A History of the Black Lives Matter Movement
1 2017-12-11T22:00:42-08:00 Kaitlin Schell f5894eea10a50fa9cbed74088e86540e6fef0130 26020 1 July 14 -- Black Lives Matter started as a hashtag on Twitter. Now it's a national movement. This Bloomberg QuickTake video explains what it seeks to achieve, how social media has changed it,... plain 2017-12-11T22:00:42-08:00 YouTube 2016-07-17T16:02:40.000Z jMedqlxbFfM Bloomberg Kaitlin Schell f5894eea10a50fa9cbed74088e86540e6fef0130This page is referenced by:
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Social media has provided a new way to fight racism. In fact, “the tools that we have to organize and to resist are fundamentally different than anything that’s existed before in black struggle” because of the ability to obtain the large outreach that social media provides as a grand result of electracy (Stephen). #BlackLivesMatter is global—people everywhere are becoming more aware of the struggle of blacks because of the hashtag; victims’ stories are being told and there is no surveillance to monitor what is being posted in the way that the telephone was controlled by a white operator. The raw truth does not have to be filtered anymore and it is creating a movement. #BlackLivesMatter creates a community among its victims, and even others sympathetic to their cause because of the publicity that the hashtag brings to itself. The connotations of Black Lives Matter can be different to the audience, whether it be positive or negative, sympathetic or not, but the story is still getting out there. It can make its readers cringe, or it can make them feel empowered. Regardless, the fact that social media can be used in such a positive way to shed light on a centuries old issue is groundbreaking.
The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013 as a response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman. The entire history of the project can be read here.