Activists gather in Altab Ali park. Photo: Isabel Infantes / EMPICS Entertainment. All rights reserved.Last Friday, traffic on main roads across England was disrupted by activists calling for an end to global structural racism. Motorways leading to Birmingham, London’s Heathrow airports, and tram tracks in Nottingham were blocked as part of a ‘day of rage’ organised by Black Lives Matter UK.
The actions got a lot of media attention and the general opinion voiced by mainstream media was that the deliberate targeting of ‘innocent people’ was wrong and that while the Black Lives Matter movement is relevant to the USA, British campaigners were just jumping on a bandwagon. Both of these responses show a lack of understanding (or a deliberate ignorance) of the state of racism in the today’s Britain.
Origins of a movement
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement started in 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted following the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead while walking home from the shops. At first it was little more than some tweets and a hashtag but as the black bodies continued to pile up the movement grew. It gained national mainstream awareness when protests following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York turned violent. The movement was never about violence though; it was about creating a world where black lives really do matter as much as everybody else’s.
