Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

Kristine Kearns

Kristine Kearns is a second-year English major with minors in Creative Writing and Sustainability.

Photo by Justin Vogel via Flickr.

The summer of 2020 will be known for the uproar of Black Lives Matter protests all across the country, in response to almost monthly murders of Black civilians shot by white police officers. From Breonna Taylor, shot and killed while asleep in her home on March 13, 2020, to George Floyd, publicly suffocated to death under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, the country has seen more people peacefully protesting to fight for justice than ever before.

Ahmaud Arbery, Feb. 23, 2020: Arbery, 25 years old and an avid jogger, was followed during a jog, then illegally detained and shot dead by three white people in Georgia one of them was a former police officer. The three white men were not arrested until 74 days after the murder, after the video sparked nation-wide protest and attention. Despite the District Attorney being indicted for showing favor to the killers, the three white men were eventually convicted of murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment on Nov. 21 2021.

Breonna Taylor, March 13, 2020: While asleep, police entered the 26 year old EMTs home after being granted a no-knock warrant. The warrant was issued to search for evidence connected to someone who did not live there and who had not been in touch with Taylor for two years. Police fired 20 rounds into the house, killing Taylor. The officer reponsible, Brett Hankison, has a history of sexual assault and misconduct involving women he encountered on the job. Hankison has been charged with wanton endangerment, and the trial has been delayed until 2022. He is currently free.

George Floyd, May 25, 2020: Floyd, 46 years old, was murdered by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. As Chauvin knelt on Floyds neck for about nine minutes, witnesses repeatedly checked in on Floyd, called on officers to get him off the ground and told officers that Floyd was unconscious. When witnesses attempted to come to Floyds aid, Chauvin pulled out pepper spray and other officers restrained the witnesses. George Floyds last words were: I cant breathe, Chauvin was charged with murder in April 2021; now three other officers are awaiting trial for aiding and abetting Chauvin.

These are only a few of the Black lives that were brutalized by the police and white vigilantes.

Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man was shot seven times in the back and left partially paralyzed by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Aug. 23. 2020. Blake is said to have been outside his girlfriends house with their three children in his car. The woman had reportedly called the police saying that he isnt supposed to be here. Blake had a warrant out for his arrest for third-degree sexual assault. He admitted to having a knife but said that he had no intent to use it. Interviewed in the aftermath, Blake acknowledged that he shouldnt have picked up his pocket knife and was not thinking clearly in the moment. Blake said to NBC reporters that the officer just kept shooting, he kept shooting. Blakes sexual assault charges were later dropped. No officers were charged for shooting Blake.

In response to this shooting, peaceful protesters gathered together in Kenosha two days later, to seek justice for Black Lives and respond to the heated levels of police brutality once again observed. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who lived towns away from Kenosha, traveled to where the protests were and became armed with an AR-15 with the idea of protecting the community properties from vandalism and fire. The night ended with Rittenhouse shooting three people and killing two, in self defense, as some claim.

Some would argue that protests ending with some individuals burning buildings and destroying community properties is immoral. It is difficult to defend this kind of property destruction, because we are taught to never fight fire with fire. However, I personally empathize with the level of anger in the protests. In her poem, Emma Zeck writes the line, I would start fires too. This concept proposes the need for the U.S. to question the reason tension is increasing. Where do we begin to place more value in property than we do in a citizen?

Many voluntary militants like Rittenhouse were proud to utilize scare tactics to defend buildings and cars from vandalization with their assault rifles strapped to their chests. Protestors, usually unarmed, did not show up with the intent to threaten or engage in violence toward people. The Rittenhouse story came at the end of the summer after months of repeated police brutality, where other peaceful protestors were killed by police. It seems the polices attempts to de-escalate situations, usually involving Black lives, only escalate.

The New York Times created a visual investigation, piecing together clips from that night. As I watched the government troops offer water to the voluntary militia and commend their behavior, I mentally noted my observations. It was as if the police and voluntary militia had some sort of unspoken bond an understanding that by seeing their whiteness and weaponry strapped to them, a silent brotherhood was assumed.

It appears that white men in America are fighting to uphold their freedom to have access to guns, which consequently gives them more power to kill people, and Black people in America are fighting for the freedom to not be killed by an officer. If one is going to utilize self defense as a justification for killing, it seems that line of reasoning should apply to both situations, or else the argument is subject to racism and hypocrisy.

Kristine Kearns is a second-year English major with minors in Creative Writing and Sustainability. KK947319@wcupa.edu

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Context for 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests and the Rittenhouse Trial - Quad

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Former PresidentDonald Trumpaccused the Black Lives Matter movement of encouraging violence against police officers.

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Speaking toBrexit campaignerNigel Farageduring an interview on British television, Trump claimed, perNewsweekthat an anti-police chant heard at a 2015 protest was the original message of Black Lives Matter, the outlet writes.

