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After a week of conflict in the United States that included the police-involved shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the subsequent sniper attack that left five Dallas police officers dead, the Black Lives Matter movement once again has been at the center of controversy.

But lost in the discussion is a sense of what Black Lives Matter is and what it stands for.
What is Black Lives Matter?
Black Lives Matter was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi as both a hashtag and a political project after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. Distraught at the verdict, Oakland, Calif., community activist Garza wrote an impassioned Facebook plea ending with the words "black lives matter." Cullors, a community organizer from Los Angeles, shared the Facebook post and put a hashtag in front of those three words. The ideals expressed - the economic, political and social empowerment of African-Americans - resonated nationwide.

Since 2013, Black Lives Matter has moved from social media platforms to the streets, morphing into an organization and a movement that gained national recognition during demonstrations after the 2014 police-involved killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
How does Black Lives Matter work?
What sets Black Lives Matter apart from other social justice groups, however, is its decentralized approach and reliance almost solely on local, rather than national, leadership. Cullors said organizing is often spontaneous and not directed by one person or group of people.

"We don't get (people) onto the streets, they get themselves onto the street," she said.

Black Lives Matter is made up of a network of local chapters who operate mostly independently. Chelsea Fuller of the Advancement Project, a nonprofit that works with grassroots justice and race movements, said that local organizing is a powerful way to address poverty, access to housing and jobs, community policing and other issues that intersect with systemic racism.

"We can't affect national narrative, we can't affect national legislation that comes down and affects local people if local people don't push back and take a stand about what's happening in local communities," Fuller said.

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What does Black Lives Matter stand for?
The most important directive of Black Lives Matter, Cullors said, is to deal with anti-black racism, to "push for black people's right to live with dignity and respect" and be included in the American democracy that they helped create.

"This is about the quality of life for black people, for poor people in this country," said Umi Selah, co-director of Dream Defenders in Miami. Though not officially affiliated, Dream Defenders and similar social justice groups often align themselves with Black Lives Matter.

"The conception that all we're mad about is police and policing is a strong misconception," Selah said. In fact, Black Lives Matter released a statement last week condemning the shooting in Dallas as counter to what the movement is trying to accomplish.

Ralikh Hayes of Baltimore BLOC echoed Selah, saying that Black Lives Matter is not inherently anti-police or anti-white, nor does the phrase Black Lives Matter means other lives aren't important.

"We are against a system that views people as tools," Hayes said.

Cullors also hears claims that Black Lives Matter lacks direction or strategy. But Cullors said the strategy is clear -- working to ensure that black people live with the full dignity of their human rights.

"We are not leaderless, we're leader-full," she said. "We're trying to change the world... developing a new vision for what this generation of black leaders can look like."

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Black Lives Matter: A primer on what it is and what it stands for

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CLOSE After a week of conflict in the United States that included the police-involved shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the subsequent sniper attack that left five Dallas police officers dead, the Black Lives Matter movement once again has been at the center of controversy.

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It had existed as a phrase for some time, but it wasn't until two black men died in the summer of 2014 that Black Lives Matter began to flicker to life as a Twitter hashtag.

The roots of the phrase are commonly traced to a July 2013 Facebook post by Alicia Garza, a California-based activist, but it appeared in the Twitter-friendly form #BlackLivesMatter only in fits and starts over the course of the following year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis on race and social media released this month.

The hashtag had a small, but sustained increase in use in the summer of 2014, when Michael Brown and Eric Garner died in encounters with the police, focusing a national discussion on race and policing and elevating a phrase that would define a movement.

"This is a very powerful example of how a hashtag now is attached to a movement, and a movement, in some ways, has grown around a hashtag - and a series of really painful and really powerful conversations are taking place in a brand-new space," said Lee Rainie, director of internet, science and technology research at Pew.

The label appears to have lasting power, simmering like a low-grade fever on social media and roaring to life with every police killing of a black citizen and every racial protest that makes the news, informing the long-running national debate.

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.

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.

