Five years after George Floyd murder, there’s been a ‘whitelash’ against racial justice efforts

This article was produced by Capital Main It is published here with permission Every Wednesday for the last eight years members of Black Lives Matter have gathered in downtown Los Angeles in front of the office of the Police Protective League They come to protest the League which they have long reported acts less like a union and more like a gang that shields its members from accountability when police profile or kill people of color Sometimes the gathering is just a handful and it almost never gets media attention Chosen Wednesdays we only had four people standing in the rain with no bullhorn reported Melina Abdullah a co-founder of the racial justice movement Black Lives Matter and director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots in Los Angeles But Abdullah believes this largest part unglamorous aspect of activism is also its preponderance key We ve got to remember that s what a movement is she declared It s people going every week BLM s relatively low profile these days is a stark contrast to five years ago when it felt like it was everywhere In May of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin galvanized the conscience of the country and jump-started a racial justice movement in the middle of a pandemic during Donald Trump s first presidency The president was and remains openly hostile to racial justice efforts But that moment had been coming for a while Multiple Black people were dying unjustly at the hands of police with specific of the more harrowing and controversial encounters recorded on cellphones and body cameras Plenty of of those encounters made headlines and were shared widely on social media The George Floyd encounter however broke through like nothing since the video clip of Los Angeles Police Department officers savagely beating motorist Rodney King Nine minutes of agonizing cellphone footage speedily went viral showing Floyd lying prone suffocating under Chauvin s knee as the middle-aged Black man pleaded for his life while Chauvin displaying no emotion slowly squeezed it out of him It was a visceral damning illustration of institutional racism a term that for various Americans was more academic than real and it propelled Black Lives Matter to global prominence The organization shaped the response to the murder and to anti-Black racism in general BLM first began staging protests against controversial police killings after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri in Floyd s murder tipped the scales and made Black justice a cause c l bre in a way it hadn t been since the s Protests peaked on June when a half million people revealed up in cities and towns around the country by the New York Times count It s been described as the largest street protest movement in U S history attracting more people than the Women s March in and the entire Civil Rights Movement of the s and s Millions of dollars poured into the Black Lives Matter nonprofit BLM became both a clarion call and a shorthand for racial justice not just in the United States but in countries around the world And then came the backlash or more accurately the reemergence of a whitelash against aggressive demands for racial justice that s constantly present in America Trump trashed protesters as criminals thugs and radicals calling them the greatest threat to America s well-being never mind that selected of the president s devoted followers subsequently took radical thuggish and racist criminal actions in the Jan siege of the U S Capitol At the same time Black Lives Matter went through its own struggle born from the scale of its sudden success In a group of BLM activists sued BLM Global Arrangement Foundation its donation arm accusing it of mismanaging funds The activists ultimately lost a nasty court battle and the organization split Meanwhile Trump s far-reaching opposition to racial equality and police reforms was mainstreamed via a soundbite campaign against wokeness and DEI That campaign helped to catapult him to a second presidential term The country is now living through the bulk explicitly repressive punitive and anti-justice presidential administration in modern history One example President Trump notified police in that they should feel free to rough up persons of interest which was alarming enough but similar sentiments are now reflected in a Justice Department that is cancelling its oversight of police departments It is also promising to enforce an April executive order dubbed Strengthening and Unleashing America s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens There is also enough of a push from prominent MAGA figures such as Elon Musk Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene and right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro for the president to pardon Chauvin who is serving a -year federal sentence for violating Floyd s civil rights for Minnesota functionaries to brace for general outrage in response Chauvin is serving a concurrent -year state sentence for second-degree murder that the president cannot legally pardon away Abdullah is unfazed Either we become totally perpetually paralyzed cower in corners or we fight explained Abdullah a longtime professor of Pan-African studies at Cal State Los Angeles You can t find a calm place in oppression It doesn t happen Abdullah who was Cornel West s running mate in his independent bid for the presidency in reported that as dispiriting as