Its shocking that it started off with pigs in a blanket, right? You know that, right? The expression Fry em like bacon, Trump told Farage.

That was about our great police. And all of a sudden this becomes mainstream? I dont really think so.

And antifa. Very bad, Trump added. They had antifa in that rally, they had antifa leading a lot of people on that day on January. And I will say that its pretty incredible that nothing happens to them.

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When Farage asked Trump if he believes BLM is about racial equality, Trump replied Theyre about politics, but I think theyre about a lot of other things.

He added, If you go back to their original founding and what they were saying. Kill the police. What theyre saying is kill the police. And that becomes mainstream? Not good.

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The fry them like bacon chant Trump mentioned was sung at a protest march held by a Black Lives Matter group in St Paul, Minnesota, in 2015.CNN reported in July 2020 that the chant was sung by a group that was independent from the national Black Lives Matter organization and has never been an official, national or prominent slogan of the movement.

Trump frequentlymade reference to the horrible chantduring his years in the White House, claiming it was the first time he became aware of the Black Lives Matter movement. He also mentioned the pigs in a blanket chant during the final presidential debate againstJoe Bidenin October 2020, while claiming he was the least racist person in this room.

Despite Trumps claims, the global Black Lives Matter movement has never called on supporters and activists to kill police officers.

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Donald Trump Says BLMs Original Message Was Kill The Police - Black America Web

Former Guilford County Sheriffs Department Chief Deputy Edward Melvin, a candidate in the 2022 race for Guilford County sheriff, is offering some clarification on a remark he made in the Rhino Times regarding the group Black Lives Matter.

In the article, he said that he was so against Black Lives Matter.

The point he wanted to make, Melvin said later, was that he was opposed to some of the tactics that are used by some of those in the group.

He wrote the following in an email to the Rhino Times.

To clarify my position relating to BLM: I understand there are certain groups or chapters of BLM that do not advocate for violence, defunding police or destruction of property in their quest to make their voices heard. I have zero issues with that and my position was not directed to those chapters or Groups. However, Im not a supporter of any group or movement that advocates for defunding the police, violence against others or destruction of someone elses property.

Black Lives Matter, like the Republican Party and the Democratic party, contains a number of disparate elements. The groups website, Blacklivesmatter.com acknowledges that BLM has a wide variety of members. The webpage states that the group is a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement.

We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum, it reads. Our network centers on those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.

Melvin said, after the Rhino Times article came out, that he had quickly heard some concern from Black Live Matter advocates and thought it was important to be more nuanced in his message.

#BlackLivesMatter was founded almost a decade ago in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martins murderer. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada. The stated mission of the group is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

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Sheriff's Candidate Clarifies His Views On Black Lives Matter. - The Rhino Times of Greensboro - The Rhino TImes

Ten years ago, a group of mostly young activists took to the streets the expensive streets of New Yorks Wall Street. One of the worlds top financial centers, headquarters to the titans of finance and the companies they headed. The activists raised their voices to speak back to the 1% of the super wealthy who own most of the nations resources. We are the 99% was their rallying cry. The 99% of Americans who lived at the other end of the economic ladder. This was Occupy Wall Street that went from street demonstrations to a makeshift squatters settlement in Zuccotti Park.

Occupy Wall Streets message and movement found eager supporters around the country and the world. Occupy Boston set up tents in Bostons Dewey Square, inspired by the energy and spirit of the movement. The encampment grew to include a kitchen to feed the hungry, and even a library named for social justice legends Audre Lorde and Howard Zinn. Here, many first-time organizers received an on-the-ground education about grassroots actions from veteran activists who had lived through the civil, voting and womens rights movements. The intergenerational mix of protestors expanded as more Boston-area residents, and others, joined the protest as did the groups list of issues, eventually embracing anti-war efforts, health care access gaps and environmental concerns. On a visit to Dewey Square, then-Governor Deval Patrick observed to WBZ radio, Im just trying to understand, theres such a range of issues and interests.

All of the Occupy groups refused an organized structure and designated leaders, insisting their movement could be steered by any among them they were not leaderless but leaderful. They may not have been traditionally organized, but they were laser focused on the central mantra of the 99% vs. the 1%. They helped concretize and humanize the economic inequities, their frustration addressing the widening gap they felt between the haves and have-nots. At Dewey Square, 27-year-old Amy Fisher told WBZ, Im really sick of nothing happening to reduce income disparity. Its just going to get worse and worse and worse until violence takes over.

Her words seem prescient considering the ongoing street protests about living wages and low-income workers fight for a $15 minimum wage. And the economic pain and suffering levied by the impact of COVID, which has swelled the ranks of the unemployed.

