When the mayor of Washington recently painted “Black Lives Matter” on a avenue close to the White House, it drew the ire of native civil rights activists operating under the name.
Muriel Bowser had intended the outsized yellow letters as a rebuke to President Donald Trump. But the small group of campaigners working under the BLM name in the nation’s capital joined with others to add a riposte targeted on the mayor and her police chief: “Defund the Police.”
The exchange highlighted the dynamics of the decentralised protest movement that has swept the US since the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, in what has been the most significant civil unrest in the country for decades.
Tens of 1000’s of people have marched under the Black Lives Matter banner, but they include a myriad of activist and group groups and local officials, all responding to a highly fragmented system of policing in a country with 18,000 totally different police departments.
The number of actual Black Lives Matter representatives at any specific protest will be fairly small. NeeNee Taylor, an organiser with the Washington chapter of Black Lives Matter, said her group was made up of “actually 5 black ladies and one black male”.
“That’s what we now have that does this highly effective work,” Ms Taylor said, adding that she hoped the momentum would last: “Don’t make it a moment. Make it a movement.”
A broad coalition of antiracism activist teams emerged in the US since 2013 in response to a spate of killings of black Americans that drew national consideration, including the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted on homicide charges.
Black Lives Matter was the most prominent, with largely autonomous branches throughout the US and overseas that always worked with area people groups and different organisations. In 2014, activists together with BLM formed an umbrella group called the Movement for Black Lives.
After Floyd’s killing, these networks have provided a language of radical change, social media platforms for organising, and logistics for the protests. They liaise with volunteer medics, authorized observers and scouts who be careful for bother from the police, troublemakers in their ranks or far-right opponents.
The influence of BLM has its limits. Ms Taylor for instance, said her organisation opposed such widely used US protest techniques as “die-ins” — sit-ins that mimic prone our bodies — and the mantra: “Palms up, don’t shoot.” To BLM, they’re unduly submissive.
One other variable in the protests is the fragmented nature of US policing. Cities and different local authorities determine budgets, guidelines of conduct, and accountability for his or her departments. Though Floyd’s name has turn into known worldwide, activists in each corner of the US also carry the names of lesser-known victims for whom they search justice.
“Policing may be very local. It’s both occurring on the state, or occurring on the city or county level,” said Dominique Hazzard, an organiser in Washington with BYP100, a youth activist group that works alongside Black Lives Matter.
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