Concern 1
This Unrest Came Out of Nowhere
These uprisings are NOT in response to just a singular event. This section grounds the current protests within the longer history of the multiple transgressions minority communities have endured for centuries in the U.S. It expands on the countless experiences of hopelessness and devastation so many Black people have experienced in response to police brutality and the over-policing of their communities.
01
'A Riot is the Language of the Unheard,' Martin Luther King, Jr. explained 53 years ago
By Peter Weber, The Week,
(May 29, 2020)
Martin Luther King Jr. famously condemned riots and all forms of violence, but also made strong appeals for people to understand and listen to rioters in order to fundamentally change society. Read his words in this article featuring excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1967 “The Other America” speech.
“America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.”
“In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? … as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
02
Am I Going to Write About Murdered Black People Forever?
By Kara Brown, Jezebel
(July 7, 2016)
This deeply personal article from journalist Kara Brown discusses the experience of lost hope and the impotent rage of being a black writer while black people are so cyclically murdered in the open.
“We ache and we yell and we hope that, eventually, the obvious weight of all this pain will be enough to move something to change. But at times hoping in public feels even more precarious.”
“I can continue to vote and go to protests and sign petitions and donate money and get in arguments with racist white people. And I can write. I can write again and again for as long as this nation piles up Black bodies. But when you’ve just watched a man bleed to death after a routine traffic stop while a child sits in the back seat, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like much.”
"We’re asking for something very simple that sometimes feels impossible: for the nation to be compassionate, for the nation to recognize our humanity."
03
The Shooting Of Black Americans Started Long Before The Looting
By Taryn Finley, Huffington Post
This article from the Editor of Huffington Post’s Black Voices, provides a personal and overarching gaze into the deep roots of injustice that have fueled riot and highlights the unique experience of justified rage that leads so many black people to rise up.
“Civil unrest is happening because Black people in this country are fed up with being killed. We’re tired of watching videos of our brothers and sisters die at the hands of police. We’re tired of having to deal with racism — especially amid a pandemic that disproportionately affects Black people — while some white people aren’t even aware of the mourning taking place. And it’s utterly exhausting to live under oppressive structures that expect us to stand by idly as we watch people who look like us be killed because some cop (or civilian) sees them as a thug. We’re mad as hell and if you care about black people. You should be too.”
"...There’s nothing novel about political analysts and folks on social media expressing more anger about destroyed property than a lost life."
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Mapping US Police Killings
Mappingpoliceviolence.org
Here is the data. Here is an interactive map of the United States that shows the 1098 people killed by police in each state in 2019. Click through to the link to search on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis and to see a variety of graphs showing the disproportionate rate at which black Americans are killed—3 times more likely—compared to white people, how police shootings do not correlate with crime data, and how 99% of police killings did not result in officers being charged with a crime.
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COVID-19 Racial Data Tracker
By the COVID Tracking Project and the Antiracist Research & Policy Center
This tool is a real-time tracker of the disproportionate deaths of Black people to COVID-19 in America down to the county level. This tool highlights how a system of racist institutions is failing the Black community.
06
Of Course There Are Protests. The State Is Failing Black People.
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New York Times (May 29, 2020)
This informed opinion piece outlines the multiple longstanding and ongoing failures of the state to protect Black Americans, including racist economic policies, police brutality, and social inequities underlying the disproportionate devastation of coronavirus on Black communities.
“This spring season has bloomed at least 23,000 COVID-19-related deaths in Black America. The coronavirus has scythed its way through Black communities, highlighting and accelerating the ingrained social inequities that have made African-Americans the most vulnerable to the disease.”
“Instead of using this monumental crisis to change the conditions feeding the rapid rate of Black deaths, the armed agents of the state continue their petty, insouciant policing. Even seemingly innocuous instructions for social distancing become new excuses for the police to harass African-Americans. In New York, Blacks made up a staggering 93 percent of coronavirus-related arrests.”
“What are the alternatives to protest when the state cannot perform its basic tasks and when lawless police officers rarely get even a slap on the wrist for crimes that would result in years of prison for regular citizens? If you cannot attain justice by engaging the system, then you must seek other means of changing it. That’s not a wish; it’s a premonition.”
“The convergence of these tragic events—a pandemic disproportionately killing Black people, the failure of the state to protect Black people and the preying on Black people by the police— has confirmed what most of us already know: If we and those who stand with us do not mobilize in our own defense, then no official entity ever will.”
07
By Remembering Our Sisters, We Challenge Police Violence Against Black Women and Legacies that Eclipse these Injustices
By Kali Nicole Gross, Association of Black Women Historians (May 31, 2020)
A retrospective introduction to the longstanding pattern of state-sponsored and -sanctioned violence specifically targeting Black women in the U.S., as well as their unacknowledged histories and the importance of the #SayHerName campaign.
“In the years since Aiyana’s untimely death, the number of Black women and girls either killed by police or that have died in police custody has grown to include: Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Rekia Boyd, Natasha McKenna, Sandra Bland, Kindra Chapman, Kimberlee Randle-King, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Kayla Moore, Gynnya McMillen, and Korryn Gaines. Their deaths are compounded by the experiences of those Black women who have been punished for attempting to defend themselves. Black women like Marissa Alexander, who was initially sentenced to twenty years for firing a warning shot as her abusive partner (a man against whom she had restraining order) advanced, and CeCe McDonald, who was imprisoned after defending herself against a racist, transphobic attack in Minneapolis in 2011.”
“The devaluation of Black women’s and girls’ lives is deeply embedded in the marrow of American justice. The same legal system that birthed the nation also set in place laws and practices that rendered Black women chattel, excluded Black women from judicial protection, and simultaneously sanctioned brutality and sexual violence against Black women.”
“We can point to colonial statutes that carried stiff sentences for the rape and attempted rape of white women and white girls, while failing to criminalize the rape or attempted rape of Black women and Black girls. We can cite the long history of Black women being starkly overrepresented in prisons and penitentiaries across the country as well as across time and space. And we can talk about how Black women and Black girls have received and continue to receive harsher sentences than white women and white girls for the same infractions.”
08
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
By Alicia Garza, The Feminist Wire (Oct 7, 2014)
Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza discusses the genesis of the movement, its appropriation, attacks on the groups’ message, and addresses how ‘All Lives Matter’ derails the point of the movement.
“Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
“#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important–it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide reaching and transformative for society as a whole.”
“When Black people get free, everybody gets free”
“Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down unity and more active solidarities with us, Black people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend on it.”
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