Ironic that the 10th anniversary of 'Occupy' arrives as the super wealthy literally cant stop making money. As I noted recently, billionaire MacKenzie Scott, who founded Amazon with her ex-husband Jeff Bezos, has acted on her pledge to give away most of her fortune $8.5 billion so far to various institutions and causes addressing public health, climate change, pandemic assistance and more. But because of the way the wealthy are invested, she earned back all the money she gave away. (Ill point out that her ex-husband is spending some of his billions flying into space.)

Occupy Boston only lasted two and half months, before Boston police razed the encampment on Dec. 10, 10 years ago this week. But the mantra the 99 vs. 1% is now part of the lexicon. And the economic inequalities the mantra reflects are now generally understood. Whats more, many of the Occupy activists were forever changed by their experience and have gone on to work for the cause of the 99% in nonprofits, politics and, yes, other protests. Occupy lives through the marchers in last summers George Floyd protests for racial justice. Seeds of Occupy fueled #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Perhaps the late professor and activist David Graeber said it best. Back in 2011, he foresaw Occupys fundamental lesson, telling Time magazine, the system is not going to save us, were going to have to save ourselves.

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Ten years on, the 'Occupy' movement is mainstream - wgbh.org

Is justice really blind? When truly assessing the equitability-related outcomes of legal procedures in the U.S., the answer is no.

Procedural justice is defined as seeking fair processes. This is important, as a persons perception of fairness is strongly impacted by both the result of a process and the quality of the persons experiences while engaging in the process.

Democratic systems are only effective if they grant participants equal access to the political process and provide societal outcomes that are considered just and fair by the entirety of a citizenry. Failure to do so might compromise the legitimacy of a system, and create division, inequity, mistrust, and exclusion.

In recent years, a large facet of the legal community has admitted that there is a clear racial inequity in the outcomes of the criminal justice system. It is also true that many Black people in the U.S. do not feel that the legal system, or the process of engaging with the legal system, is fair. To many, it is overly punitive.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement emerged as a continuation of previous movements for racial justice to name the ways that Black people are harmed by the criminal justice system, including by police officers, prosecutors, prisons, and empowered vigilantes with a proven degree of impunity.

Historically, these practices have been fueled by racially targeted tropes about Black people being criminal, in need of supervision, violent, and deserving of harsh punishment.

When they speak out, however, Black people are met with aggressive resistance through the perpetuation of the very tropes they are insisting on eliminating. For example, after the surge of protests of 2020, immediately following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, White vigilante agitators arrived at protests to confront activists, and anti-protest bills with broad, sweeping criminalization language surged across the country through the state legislatures, presenting harsh felony charges for protesters within certain proximity to resulting property damage.

Some media outlets slammed the protesters, using charged language not only about the individual actors engaging in property crimes, but any protester involved with the movement, and any group of people affiliated with the cause.

State legislatures proposed bills that include overly harsh charges for people who allegedly engaged in petty crimes during protests, and even proposed the elimination of civil and criminal liability for those who harm or kill protesters. The bills were highly politicized, and not surprising considering other moments in history, where hyperbolic, criminalizing language was used to describe a need to quell the Black voices or punish the Black community, while little to nothing was done on a large scale to address the issue of police brutality and other oppressive actions in the Black community.

Source: The International Center for Nonprofit Law, reproduced with permission

The results of Kyle Rittenhouses trial reignited activists to speak out about the historical continuation of laws that encourage vigilante justice through the legal system, especially when Black people cause trouble. (Rittenhouse, who lived across the state line in Illinois, shot and killed two White men at the scene of civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisc., prompted by the police shooting and paralyzing of Black man.)

This triggers strong memories of post-Civil War Black communities being silenced by racial violence when they engage in procedural justice seeking measures to accomplish economic growth. In some instances, entire Black communities bore the brunt of White anger without protection through criminal or civil process. On the contrary, those processes were used as weapons against positive change.

Rather than respond to recent demands for change in the justice system or policy changes from BLM and other groups, at least 36 anti-protest laws have been enacted, and at least 50 are still pending.

The criminal justice system has been able to avoid meaningful change by focusing on racially biased, controlling images of Black people, and fallaciously blaming Black communities for this misfortune. This has been accomplished by using the acts of a few to label an entire movement.

By the end of June, at least 11,000 people had been arrested in George Floyd-related protests, and by November 2020, at least 25 people had died in relation to the unrest. Still, many newly proposed anti-protests bills pose strict consequences for even being proximate to areas where property crime occurred during race related protests.

Civil law cases against protesters also followed, implicating significant numbers of people together, regardless of the lack of strong evidence that suggest respondents approximately caused physical damage themselves while engaging in protest.

Notably, these egregious bills and frivolous legal practices also greatly impede upon one very important process used by American citizens to seek change: the First Amendment right to free speech, and to peacefully assemble. Questions related to the impact on civil liberties, as well as First Amendment-related lawsuits are emerging in response to anti-protest bills, hoping that the courts will prevent the use of these laws to unconstitutionally burden protest activity. However, as an aside, the damage has been done to a degree.