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."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: How Twitter Hashtag Came to Define Black Lives Matter Movement. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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How #BlackLivesMatter Came to Define a Movement

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It had existed as a phrase for some time, but it wasn't until two black men died in the summer of 2014 that Black Lives Matter began to flicker to life as a Twitter hashtag.

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Black lives matter es un movimiento social que se originó en estados unidos.

Pero no empezó con la intención de convertirse en esto. Black lives matter es fundado en 2012 por Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza y Opal Tometi. En primera instancia black lives matter o también BLM, tenia la ambición de convertirse en un movimiento político, pero el cambio se da cuando en 2013 un ni;o de 17 anos, Trayvon Martín, es asesinado por un policía llamado George Zimmerman, el cual no fue condenado por sus acciones.
Zimmerman se encontraba una noche patrullando el vecindario el cual era su trabajo cuando ve a un joven que le parece sospechoso y enseguida llama por refuerzos, como los refuerzos no llegaban el decidió seguirlo y, minutos después, Trayvon muere de un disparo en el pecho. a partir de la muerte de este ni;o, se esparce una conmoción en todo Estados Unidos y, Alicia Garza, decide publicar una carta abierta de amor conmovida por lo sucedido titulada una nota de amor a la gente afroamericana,  la cual termina con las palabras Black Lives Matter.

Así es como un periodista logra re publicar su carta y se viraliza el famoso hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Y deja de ser solamente un movimiento con intenciones políticas para convertirse en una organización y un movimiento social.

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Conflictos luego del surgimiento de Black Lives Matter

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Conflictos luego del surgimiento de Black Lives Matter

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la organización Black Lives Matter tuvo desde el principio terminar con la violencia racial a la cual están expuestos los afroamericanos en la sociedad estadounidense. debido al termino especifico de Black Lives Matter varias personas empezaron a a actuar en contra de ello ya que decían que de la manera en la que se presentaban y por lo que luchaban eran solo por un sector de la población de estados unidos. Por ejemplo no luchaban en contra de la violencia sino solo en contra de la violencia contra los afroamericanos, no luchaban en contra de la brutalidad policial sino que luchaban en contra de la brutalidad policial en contra de los afroamericanos.

así es como nacieron otros movimientos como los de White Lives Matter, All lives matter y Blue lives matter, que luchan por los policías asesinados por delincuentes.

en respuesta a esto las fundadoras explicaron que no es que solo luchan por terminar con todo tipo de violencia solo con la población afroamericana sino que luchan por esto ya que desde que se empezó a luchar por los derechos civiles y la igualdad de derechos hace décadas los afroamericanos siempre tuvieron mas vulnerabilidad frente a la policía, es decir es mas probable que un afroamericano muera en las manos de la policía antes que un blanco. la desigualdad social y el racismo es lo que producen esta clase de actos, entonces no están diciendo que las vidas de loa afroamericanos importan mas que la de los blancos sino que estados unidos tiene un pasado histórico en el cual se presenta que nunca se ha importado o protegido al mismo nivel todas las vidas de los ciudadanos estadounidenses.

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Michael Brown, todo empezó con un forcejeo mientras el oficial Wilson seguía sentado en su patrulla, en ese forcejeo es cuanto el oficial dispara y ellos salen corriendo. Según el primo de Michael Wilson les iba disparando y Michael siente el efecto del disparo y se da media vuelta se pone de rodillas y dijo. “No dispare”, ahí es cuando Wilson se acerca y dispara varias veces mas.
Michael muere en el instante en el que una bala es disparada a su cuerpo.

Eric Garner, quien fue detenido en Staten Island por vender cigarrillos sueltos, lo cual es ilegal en Nueva York, cuando no se sabe bien si es por obra forzada de los oficiales o cuenta propia que levanta los brazos sin oponer ninguna clase de resistencia, y cuando estaba en el piso con los brazos para arriba un oficial decide aplicarle una llave a lo cual el responde “no puedo, respirar me asfixio”, el oficial no para y Eric Fallece.

estos casos tienen en común que ambos hombres eran afroamericanos y los oficiales que los asesinaron eran blancos y no fueron declarados culpables por sus acciones tanto en el caso de Michael, como el de Eric.
Por estas razones es por las que los principales pilares de Black lives Matter es terminar con la brutalidad policial y el racismo.

