Social Sciences Essay: Black Lives Matter Movement

Black Lives Matter Movement
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Black Lives Matter Movement
Introduction
Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is a social and political movement with a decentralized system of leadership that advocates for non-violent civil disobedience to protest against incidences where there are police brutality and racial discrimination (The Gurdian, 2020). BLM movement relates to the acts of violence described by Scheper-Hughes & Phillipe (2004), where there were gang rape and other related violence. Sometimes BLM movement can be understood as a decentralized social movement known as Black Lives Matter. In the USA and Canada, there is the existence of a decentralized network that contains 16 chapters.
This movement began in 2013 when there was a trending hashtag "Black Lives Matter" on various social media platforms (The Gurdian, 2020). The hashtag started to trend when George Zimmerman, who is an African-American, was shot dead seventeen months earlier. Additionally, the movement went further, and there were street demonstrations when two more other African Americans. In 2016, the movement had grown big in such a way that Black Lives Matter activists started to involve themselves in presidential elections. The Black Lives Matter movement did not only take place in America but also extended to other parts of the world.
Black lives matter movement in the USA
According to Buchanan et al. (2020), the recent BLM movement in the USA that was well known across different parts of the world was the killing of George Floyd. This movement occurred on 6 June 2020 when more than half a million protestors turned across different cities of the USA. Some of the four recent polls released about the BLM movement in the USA suggest that for about 26 million people in the USA, 15 million have participated in this movement (Buchanan et al., 2020). These statistics involve the killing of George Floyd and other related cases. These figures make these demonstrations one of the biggest in USA history. The BLM movement has changed the way Americans fight for freedom and the USA politics.
How BLM Movement has changed the fight for freedom among Americans
Over the last few years, Americans have been using means that have not been recognized by the state government (Roberts, 2020). After the launch of this movement in 2013, Americans have changed how they fight for their freedom. BLM movement has always been advocating the protection of human rights rather than a civil rights movement. Its' focus has been specifically changing specific laws and fighting for a society where there have been practices that lead to dehumanization. One of the ways through which this movement has led to the change of how Americans fight for freedom is described by the incident when the students from Missouri advocated for the resignation of the University of Missouri president (Roberts, 2020). The president had failed to tackle the wide range of racism cases experienced in the university. The students in this university fought for freedom by using the hashtag "concernedstudents1950movement." Therefore, the BLM movement enabled the students from Missouri to fight for freedom by using the hashtag to remove the university president.
According to Roberts (2020), the BLM movement forced democrats to restructure the national platform to involve issues such as criminal justice reform. Also, the movement has a role to play for the election of black leftist organizers to serve public offices. For example, Chokwe Lumumba was elected to fill the position of mayor in Mississippi. National platforms such as criminal justice fought for the freedom of Americans by forming policies that will favor all the races (Roberts, 2020). Additionally, these platforms ensured ...