this moment is for so multiple Black people sitting out the struggle isn t an option It s not just about police violence Federal workers who got fired are Black she commented Black immigrants are being deported too including Venezuelans One legacy of Black Lives Matter is how it engaged young people in causes beyond police brutality in the United States Numerous who protested anti-Black racism became part of the college campus movement against the Israeli assault on Gaza in response to Hamas fighters Oct sneak attack on Israel But times have changed Being involved in that more contemporary protest movement has proved to be risky in a way that was unimaginable during the George Floyd uprising which despite the subsequent whitelash had tremendous popular sponsorship Abdullah mentioned one of the early members of Black Lives Matter s youth contingent went on to become a Columbia University participant who participated in the Gaza protests on May She suffered immediate consequences she lost her meal plan couldn t access her dorm and ultimately was barred from participating in graduation ceremonies even though she was slated to graduate with honors One of BLM s current campaigns is Hands Off Students a collaboration with the California Faculty Association which supports students facing retaliation for their campus activism Chauntyll Allen a Minneapolis activist who heads BLM Twin Cities announced that despite the real risks of protesting in young people are ready and eager to get into the streets It s going to be them that s going to lead us she stated Even at the height of the outpouring over George Floyd it was clear that the concern of police shootings would not disappear or even decrease overnight Shootings by police officers nationwide have increased every year since at least not even declining the year after the George Floyd protests with registering the highest numbers on record according to Statista Black people are shot at the highest rate In Los Angeles police officers shot and killed more people in than in firing significantly more rounds than they had the previous three years combined Abdullah declared BLM continues to publicize and follow the stories of casualties in and around L A such as Christopher Mitchell killed by police in Torrance in But the new pro-law enforcement anti-justice mood emanating from the White House is already casting a pall The interim U S attorney in L A is trying post-trial to offer a plea deal to Trevor Kirk the sheriff s deputy who was convicted of violating the civil rights of a Black woman he body-slammed to the ground in As for the media Abdullah revealed it s fully turned away from coverage of police abuses unless you re talking about something that s drastic When the federal establishment sees anti-white discrimination as America s real civil rights issue and Trump welcomes white South Africans as refugees from that country s Black leadership it s hard to know what drastic means Worse to Abdullah is seeing liberals and politicians especially Black politicians who seemed committed to racial justice capitulating to a fear of Trumpian retribution Mayor Karen Bass a legendary locality organizer before launching a career as an elected official has increased funding and provided raises for police since becoming mayor She was perhaps not coincidentally endorsed by the police union That spending is part of the reason the city finds itself facing a billion deficit now Abdullah noted For the last five years Black Lives Matter has proposed a People s Budget to the L A City Council in an attempt to reduce police funding and prioritize housing mental wellness parks libraries and other services Bass received the People s Budget at a inhabitants event in Leimert Park in April but none of its recommendations were adopted BLM mobilized around the latest City Council vote on the budget which did not increase police hiring nearly as much as Bass desired an outcome that was a win for BLM s bigger mission This is not personal Abdullah disclosed I ve known Karen since when I first moved to L A I love her But this isn t about that love You ve got to call people out Love is also about challenging people Abdullah refuses to be wistful about the watershed year of when over people jammed the streets of Hollywood on a memorable day of protest It was an unrealistic expectation to keep that up she explained It was a different time We were in COVID people were home and available to get out She added that even as democracy is being undermined or because it s being undermined Black Lives Matter is regaining traction The Wednesday protests that were often miniscule are growing On our lowest days we ve got people That s tremendous upsurge she reported The organization is onboarding new chapters including one in Santa Clarita and another in Sweden That would bring the total number of chapters to a high Though particular people continue to despair about the trajectory of Trump Abdullah observed that chosen people are more determined than ever to counter it chiefly by returning BLM to its roots with a strategy of changing the status quo one campaign at a time one week at a time I stated in that the world cracked open disclosed Abdullah It s cracking open again Capital Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the preponderance pressing economic environmental and social issues of our time including economic inequality atmosphere change robustness care threats to democracy hate and extremism and immigration Copyright Capital Main