By Deron Dalton
Black Lives Matter changed the national conversation on race. An organizational and international network, it has ballooned into 31 chapters in three countries.
Now comes the hard part.
It all started back in July 2013, when three Black women and community organizers—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—founded #BlackLivesMatter and the online campaign’s social platforms following the verdict that acquitted George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
The group includes a table of Black organizations called the Movement for Black Lives. Also, the larger Black liberation movement—which includes many more activists within different organizations not officially affiliated—grew to prominence in August 2014 following the death of another Black teenager, 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose body laid in a Ferguson, Missouri, street for more than four hours after he was fatally shot by white police officer Darren Wilson. The Ferguson uprising further mobilized Black people—many of whom were on the frontlines—sparking a more mainstream conversation on police killings, the brutalization of protesters, and how some state-sanctioned systems allegedly dehumanize Black lives.
Read more via The Daily Dot.