This article is the first in the Black Lives Matter Everywhere series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation. To mark the awarding of the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has reignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (tickets here).
For weeks, we had been glued to our televisions as police and “friends” of Zimmerman tried to disparage the high schooler – to make the victim some kind of predator. But we had seen his face. We saw his eyes dance, BLM Revolution Movement Unisex T-Shirt his brown skin glisten, and his smile warm hearts. He was a child, a lovely, beautiful boy-child who looked like our own children. And Zimmerman had no right to steal his life, regardless of what a court says.
Black bodies filled the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting White shoppers and making the normalcy of White American middle-class existence less certain.
As our ranks swelled and our presence became more intentionally targeted at White epicentres of escapism (including tourist attractions like Hollywood and Highland), Black Lives Matter shirt we began to understand the power of disruption. In disrupting these spaces, we refused to allow our collective pain to be confined to Black communities. Others may not see their own children in the face of Trayvon, but they would not be permitted to dismiss us.
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