Fighting for procedural justice would create processes that produce equitable results. It would also eliminate the practice of one sector of society bearing the weight of punitive practices.

It would also apply assessment, since institutional structures are as fallible as we are. Unfortunately, some legal minds remain complicit in the perpetual exclusion of Black people, but hopefully we will work toward a society where justice isnt choosyor selectiveand there isnt a price for seeking it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

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Jilisa R. Milton is a civil rights attorney, policy analyst, community organizer, social worker, and abolitionist of harmful practices against Black people. She is a survivor of police violence and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Birmingham Chapter. Currently, she serves as national vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Criminalization of Protest in the Fight for Racial Justice - Bloomberg Law

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This article is from the Fall 2021 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, Climate Justice: A Movement for Life.

When I was a child, my mother would often tell me stories about her experiences growing up in Sioux City, Iowa. She described playing childhood games around the city dump, which had been parked in her neighborhood. The communitys trash had to go somewhere, and the powers that be chose to send it to the part of town that was predominantly home to people of color. There were people of means and people of limited means in the community; because of segregation and discrimination, both lacked political clout.

It is said that the sense of smell is harbored within our most vivid memories, which may explain why that dump found its way into the stories my mother shared with me.

In 1979, when I took my first job out of college, at the Environmental Protection Agency, I saw up close how my mothers experience was far from happenstance. In neighborhood after neighborhood, I witnessed people who looked like me living in disinvested and redlined neighborhoods standing in the shadows of chemical plants, refineries, and toxic waste sites. I saw air, land, and water pollution resulting from mining activities. And I was routinely assaulted by the same pungent odors that would have been constant in my mothers childhood and that poisoned generations of Black and Brown children.

Not unexpectedly, these communities faced a host of other challenges linked to environmental hazards that were part of their daily lives. They dealt with chronic health problems and disparities regarding healthcare access and treatment. They dealt with failing schools and economic dislocation. They had little or no opportunity to influence or reverse the decisions that had led to these conditions.

Those early experiences have stayed with me throughout my career and have shaped my environmental justice journey, which now spans five continents and more than four decades. Along the way, theyve fueled an ever- growing sense of urgency as I witness the burgeoning threat of climate change inflict increasingly disproportionate damage on already marginalized communities around the globe.

Over the past eighteen months, Black Lives Matter and the COVID-19 pandemic have shone a spotlight on systemic racism here in the United States and across the globeand put an even finer point on the idea that we must act differently if we want to achieve change. Never has it been more apparent that environmental justice cannot occur in a vacuum. Around the world, there is a growing understanding that we cannot even begin to address the disproportionate impacts of environmental and climate change on people of color, women, and the poor without also addressing the overlapping and intersecting factors of economic, racial, and social justice.

For too long, government and philanthropy have approached climate change and climate justice as stand- alone issues. Climate injustice is a root cause of health inequities, and influences how children learn and grow. Environmental injustice amplifiesand is amplified byeconomic, gender, and racial injustice across the globe. These are integrated problems that require integrated solutionssolutions that tap into the skills and knowledge of people and communities that have been experiencing these issues for generations. As we come to grips with the overlapping and urgent threats of climate change, racial injustice, and a worldwide pandemic, its time to take a comprehensive, coordinated approach.

Adopting an integrated approach to climate justice is difficult workit requires a seismic shift in how we think about some of the most persistent and potent challenges facing our planet and all who inhabit it. It also requires a fundamental rethinking of the systems we use.

People of color are the global majority. They are the hardest hit by the issues, and the most affected by centuries of decisions made by those who do not share their interests. Those who have access to the power and money needed to make change must be willing to upend traditional, top-down approaches so we can design equitable, community-led solutions. Failure to do so will only continue to reinforce our historic inequities.

Ceding power might sound intimidating to those working in and under philanthropys existing structures, but there are a growing number of examples that offer a road map for how to create community-based approaches to climate justice that are embedded with racial, social, and economic justice. I offer three, here.

After Hurricane Maria, the Fundacin Comunitaria de PuertoRico (Community Foundation of Puerto Rico) working in partnership with philanthropy and government agenciesbegan an ambitious effort to help isolated, low-income communities create community-owned, solar-powered electricity systems designed to help them weather future catastrophic storms and create a path forward for scalable economic growth.1,

Through the Puerto Rico Community Green Energy Corridor project, these communities not only get access to the tools to create their own electricity but also work closely with experts who help them organize, manage, and maintain these systems. Over time, these systems will help create new businesses and job-creation opportunities in long-overlooked rural communities that face high unemployment and poverty.2

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This model is transforming lives in tiny barrios like Toro Negro, a rural community in the municipality of Ciales with a population of about one thousand people. Toro Negro went live with its power grid in the summer of 2018, after residents actively participated in its design and construction. The community now manage their own nonprofit, which owns the microgrid and is responsible for its future maintenance.3 The community make key decisions about the rate they are going to charge themselves, and identify other funding mechanisms to ensure self-sustainability for the long term. With a strong, locally managed electricity system, they are able to spin off new, locally owned businesses and create family-sustaining jobs while being able to weather future storms.

