Black Lives Matter Movement Research Paper

Black Lives Matter Movement
“Hand up, don’t shoot”, “I can’t breathe”, “I don’t want to die in jail”, black lives matter. Although blacks have been being murdered for years, by their own kind, by others, and by the police, there has been a recent interest taken in saving the lives of blacks. Black lives matter is an activist movement. There is growing tension between races such as blacks and whites that divides America. In this paper, I propose that mass media has misrepresented the Black Lives Matter Movement, leading to widespread misunderstanding of its purpose. In order to prove this point I will present BLMM, discus how the BLMM has used mass media and how mass media has turned black lives matter movement into something it does not stand
Music and pillars of support will help keep our eyes on the prize.
The Black Lives Matter movement has its own set of strategic plans and what it stands for. This movement has only started recently within the few last years or so. According to the official Black Lives Matter website, Black Lives Matter was created (by three black women) in 2013, after the George Zimmerman was acquitted for the crime (Garza et al.). The founders of the movement are Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors. The movement started gaining more momentum shortly after the death of Michael Brown and the Ferguson protest. The movement is not an anti-white, anti-police, anti-America movement but a movement to put black pride, faith, strength, hope, confidence, and racial consciousness back into the black community. Black lives matter not only protest for those dying at the hands police brutality but it attest to any type of struggles within the black community. The founders state, “Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks,
One way that the movement is gaining America’s attention and the rest of the world is through disruption of everyday life. Black Lives Matter: A New Movement Takes Place, by Khury Petersen-Smith, states, “Activists have concluded en masse that anti-Black racism is a systemic problem that should be confronted through the disruption of work, commuter travel, commerce, and other circuits of the daily functioning of US society.” (Petersen-Smith, Khury). However, unlike the civil rights movement rallying and gaining supporters are easier and quicker in today’s society. The digital age makes getting messages to the masses simple. Word travels quickly because the generations are glued to the screens of our electronics. All it takes is a quick video upload, post or tweet to alert individuals on what’s going on. According to the article, The Next Civil Rights Movement?, “Not only is social media a tool for mobilization, but the intense reporting on police brutality via social media also influences print and television coverage, which means that attention to such incidents has multiplied.” (Harris, Fredrick C.). The black lives matter movement uses these as outlet sources, and they frame the situations in any way they like. However, as positive as they would like to make it, the media also twist the situations to put the movement in a bad