When you first heard the words, Black Lives Matter, how did it make you feel? Were you angry or annoyed? Defensive? Confused maybe? Did you feel left out? Insulted?
I don't remember exactly when I first heard the phrase or precisely how I felt when I heard it. But I do recall thinking that this is someone else's cause. Not mine.
I also never bothered to take the time to learn about why these words were first uttered or why Black people thought they needed to be said.
Well...I've learned some things.
Black Lives Matter was founded by a group of moms in July 2013 after the murderer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was acquitted. Martin was fatally shot when walking home from a trip to the convenience store by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer.
During a 2019 interview on the Work in Progress podcast with actress and activist Sophia Bush, Melina Abdullah, among the original group of founders of Black Lives Matter, shared her personal account of how the Black Lives Matter movement was born. I am including a link to the entire interview at the end of this post. It's definitely worth a listen.
"He was a 17-year-old child doing exactly what he should have been doing, and his life was stolen," said Abdullah, an advocate, organizer, professor and mother of three."And then the state gets behind Zimmerman and says he had the right to steal the life of this boy who was ours."
Abdullah recalled like it was yesterday receiving a phone call on July 13, 2013 from her brother when she was out shopping for a car for her growing family.
"And I remember going into Car Max and almost as soon as I got there, my brother called," she said. "And he goes, 'where are you,' and I tell him, and he goes 'well sit down because you're not going to like it. He got off, and they are giving him his gun back.' When I hear that second part that they are giving him his gun back, it just like hit me and I felt this fog kind of overtake me."
After receiving this news, Abdullah gathered her children back in the car and went home. A single mom, she made dinner, put all her kiddos to bed and found someone to babysit them.
She then had some other moms over and they sat and talked before heading to Leimert Park in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. Abdullah recalled: "There were easily 1,000 people milling around in the park. Some were crying. Some were upset. Some were giving impromptu speeches. I remember there was this young sister there who I was talking to and she says to me, 'I don't want to be in this park.' And me and the other moms are like, 'well, what do you want to do. And she said 'well I wanna march.' So I grabbed the bull horn and I say, 'we gonna march.'"
And so they marched for three days straight.
The third day of protests was a turning point. After taking pictures from an overpass of thousands of protesters marching on an LA freeway, Abdullah received a text from Patrisse Cullors that said "Meet at 9 p.m. at St. Elmo's Village," Abdullah recalled. Cullors and Abdullah were both part of a Black community organizer space along with about 15 others. "We had become friends and comrades in that space," Abdullah added.
Abdullah described St. Elmo's Village as a black artist community. "We gathered in this beautiful artist village that is set up like an African village with this space in the center and we circled up." Abdullah said.
"There were about 30 of us, including some of the mommas, including a bunch of my students who I had called out into the streets and then a bunch of Patrisse's beautiful artist and organizer friends, and we committed to building a movement, not a moment," said Abdullah. "Now at the time we didn't know what that meant, but it was a commitment that we made from our souls. You felt this ancestral presence and that was the birth of Black Lives Matter."
She added, "I feel...I believe...I know...It's our sacred duty to not simply sit by as our people are oppressed and degraded and killed."
Abdullah recited one of the chants they often use during BLM protests - "It is our duty to fight for freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains."
Abdullah described how she continues to become more and more anxious about the safety of her young son as he grows older. "I'm concerned for all of my children, but specifically my son, who's now 9," she said. "And I feel like as he continues to grow, the target on his back gets bigger... I don't know white moms who feel that about their sons. And so it can't just be a weight that I carry. right? I need you to care as much as I care."
Abdullah is right. White people DO need to care just as much as she does.
I will never understand what it is like to have a Black son and what it's like to carry the fear for my son's life because of the color of his skin. However, that absolutely does NOT give me an excuse not to care. In fact, I need to do a heck of a lot more than just care. Caring is the least I can do. I am outraged that Abdullah's reality is true for so many other parents in this world. This should NOT be their reality, but it will continue to be their reality until systemic change is made. And it is up to ALL of us to fight for that change.
So I'm asking those of you who instinctively want to respond to the words Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter to think twice before doing so. The Black Lives Matter movement is not saying that only Black Lives matter, it is asking for Black Lives to actually matter.
Tamika D. Mallory says it best in the following excerpt from her new book, State of Emergency: How We Win in the Country We Built.
"The Black community would love to be able to focus on all lives. Our mission is to reach a point where history can mark the date when all lives begin to matter equally, but that is not our reality today. Unfortunately, that has never been our reality. A Black person in America wakes in the morning and goes to sleep at night being told that we do not matter. The message is reiterated every day on our TV screens. The message is reinforced with every denied loan application, with every job passed down by nepotism over merit, and with every unequal dollar poured into inner-city school systems. Black lives don't matter, and until they do, screaming that all lives matter is racist." - Tamika D. Mallory
Resources
1. Link to the Melina Abdullah podcast interview with Sophia Bush
2. State of Emergency: How We Win in the Country We Built by Tamika D. Mallory
Other book recommendations
1. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
2. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Until next time...