Toro Negro might be smalland the Puerto Rico Community Green Energy Corridor might be largely unknown in the mainstream United Statesbut imagine if philanthropy and donors began exploring how they could invest in replicating its model across the Caribbean. Scores of rural communities, most of which are poor, would become more economically viable. At the same time, it would mean investing in tangible projects that address the impacts of climate change, establish sources of green energy, and improve health outcomes. It would also help make these communities more resilient in the face of future stormssaving countless lives and billions of dollars in the process.

In Yavatmal and Dhar, cotton has historically been the most profitable crop, but livelihoods are now being threatened by climate change. Cotton happens to be one of the most water-intensive crops to grow, and changes to the environment have made water an increasingly precious commodity in these regions.4

The most obvious solution to this challenge centers on helping farmers develop agricultural practices that optimize water use. Yet when the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) began working with locals there to address this challenge, the water shortage turned out to be a canary in a coal mine of sorts: it exposed a series of other, interrelated challenges that had long vexed the regionin particular, issues involving gender equity.

ISC launched a project to enhance the role of women and address the regions water shortage by designing and implementing regenerative agriculture, soil, water, and pest-management models through cotton cultivation training and demonstration programs; improving understanding of local water balance by involving farmers and village-level institutions in water budgeting and developing village water management plans; and strengthening women and advancing equity through gender learning groups and training women farmers and entrepreneurs.5

Still in its early stages, the project already shows whats possible for communities when they take steps to embed gender equity in efforts to improve local economies and tackle problems created by climate change. For instance, focusing on promoting environmentally sound entrepreneurial opportunities for women (such as the production of compost and biopesticides) has created an open lane to encourage environmentally friendly cotton production, providing tangible examples of the vital role women can play in improving quality of life and economic conditions in their villages. Further, ISCs expert gender learning groups augment understanding of the role gender plays in cotton cultivation and water management. Those learnings could have wide-ranging implications across India and elsewhere in agricultural regions that face the dual challenge of climate change impacts and a severe imbalance of opportunity and influence based on gender.

In the United States, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the irrefutable link between climate and racial justice more than nearly any other environmental catastrophe. For it is out of that August 2005 tragedy that one of the most consequential movements for racial and social justice was born: Black Lives Matter.

On the tenth anniversary of Katrina, Slate magazine published a piece titled Where Black Lives Matter Began. In it, author Jamelle Bouie traces the roots of the Black Lives Matter movement to the stark inequities that those category 5 winds and relentless rain laid bare for all the world to see. People desperately huddled on roofs and crammed the damaged Superdome. Bodies floated through flooded streets. Entire neighborhoods were left in ruin. The faces of suffering the world saw were disproportionately, predominantly Black and Brownpeople whose limited means and historic disenfranchisement had destined them to live in the most vulnerable sections of New Orleans.

When we look at the first 15 years of the 21st century, the most defining moment in [B]lack Americas relationship to its country isnt Election Day 2008; its Hurricane Katrina, Bouie wrote. Black collective memory of Hurricane Katrina, as much as anything else, informs the present movement against police violence, Black Lives Matter.6

Katrina offers an accessible and familiar touchstone to make the clear connection between climate justice and racial, economic, and social justice. In post-Katrina New Orleans, the interconnectivity between the health of the planet and the health and well-being of its most divested and exposed citizens is undeniable. The scope of the catastrophe, and the wall-to-wall media coverage it attracted, laid bare the depths of Katrinas impacts. Without both, what happened to mostly Black and Brown people might not have been so clear.

***

Enormous opportunities for transformative change exist at the intersections of climate stabilization, racial and economic justice, gender equity, health, access to safe and affordable housing, transportation, and social mobility. To effectively meet the present moment and lay the groundwork for a more just future for all requires that we embrace fully the connectivity of our challenges, in ways that encourage and energize community- based solutions that reach beyond a singular focus.

Our most pressing challenge lies in the fact that countless catastrophes of significant scope inflict damage in far more covert and sinister ways around the globe. Factory emissions vanish into the sky; toxins silently permeate soils and groundwater; pervasive ozone gases are unseen, and to most, abstract. I suspect that in my mothers childhood home of Sioux City, ways may have been devised to mask the stench of that landfill. But that does not answer the question as to what remains beneath the ground or in the air around the dumpand how it continues to affect those who live nearby.

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Health and Wealth: An Integrated Approach to Climate Justice - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly

The American Museum of Natural History has covered up a monument to the past.

