anyone else. That's why many of us feel a sense of confusion, bewilderment, and, yes, anger, when people shout "All Lives Matter" as a counter to "Black Lives Matter." After all, we as African-Americans have supported America in nearly every moment of victory and crisis this country has witnessed.

In nearly every war this country has fought, from the War of Independence to Vietnam and Iraq, African-Americans have jumped at the opportunity to serve and fight for freedom -even when they were being denied those same freedoms at home.

When terrorists attacked America on September 11, African-Americans stood in solidarity with every American on that day and every day since.

Domestically, when horrific shootings erupted in places such as at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, we cried, grieved, prayed, and supported the families of those who lost their children just like every other American did.

When gunmen opened fire in Orlando two weeks ago, we too prayed, participated in vigils, and changed our social-media avatars to L.G.B.T.-friendly rainbow flags in solidarity.

Even in this era of fierce debate around the issue of police brutality, many of us African-Americans make it a point to articulate our support for the 99 percent of police that do their honorable, thankless job right. And each time police officers have been killed or murdered in the line of duty, from Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in New York in 2014 to Michael Smith, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson in Dallas just a week ago, we too mourned and honored those who died. To give just one example, after the events in Dallas, an African-American boy asked his mother if he could hug one of the officers. That led to a long line of people of all colors and backgrounds showing their support for the grieving men and women in blue.

It's hardly news to African-Americans that all lives matter. Our history of enduring challenges and tragedies allows us to understand what other people and groups endure. But that same understanding compels us to say Black Lives Matter, because the empathy we have shown others has so rarely been reciprocated.

There is a well-documented tendency to view the trials and tribulations of African-Americans in a silo, as African-American issues rather than American issues. So in times of tragedy and crisis, the African-American community often feels left to its own devices for support. Nothing illustrates this cultural "empathy gap" more clearly than social media. You could see it in the immediate aftermath of the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Here's Why It Hurts When People Say, "All Lives Matter"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Black Lives Matter"Yes, we do. Period. In its simplest definition, to matter means to be of importance, significance, and consequence. And for many in the African-American community, saying "Black Lives Matter" is our way of declaring that we are important, our issues are important, and neither we as individuals, nor the issues that impact us, will be discarded, overshadowed, treated as nonsense, or accused of "playing the race card" anymore.

# data[].attributes.body
Lupita Luna

# data[].attributes.body
Daniela