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Black lives matter es un movimiento social, la organizacion Black Lives Matter, segun una de las co fundadoras Cullors, lucha por la igualdad de derechos de vida de los afroamericanos, luchan tambien en contra del racismo y principalmente terminar por completo con la brutalidad innecesaria en contra de los afroamericanos.

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Michael Brown

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Eric Garner

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The Black Lives Matter movement has pushed itself into the national conversation again and again. It seems anyone can join them and anyone can claim to be a part of the movement, simply by creating a Facebook page or using a hashtag.

Still, it is praised as much as it is criticized. While there is no way to know exactly how large the movement has become, the organization has branched out with chapters in 31 cities and held rallies, boycotts and other actions across the United States, according to one of the co-founders.

For a group that started with a hashtag in 2012 after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, it has grown into a social juggernaut. It has changed the way people talk about police brutality and inequality.

"Because of social media we reach people in the smallest corners of America. We are plucking at a cord that has not been plucked forever," Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter says. "There is a network and a hashtag to gather around. It is powerful to be in alignment with our own people."

You can try, but it is hard to avoid the conversation about Black Lives Matter anymore. And that's exactly the point.

But the group is also trying to find its footing to make much more change.And part of that means really figuring out what the movement is about, longer-term; where leaders think they can do more than demonstrate and disrupt society and "shut sh*t down," as they often chant. They say it is about much more than each individual death of an African-American man or woman, it is about what it means to be black in America.

And that means learning how to make political change to address the frustrations of the African-American community. The movement wants a civil rights movement-type of change that shakes up politics and breaks the cycle of violence and silence.

To do that, it also must confront itself, its leadership and how it plans to operate. The group does not have one prominent leader, and that is by design.

"We don't have a one strong leader model. You can't kill the movement by killing the leader because there are many," Cullors-Brignac says. "But decentralization does not mean disorganization. We are highly organized."

Still there are those who have emerged as social media leaders, judging by their mass followings.

DeRay Mckesson is front and center, with 268,000 Twitter followers and counting. He drives conversation. He is poetic and polarizing all at once. He's been called everything from the new Martin Luther King Jr. to a devil intent on dividing America, depending on who is responding to him.

Mckesson has been protesting in some form since the August 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which was eventually deemed justified by both a grand jury and a Department of Justice investigation. He is never absent from Twitter, where he skewers police accused in killings or brutality. He attacks police department tactics and the media, and his prominence keeps growing among those who hate him and those who support him.

While he is vociferous at times, he knows that the movement is bigger than any single person, and he wants to keep it that way.

"I think it's a movement of many people doing important work and leading in different ways. We've only begun to see the power and impact of that type of model," he said.

Which is why social media is such a big part of how Black Lives Matter operates. Activists like Mckesson, Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac, Shaun King, Brittany Packnett, Johnetta Elzie and Samuel Sinyangwe make sure to use the platform as a bullhorn to share their message with the public and inspire others to take part.

Protesting politicians, and maybe their allies

In the past 15 months, the movement has gone from local outrage in Ferguson to a tidal wave of awakening across the nation.

"We brought more people into the conversation, and they realized the problem is much closer to them than they think," Mckesson says.

But the group's tactics have come under intense scrutiny, sometimes by the very people it is supporting or who have supported it.

Some critics blame Black Lives Matter for worsening race relations in America, pointing to polls that show Americans think race relations are worse in recent years. But Black Lives Matter activists say just because they have pointed out racism in America, doesn't mean the group is to blame.

The group is also known to take over at political rallies of the very people who could be allies in their fight.

When Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally in Seattle in August, shouting their way onstage and later causing the Democratic presidential candidate to leave the event, some members distanced themselves, saying that didn't represent their agenda. But with the way the group has positioned itself, anyone with similar goals can consider themselves part of the group and movement.

Sanders' fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was next, later that month. But this time, they wanted to make sure she heard them. So they pushed to get close and have a personal conversation about paying more attention to the group's goals.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hasn't escaped their ire, but he did manage to talk over them partly because some of his supporters pushed out one of the protesters during a speech in Alabama.