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt that has stood on the front steps of the Manhattan museum for more than 80 years is now blocked from view, photos taken by The Post show Monday.

The bronze effigy to the nations 26th president, criticized for glorifying colonialism and racism, is being sent to North Dakota on a long-term loan to the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

Just two weeks after the move was announced, the statue is already completely hidden from view, covered by scaffolding and a tarp, The Posts pics show.

The removal, being carried out by the museum with help from the city, is expected to take several months to complete, officials said when announcing the deal.

Opposition to the statue mounted in recent years, especially after the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George Floyds murder by a Minneapolis cop in May 2020.

In June 2020, officials at the museum which is privately run but sits on public land proposed removing the statue amid a nationwide movement to remove public works honoring Confederate leaders.

The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously that month to relocate it.

One of the ex-presidents descendants, Theodore Roosevelt V, supported removing the statue, which he conceded is problematic in its hierarchical depiction of its subjects.

Rather than burying a troubling work of art, we ought to learn from it.

It is fitting that the statue is being relocated to a place where its composition can be recontextualized to facilitate difficult, complex, and inclusive discussions, he said of the North Dakota librarys plans.

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Theodore Roosevelt statue in NYC covered ahead of move to North Dakota museum - New York Post

From the start, the founders of Black Lives Matter have always put LGBTQ voices at the center of the conversation. The movement was founded by three Black women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of whom identify as queer.

By design, the movement they started in 2013 has remained organic, grassroots and diffuse. Since then, many of the largest Black Lives Matter protests have been fueled by the violence against Black men, including Mike Brown and Eric Garner in 2015, and now George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.

But it's not only straight, cisgender Black men who are dying at the hands of police. Last month, a Black transgender man, Tony McDade, 38, was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee.

Andy Jean, a costume designer, celebrates Black Trans Lives at the Juneteenth Jubilee in Harlem. "It was powerful to receive that love from our community. We fight and celebrate our freedom each and everyday," Jean said.

On June 9, two Black transgender women, Riah Milton and Dominique "Rem'mie" Fells, also were killed in separate acts of violence, their killings believed to be the 13th and 14th of transgender or gender-non-conforming people this year, according to the Human Rights Coalition.

And in 2019, Layleen Polanco, a trans Latina woman who was an active member of New Yorks Ballroom community, died while in solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail.

"We are a prime target because of our Blackness, and our intersectionality of being trans adds an extra target on our backs," said Jonovia Chase, co-lead organizer of House Lives Matter, a community organization composed of sexual- and gender-minority people of color.

Chase said that although Black Lives Matter was "created by queer folks, [cisgender] privilege has taken precedent over gay and transgender people."

While Chase and other LGBTQ advocates of color clearly condemn the deaths of George Floyd, Amaud Arbuery and countless other cisgender Black men, they're also quick to call attention to other acts of violence against Black LBGTQ people that garner less national media attention.

Jonovia Chase, center, honors native land in an opening ceremony led by Graciela Tibiaquira at the Juneteenth Jubilee.

They often point to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, a trans woman of color, who helped kickstart the LGBTQ rights movement following the Stonewall uprising of the 1960s only to watch as many hard-fought rights and privileges benefited white gay men and women but weren't extended to people like them.

"It's another example about how the Black queer community has been in the forefront leading, however, we're not being seen or heard or valued," Chase added.

However, organizers say there are clear signs times are changing, and that Black LGBTQ voices are increasingly taking center stage in nationwide conversations about race, discrimination and police violence.

In recent weeks, people have turned out in never-before-seen numbers to support the LGBTQ community of color -- and especially Black transgender people.

Last week in Brooklyn, an estimated 15,000 people turned out for a demonstration called The Black Trans Lives Matter rally, aka "Brooklyn Liberation," making it one of the largest transgender-focused protests in history, according to the organizers.

Protesters stand in solidarity with transgender people at the Juneteenth Jubilee in Harlem.

In Los Angeles, tens of thousands more gathered in Hollywood for the All Black Lives Matter protest, intended to be inclusive and centered on LGBTQ members of BLM.

And on Juneteenth, to celebrate the day the last enslaved people were informed of their freedom, celebrations across the country sought "intersectional" celebrations of the Black experience in the United States

In Harlem, in New York City, hundreds gathered for a massive celebration of music and art intended to "lift up and center Black Queer and Trans folks" in an event co-organized by The Blacksmiths, Intersectional Voices Collective and the Wide Awakes.

"More people are also becoming educated and intentional at this moment," said Niama Safia Sandy, who's on the steering committee of The Blacksmiths, a coalition of artists, curators, culture producers and organizers committed to Black liberation and equality.

"It is just not possible to turn a blind eye away from these things any more," Sandy said.

Dancers gather at St. Nicholas park in Harlem for the Juneteenth Jubilee.

Clad in face masks and handing out hand sanitizer, hundreds turned out to dance, sing and march along historic Black landmarks on a hot day Harlem.

