Black Lives Matter and Racism Essay

Minneapolis has been engulfed by protest this week Over The Killing of an unarmed black man on May 25, 2020 Geroge Floyd died after a white officer pinned him down kneeling on his neck, in the video he can be heard repeatedly “ I Can’t breath” over the night protester threw fireworks at police and set a police building on fire. The government requested reinforcements from the National Guard. the prostate has spread to New York, Denver, phoenix in Columbus Ohio, menstruates tried to enter the statehouse. In Los Angeles members of the movement “Black Lives Matter” gathered outside the hall of justice for the phrase I Can’t Breath Hawks back to an incident that galvanized the movement in 2014 black lives matter had momentum and real cultural currency it felt like their calls for semantic change might be answered the protests are a reminder of the anger behind the movement hasn't diminished even if it might see the movement itself has

So the phrase I can’t breathe we heard in Minneapolis is very similar to what we heard in 2014 when the man Eric Garner was choked to death by a policeman

he was saying I can't breathe phrase and the phrase became a phrase that was used by black lives matter to complain about police brutality and the freedom from the killing of African American men by the place.

Similar to what happened in Minneapolis how has black lives matter been responding to this incident

I think we haven’t seen as much use of the term black lives matter a couple of months ago, in fact, we’re seeing the same thing it’s where ordinary African Americans absolutely outraged by the behavior of the police and the bad training that they have and they’re furious and they demand so that is serious to prevent this from happening in greater numbers so this is resident of what happened in the past few years and the fact that we’re heading in the warm summer months when more of these things seem to happen could suggest more protest more incidents to fuel a fire

But BLM seems to have faded from public view somewhat in the past few years what’s been happening in the meantime

What is interesting is to look back on the last few years and ask what happened to BLM because in some ways it has faded as a present as a force. If you look at the interest online for BLM in the weeks and the years before these latest police killings actually had to decline a great deal if you were to look at the individuals, who are involved in BLM they haven’t been able to substance the same level of high profile discussion and media attention that they once did among the various founders and activist in BLM they have said that after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 their phone calls went dead no longer did tv produces and others want to have them on their shows the interest from the mass media in BLM seen drift away since about 2016 BLM has gone into a more duel phase

But yet hasn’t disappeared altogether what do think are the structural issues that have led to that evidence of decline or at least slipping out of view

One of the problems with BLM is that it decided to form this nonhigh radical structure for the organization so they wouldn’t pick a single cosmetic leader to be the frontman or the frontwoman of the organization they consciously say they don’t want anyone to have a leader such as Martian Luther King who could be identified as the face of the organization members of the group say for example they don’t want to have one leader who could then be assassinated or taken out and therefore to weaken the organization but the problem with lacking a single cosmetic leader is it makes it harder for followers for donors, partners to see someone who they can feel intoned with and decide they want the support and you look at the situations such as now with coronavirus where African Americans are being killed at a rate two in a half times greater than white Americans BLM has not emerged as a powerful voice to speak up on that issue it’s not being nimble enough to really find ways to speak up on the issues beyond the violence committed by police and by white pigeon auntie

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but that's not to say that all of the foot soldiers of the movements have been idle during this time I mean what have they been doing

So there are other ways in which BLM has had a great impact and if you speak to other people's one activist I spoke to in Los Angeles says that the real impact of the charter of the movement is being at a local level so you look at black lives matter in Los Angeles in Chicago in Washington DC and you see where activist turn out to local meetings Vance weather has the greatest impact it's not online is not in the mass media is the foot soldiers it’s the local activist who actually makes a difference to persuade the police to behave differently this is a sentiment echoed by Patrice trees colors who is a co-founder one of the three co-founders of black lives matter when The Economist spoke to her back in 2018

Local work always impacts the nation so many of our chapters are working on bail reform many of our chapters are working on diverting money from law enforcement into Community responses to violence this is very powerful work that's happening around the country

but it means it's the thing that was striking about black lives matter when it was more in the news was the degree to which the sentiment was actually shared across divides of class and color what happened to that

“One of the big reasons black lives matter had an impact in the mass media and online and white liberals who agreed that that was a great problem to be solved and yet some of these have drifted away so I spoke to Melina Abdullah and co-founded black lives matter the local chapter in Los Angeles and she told me about long black folks having the privilege of being able to feel an exhausted story and maybe take up an interest in something else”

And so what's your view that in light of all that about the degree to which Black lives matter we'll get a little bit of a boost to grab more attention in light of the events this week

I think sadly these grim events are going to happen again they'll be more of them we see that in summer months we get more violence and the police get more involved in stopping and searching people so I feel that we may have other reasons to speaking again about such misbehavior by the police and there for black lives matter has the opportunity to speak up and be noticed again that said I haven't seen any evidence that the organization its restructuring or it's finding a ready dynamic leader to be a strong voice to speak out on these issues to grab the attention so far I think the movement is caught between two stools is neither dominating in the way that it did back in 2014 but nor has it completely disappeared so I think it will sustain its self but it won’t be as dominant as it was

The police are one particular pipeline in the social infrastructure—a large one. The United States depends on the police to address homelessness, domestic violence, stranded cats, missing property, and much more. This particular pipeline was established to seek social stability. And just as the Fed seeks economic and financial stability through preservation, the police forces in this country work to establish social stability through preservation. In so doing, the police have preserved the systemic racism built into the fabric of this country.

Recognizing this, the BLM movement has coalesced around the idea of defunding the police and, in so doing, dismantling this particular piece of U.S. social infrastructure—eliminating the force designed to preserve a social arrangement characterized by systemic racism, because some things aren’t worth preserving. Replace it with new social infrastructure, a set of pipes and conduits that allow citizens to relate in ways that don’t preserve, but rather improve, our society. Defunding the police entails taking responsibilities and powers away from the police force that is more appropriately and more effectively executed by others: social workers, mental health facilities, educators, job creators, and the like. There are lessons from the BLM movement for the U.S. economy, where monetary policy infrastructure is dominated by private financial institutions. Consider the Fed’s coronavirus response.

The Fed is fighting the current economic crisis with all the tools in its arsenal. Every action it takes, every time it injects funds into the economy, goes via the financial system. Scholars have referred to this fact as the infrastructural power of the financial sector. Take one example: The Fed is working to support the Small Business Administration’s efforts to get loans out to small businesses. To do so, the Fed has purchased those loans on the secondary market, thereby (hopefully) incentivizing banks to make more such loans, but inevitably enriching any financial actors involved in buying or selling them. Meanwhile, out of urgency on the part of the Fed to get the banks to lend to small businesses, the central bank has temporarily reduced regulations on Wells Fargo that were originally implemented because of “widespread compliance and operational breakdowns that resulted in harm to consumers.” In other words, the Fed is easing up regulations meant to make Wells Fargo less predatory in hopes that Wells Fargo will, in turn, help those in need. All because the Fed itself cannot make those loans directly. The channels, and the infrastructure, that are required to forge a better economy simply aren’t there. The pandemic has again exposed a range of troubling inequalities, most of them long-standing. As the national discussion continues, it is critical to remember that equity includes access to education, work, and economic opportunity. I am reminded that Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, just a few short blocks from the Federal Reserve, at a rally whose full title was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Currently, both American policing and American monetary policy are designed to preserve, not progress. And in both cases, the country is holding on to something not worth preserving. We don’t need to identify the perfect future in order to let go of a rotten past; we just need to establish the infrastructure that will allow things to get better.