Black Lives Matter is a decentralized movement, an alliance of organizations whose protest actions attract many unaffiliated supporters. That makes it tricky to categorically state that "BLM believes this" or "BLM believes that." But we can examine the rhetoric of the affiliated organizations and prominent activists within the movement. They paint a surprisingly consistent portrait.
Let's start with one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement,
Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac.
She writes:
In 2013, I helped create a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. You may have heard of it. As many of you know, it was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. Another co-creator, Alicia Garza first uttered the words in a love note to Black people. I slapped a hashtag on it because I understood the power of spreading messages. Opal Tometi caught wind and helped us develop the broader social media platform, among other things. All of us are trained radical Black organizers, who have long been a part of the larger Black liberation movement....
[BLM] is adaptive and decentralized with a set of guiding principles. Our goal is to support the development of new Black leaders as well as create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities.
Self-determination is a term that often crops up. In
black nationalist ideology this usually refers to separation of the races and the establishment of autonomous (or mostly autonomous) black communities, or sometimes to a single autonomous black nation in the American South. It has its roots in Marcus Garvey's back to Africa movement in the early 20th century.
She goes on to denounce “capitalist white supremacy.” “The Black radical agenda, which pushes us closer to freedom and the agenda to which I subscribe, calls for an eradication of white supremacy and an adoption of values and traditions endowed from the Black experience.”
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BLM activist
Marissa Johnson came to national prominence when she disrupted a
white supremacist rally in Seattle.
Then, Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford, activists with the Black Lives Matter movement who were standing near the stage, raised their fists in the air....Johnson spoke through the heckling, welcoming Bernie to the town of Seattle, where "white supremacist liberalism" prevails.
She went on to
call the crowd of Bernie supporters white supremacists and described in more detail how white liberals are complicit in advancing white supremacy in America.
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It shouldn't come as a shock that BLM has support in certain academic circles.
Lawrence Ware of Oklahoma State University and
Lauren Whiteman (ironically actually a black woman) of the University of Oklahoma,
write in defense of BLM:
Yes, President Obama is a black man in the White House—but as Louis Farrakhan reminds us, we should never lose sight that it is still the WHITE house. That is, the Presidency in this country is an office invested in maintaining and acting out the norms of white supremacy....
He spent the first two years in office trying to build bridges with those who maintain white supremacy and now he wants to lecture those engaged in a movement to that was formed under his watch. What oppressed people need is neither always convenient nor expressed according to the expectations of those who need to hear them. If we were politely asking for our needs to be met, we would die before we attracted the attention of those in power. In fact, many already have.
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Blacklivesmatters.com describes
Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou as a “movement pastor.” He wrote on
Facebook:
My heart breaks at this time for Joshua Williams, our son, who languishes in the belly of the beast while those who shoot us dead in the street, those who ensure they evade justice and those who profit from the systems of white supremacy and incarceration walk free,” Rev. Osagyefo Sekou said.
Joshua Williams is a BLM activist who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for an arson and burglary he committed during a BLM riot in Ferguson.
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About the affiliate organizations,
blacklivesmatter.com writes: “BLM is composed of many local leaders and many local organizations including Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, Hands Up United, Millennial Activists United, and the Black Lives Matter national network.”
Let's start with
Hands Up United. Founded in response to the Michael Brown shooting,
it describes itself as “a collective of politically engaged minds building towards the liberation of oppressed Black, Brown and poor people through education, art, civil disobedience, advocacy and agriculture.”
They refer to themselves as part of the Black Power movement, and demand self-determination of black and brown people. Self-determination, as I said, has a very specific meaning in black nationalist circles.
While playing a critical role in the North American uprising for Black lives, HandsUpUnited aims to fulfill the political void that remains from the historical archives of the Black Power Movement. HandsUpUnited strongly believes liberation for oppressed Black and Brown people will be achieved solely through self determination coupled with traditional and nontraditional means of political education.
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Black Youth Project 100 describes itself as "an activist member-based organization of Black 18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people."
In collaboration with two other groups, BYP100 wrote
a letter to the US Conference of Mayors in January 2016. In the letter they claim to “currently live under police terror” in Chicago.
Rahm Emmanuel does not stand alone as a United States mayor who advances white supremacy and state violence while refusing to be accountable to Black people. Chicago is just one example of a crisis of leadership across the nation.
They go on to cite LA, Detroit, and DC as examples of other cities that “advance white supremacy.”
A
post about Trayvon Martin by Black Youth Project 100's staff includes the following:
Trayvon was manifested from ancestral excellence. The salt water falling from our eyes now, is not different from the salt water we were trafficked on then. If the soil of the United States could speak, before saying a word it would cough up our blood. Choking frantically, crust-curdling with the gore of a oppressed peoples it has been force-fed. White supremacy has water-boarded it with the remnants of its genocide of us.
They conclude:
We continue to call out Black Love, Black Power and Black is Beautiful in the face of continued devaluation of Black life....The poet Claude McKay once said, “Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave…we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack. Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
McKay's poem, about the "Red Summer" of 1919, was also popular in 1960s black nationalist circles.
In
another post they described being “terrorized by the realities of white supremacy.”
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The Organization for Black Struggle "was founded in 1980 by activists, students, union organizers and other community members in order to fill a vacuum left by the assaults on the Black Power Movement.”
Their
Freedom Agenda includes the following:
We will fight to advance beyond capitalism, which has demonstrated its structural incapacity to address basic human needs worldwide and, in particular, the needs of Black people...
We will struggle against state terrorism....
We will uphold the right of the African American people to self-determination.
They sell t-shirts stating “The Whole Damn System is Guilty as Hell” with a black nationalist fist in red. The back says “Organize, Resist, Revolt,” also with a black nationalist fist in red. “Who said freedom fighters can't stay fly?”
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Dream Defenders, founded in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting,
writes about the “racial habits and oppression...engrained in the DNA of this country.” They make liberal use of my favorite neologism, “Amerikkka.”
In the “about” section of their website they state:
We believe that our liberation necessitates the destruction of the political and economic systems of Capitalism and Imperialism as well as Patriarchy. We believe in People over profits. We believe that nonviolent resistance is “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” and are fundamentally committed to nonviolence as our means of struggle against a violent oppressor.
They're notable in their explicit adherence to non-violence. This is not a concept that comes up a lot on BLM websites.
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And last but not least, there's
Blacklivesmatter.com, which states it is the “the Official #BlackLivesMatter Organization founded by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza.” In one of their more
elucidating statements, they determine the real cause of the mass murder of Hispanic homosexuals by an Afghan jihadi in Orlando. You guessed it, capitalist white supremacy.
Homegrown terror is the product of a long history of colonialism, including state and vigilante violence. It is the product of white supremacy and capitalism, which deforms the spirit and fuels interpersonal violence. We especially hold space for our Latinx family now, knowing that the vast majority of those murdered were Latinx, and many were specifically Puerto Rican. From the forced migration of thousands of young people from the island of Puerto Rico to Orlando, to the deadly forced migration throughout Latin America and the Caribbean — we know this is not the first time in history our families have been mowed down with malice, and we stand with you....
We will not allow a false narrative of “Islamic terrorism” to be dictated by white supremacists and corporate media. We know it was bullets and bigotry that killed you....
The enemy is now and has always been the four threats of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and militarism.
A garden will make your rations go further.
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