Eventually, the parade-like crowd landed at St. Nicholas Park, where members of New York City's ballroom community greeted protestors with elaborate voguing performances, a dancing style born in the queer ballroom scene that has since been popularized by Madonna, Rihanna and Ariana Grande.

"It's rare that we get opportunities to come together as a Black community and specifically center the trans and queer community," said Chase, who helped organize the Juneteenth celebration in Harlem.

During one performance, model and poet Linda LaBeija, a member of the House Ballroom community, read a spoken-word poem called, "Vogue, bitch," to a thunderous crowd of more than 300 people.

"How many of those beacons of light must we lose along the way?" LaBeija asked the crowd, referring to the Black trans women who have been the victims of violence.

Cotton Juicy Couture performs a stylized dance called 'voguging' for those gathered for the Juneteenth Jubilee at St. Nicholas park in Harlem. "It was so fun and liberating to finally vogue in front of a crowd after [social distancing] for a long time," he said.

And as Black Lives Matter protesters continue to remember George Floyd and others killed at the hands of police, LaBeija asked, "Are you including Black trans women in that list of Black names?"

As a Black transgender woman, Deja Smith said she's learned the hard way how difficult life can be for people like her in the United States.

"It has been a struggle most of the way here," said Smith, a founding member of the Intersectional Voices Collective and director of makeup artistry for DDPRO.

"But over the last three to five years things have started to ease up, leading to this moment today where I just thought I would never see a crowd of Black, queer and trans people of like minds, getting along, and speaking to our ancestry."

Smith credits the founders of Black Lives Matter for creating space for LGBTQ voices from the start.

"It has always been part of their cultural movement," she said.

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From the start, Black Lives Matter has been about LGBTQ ...

The first time, he stumbled on it by accident, after following a dirt track through fields of sugar cane that came to a clearing. There was a sign, Hakeem Ward remembers, beneath which someone had left an offering.

The sign said it was a slave burial ground, he says. We went and Googled it, and then I realised it was actually one of the biggest slave burial grounds in the western hemisphere.

Ward, 24, lives nearby, within sight of the turquoise waters that lap at Barbados south coast, but had never learned until then of the Newton Slave Burial Ground, where the remains of an estimated 570 enslaved people were found interred in unmarked graves. At school he says they brushed lightly over the history of the slave trade on the island. We learned a lot of stuff about Christopher Columbus and how he discovered and colonised the world.

But the past still agitates, making itself known. Dogs occasionally vanish into the bushland, returning with skulls and other remains, Ward says. He and his friends try to avoid hanging out near the site. With the spiritual energy, we dont want to see anything, he says. Because we see things, and we want to avoid that as much as possible.

Late on Monday night, local time, Barbados will declare itself a republic, becoming the first nation to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state in nearly three decades. The transition, flagged last year in the thick of activism inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, is being executed amicably, in the presence of Prince Charles, and circumspectly, more than 20 years since it was recommended by a government commission.

But, unmistakably, it is a repudiation of the British monarchy, part of a wider campaign that includes strengthening ties with the African nations from which most Barbadians claim heritage and renewing demands for the UK government to make reparations for its historical crimes. Aimed at authoring a liberated future, many hope it will also soothe the restless ghosts of the past.

As its peak tourism season approaches, Barbados is bearing the brunt of its worst Covid-19 wave. Masks are ubiquitous and many supermarkets and government buildings have installed imposing machines to check temperatures. Still, visitors are coming, drawn by the islands famously pristine beaches, lush hinterland and gentle weather.

It was these same natural blessings that made the easternmost island in the Caribbean an exquisite laboratory for the development of a new form of capitalism in the 17th century. Sugar, backbreaking to produce and for centuries reserved for Europes ultra-wealthy, flourished in Barbados rich soil. The islands even topography offered vast space for plantations.

But it was a third innovation, the perfection of a model using enslaved Africans to work the fields, which set off a sugar revolution that made England extraordinarily wealthy and created a template that soon spread across the Americas. It was in Barbados that the slavery plantation production model was invented right here, says David Comissiong, the countrys ambassador to Caricom, a Caribbean regional integration body.

Reclassified under British law as property, the men, women and children who worked the cane fields of Barbados were subject to unimaginable brutality. The first systematic study of the health of those buried at the Newton Slave Burial Ground found the average life expectancy of those examined was 18 years old, with the lives of women thought to be especially appalling: until then, no lower mean age of death had been documented among enslaved females anywhere in the world. Barbados was a hellhole, Comissiong says. For black people, Barbados was a brutal, hellish society.

It is easy to be among the more than 1 million people who visited Barbados each year before the pandemic and never encounter this history. There is a single statue commemorating emancipation, at the centre of a busy roundabout, depicting a man who has come to be identified with Bussa, the leader of a failed 19th-century revolt, whose broken chains dangle from arms raised skyward.

