Lives Were Paid To Show Us The Unwilling Truth
Black people have melded into every facet of American society so much so that several signature marks of American culture are pioneered by the Black community. However, getting Black people together in the USA has forever been the cry of the community that has gone unheard of most of the time.
The reason is not very difficult to grasp as there are many facts spread across several surveys that substantiate this point. The reason is the systematic segregation of this community and their own ignorance and difference that has collectively led to the current situation. It took a global phenomenon called “Black Lives Matter” to bring several decades of collective issues to the forefront of people’s attention. The irony is that the “Black Lives Matter” movement is not just one or two isolated incidents in one or two locations but spread across regions, gender, and professional disciplines. However, the heartwarming result is that the movement didn’t just burn brightly and then quickly fade away but has snow-rolled into the ears and hearts of millions worldwide.
How did the Black Lives Matter movement gain prominence?
The movement started with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Black American teen Trayvon Martin. The unfairness of the incident itself, coupled with the injustice witnessed at the courts, and the final verdict burned a fire in the hearts of many and culminated in the use of the #BlackLivesMatter across several social media platforms. Unlike most other hashtags, #BlackLivesMatter didn’t just fade away but gained momentum with passing time. The main reason was that the first incident was just the impetus for several incidents from the past to be brought to the forefront. This created an awareness in people that this is a festering problem that has gone unnoticed and that racism is no longer an evil of the past.
The lives that were paid to show us that the evil called racism is still alive:
However, this incident was not enough to turn Black Lives Matter to turn into what it is today. In 2014, the unfair deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in New York threw it into the global attention sphere, and from then on, this movement started to gather steam. The death of George Floyd stamped itself permanently onto the global news and drew widespread protests across the country. These protests were followed by further police violence, and suddenly the eyes of the world turned toward America with increasing concern, which then turned into anger. Suddenly, more and more people started searching for George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, who were just ordinary people. These ordinary people turned into martyrs and fanned the flame in the hearts of millions worldwide. The police violence during the protests following George Floyd’s death drew the ire of the world as a collective. The 68-page report entitled “The World is Watching: Mass Violations by US Police of Black Lives Matter Protesters’ Rights” showed that the police used physical violence, chemical irritants, and kinetic bodies as projectiles to attack peaceful protestors.
The whole world started supporting Black people in the USA, or rather they couldn’t do so as a result of this hypocritical blatant disregard of human life and rights by the people who are supposed to safeguard it. So join us as we keep the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement alive so that these kinds of incidents never ever happen again.
