Black Lives Matter Essay

The Black Lives Matter movement is a movement that has raised global awareness of how minorities, in this case, black people in the United States, have been dealing with racial inequality, racial profiling and police brutality in the criminal justice system. According to Alicia Garza, one of the three women who created the hashtag ‘Black Lives Matter’ on Twitter, ‘the movement was a response to the anti-black racism that permeates the society and the movements of black people in the US.’ The Black Lives Matter movement has often been compared to the black civil rights movement from the nineteen-sixties. The civil rights movement from the nineteen-sixties was also led by black people and their allies. However, the Black Lives Matter movement should be distinguished from this nineteen-sixties-style of activism.

Firstly, the tactics of the Black Lives Matters activists are of different nature than those of their civil rights predecessors. The Movement for Black Lives, another name for the Black Lives Matter movement, has become significantly well-known due to the use of Social Media. Social Media is a tool for mobilization. For example, core Black Lives Matter activists like DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie now have the ability through Twitter to frame events and direct the actions of hundreds of thousands of people across the United States at their fingertips , whereas a substantial amount of time and effort was needed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people during the