But the focus also had to be on real areas they could change now with leaders currently in power. At an October town hall meeting in south Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti showed up intending to listen and respond to the community to restore a frayed relationship. What he encountered was Black Lives Matter activists who stood up and turned their backs on him.

"The mayor has neglected, disrespected and abused the black community for far too long," said Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer and professor of African studies, grabbing everyone's attention.

While the crowd may have agreed with her, some were frustrated that members of the group had sideswiped their chance to have a serious conversation with the mayor.

"You have the subgroup trying to take over the town hall. Whatever they were talking about is not my reality," Daryle Shumake, a 45-year-old black health care worker, told the Los Angeles Times that night.

In Minneapolis, protesters occupied the police department to demand that video be released of the police shooting of 24-year-old Jamar Clark. The officers involved in the death are on administrative leave pending state and federal investigations.

Black Lives Matters members continue to protest. Clark's family has been thankful for the activists' support but also frustrated at times with their tactics. Family members repeatedly appealed for peace, and respect for property, saying there's a fine line between protesting a cause and hurting the community.

Later, the Black Lives Matter movement was the target of a shooting outside the police department and the family again urged them to leave, this time for the group's own safety.

"Disagreements about tactics are totally normal. We have differing opinions. This happened during the 60s in the days of Martin Luther King, and the Black Panther movement," Cullors-Brignac says. "It is just that our disagreements are often displayed to the public in real time on social media."

She openly worries that the infighting can be destructive, but it shouldn't take away from the work that needs to be done.

Confronting violence and their path ahead

The Black Lives Matter movement is making a concerted effort not to encourage violence. It responds fiercely when accused of committing violent acts during protests. But this comes with the territory with a loosely formed group. When you organize or encourage protests and encourage all to get involved, then the group itself and the movement bear the brunt of the blame if some become violent or destructive, as was the case in Ferguson and Baltimore.

So, in Minneapolis, the activists took a different tack when they learned of a potential plot by white supremacists to incite violence to tarnish the movement. They told group members to make sure their faces could be seen, so fingers couldn't be pointed at them.

When a male walking around the crowd was asked to remove his mask and refused, the group questioned why he was there. When he said he was just checking things out, they grabbed him by the arm and escorted him out.

"Not today. You are not welcome to create chaos here. No sir," they said.

Again, some praised the group's actions, while others condemned them. They were trying to police themselves, but also removed someone from a public street.

Police later discovered Molotov cocktails not far from the protest site, though they never figured out who was responsible.

The threats against the group itself are now fast and furious. Most are online. But some are in person. In Minneapolis, five demonstrators were shot. Police arrested three suspects, all of them white, after a confrontation between protesters and the men.

Despite the bumps, the hurdles and the accusations, the movement continues and grows across the country. The question is, what is the group's plan for the future and will it have an impact on policy, or will it just continue to make its presence known by protesting?

"In the beginning that was about awareness and recognition, helping bring attention to an issue," Mckesson said.

He and Samuel Sinyangwe, Britanny Packnett and Johnetta Elzie came out with a policy of sorts -- or at least a clear and concise list of principles for policy change. They called it Campaign Zero, and they map out policy issues and have honed in on areas in which they think they can bring about real change: police contracts and misconduct records; investigations of police; community representation; "militarization" of police; use of body cameras.

Mckesson says the key to the group's future is to start getting involved in hyper-local politics not just national races. Taking to the streets will always be a part of the movement, but taking over as policy-makers could change things forever.

"What does it mean when protesters become city council members, mayors, school board members?" Mckesson asked. "How will that factor into the next phase? How will we grow and change? The movement has matured, for lack of a better word, but it has to be multifaceted."

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The Black Lives Matter movement has pushed itself into the national conversation again and again. It seems anyone can join them and anyone can claim to be a part of the movement, simply by creating a Facebook page or using a hashtag. Still, it is praised as much as it is criticized.

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The Black Eyed Peas - #WHERESTHELOVE ft. The World (Video)

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Music video by Body Count performing No Lives Matter. (C) 2017 The Century Family Inc. http://vevo.ly/5a7Mra