Concept Paper

Introduction

In May 2020 George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was pronounced dead after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, despite Floyd’s repeated protests that he could not breathe. Wide circulation of a bystander’s video of Floyd’s last minutes triggered massive demonstrations in cities throughout the United States and across the globe. The tragedy also brought to national attention the earlier deaths of two other African Americans: Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. In February 2020 Arbery was jogging in Glynn county, Georgia, when two white men, believing he might have committed a series of break-ins, began following him in a truck. The men, who had guns, confronted Arbery, and a struggle ensued, which resulted in the fatal shooting of Arbery. The following month in Louisville, Kentucky, Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was killed during a botched police raid at her apartment. Although Arbery and Taylor had initially received little media coverage, in the wake of Floyd’s death they also became the subject of nationwide demonstrations.

These events swayed American public opinion in favour of the Black Lives Matter movement while drawing wide attention to the problem of entrenched racism in American society. There were calls for greater police accountability, and in 2021 Chauvin was found guilty of murder. It was a rare case of police violence resulting in a conviction.

Purpose

a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and inequality experienced by black people. When its supporters come together, they do so primarily to protest incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.

Description

Black Lives Matter (BLM), international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality. The name Black Lives Matter signals condemnation of the unjust killings of Black people by police (Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.

George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis in May 2020 sparked the largest racial justice protests in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement. But the movement went far beyond this nation's borders — it inspired a global reckoning with racism.

This time last year, countries across the globe had some of the largest Black Lives Matter protests in their history, all inspired by the video of Floyd brutal death in police custody on May 25, 2020. Crossing continents and cultures, Black activists saw Floyd's death as a symbol of the intolerance and injustice they face at home.