For centuries after slavery ceased, over the islands shameful history, there was almost a kind of indifference, a kind of silence, recalls Esther Phillips, Barbados poet laureate, that she believes stems in part from guilt and shame among those who were freed. Who wants to revisit the pain of trauma, once you get out of it, or appear to get out?

That muffling was passed down through generations, and reinforced in the colonial education of her youth, which some argue has not sufficiently been reformed to this day. I never knew there was anything called West Indian history or Caribbean history, Phillips says. I knew all about the English queens and kings.

The decades since Barbados became independent 55 years ago have seen gradual efforts to face the past, and confront its implications for the future, but always cautiously. A government commission in the 1970s examined the question of becoming a republic and advised against it, conscious that similar experiments in Caribbean states such as Suriname and Guyana had led to authoritarianism and instability.

Even the Barbadian leaders who wanted to break away from the monarchy recognised they still lived in the world colonialism made, and had an economy critically dependent on attracting a pipeline of sun-starved British tourists.

The fear, I think reasonably, was that it would not be received well, and that there would be a narrative, for example, of telling tourists in the UK: Maybe you should wait about going to Barbados, because you should make sure the political situation is stable, says Melanie Newton, a professor of history at the University of Toronto.

Part of this conservatism, too, was pragmatic: Barbados was building a society that was, by any measure, a tremendous success, with some of the best human-development indicators in the formerly colonised world, an enormous leap from the desperate conditions that prevailed in the last decades of British rule. Barbados has a very strong public service system, amazing education, good healthcare, Newton says. And a lot of that is paid for by tourism and international business and investment banking.

Over the past week, workers have been busy erecting and painting a dais in central Bridgetowns national heroes square, formerly called Trafalgar, where the handover ceremony will take place at 11pm on Monday, and the surrounding colonial buildings including the countrys Gothic parliament, the third oldest in the world are decked in the national colours, ultramarine and gold.

At the head of the square stands a grand pedestal with nothing on it.

The year 2020 produced seismic changes everywhere. In Barbados,too, it was a watershed, opening the way for government to finally propose a republic that had been promised for decades but always postponed.

Alexander Downes was supposed to be studying in Australia, but was trapped at home in Barbados early in the year when borders suddenly closed. He would pass national heroes square, glancing at the statue of the English admiral Horatio Nelson that had stood there since 1813, three years earlier than its twin in London.

At 32, Downes was part of the first generation without memory of Barbados colonial-era nor its hangover in the early years of independence. He and his friends were more inclined to question the things their parents took for granted, he says. Sometimes I would talk to my father, as we drove through certain areas, and he would be like, Oh, when I was a kid, I couldnt come to this area. And Id be, like, why not?

Those things included the pride of place given to the defender of British slavery Nelson, whose bronze statue had first stirred small protests decades earlier, to which the government had responded in 1990 by rotating it to face away from town. The compromise wasnt, lets get rid of it, says Downes. It was, literally, just turn it.

In the middle of the year, Black Lives Matter protests were spreading across the world, including to Barbados, and Downes sensed that in his careful society, something was shifting. After consulting with friends, he posted a petition calling for Nelson to come down.

I said to myself, in Barbados, what are we doing? he says. We have a colonial past, we have a past steeped in racism [The statue] is just brick and mortar. If we can start with this, then we can get the ball rolling to start addressing some bigger issues.

It caught fire, attracting more than 10,000 signatures and culminated in meetings with government officials and, months after, confirmation that Nelson would be removed in November 2020 and relocated to a museum.

Some objected, including among the more than 90% of the population with African heritage, urging him to not to meddle with the past, Downes says. They were saying, Why do you want to move this thing that has been there from before you were even born? Have some respect for your history. Im, like, 10 years from now, what I do today is going to be our history as well, he says.

At the ceremony to mark the removal of the statue, Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley, called the tribute to the hero of Trafalgar, an assertion of power, of dominance. She held her phone to the crowd, telling them her screensaver was the reggae artist Bob Marley, to remind me always that the mission of our generation is the mental emancipation of our people.

In the ruptures of the year, Mottley appeared to sense an opportunity. The same day the statue was dislodged, her government announced that, in a years time, Barbados would remove the queen as head of state and elect its own president.

Monarchists have worried for years that the end of the reign of Elizabeth Windsor may trigger a new wave of former colonies to seek native heads of state. Barbados suggests that threat, at least in the Caribbean, may have arrived in her diamond jubilee years instead, as a conviction stirring in the minds of some of her youngest generation of subjects.

Asked what the crown means to him, Downes is clear. It signifies a time when people who looked like me were almost considered just a part in the process of generating wealth, he says. Humanity was not considered. Civil rights were not considered.

At sundown, before the cars on the nearby highway switch on their lights, the view from the top of the slope of the Newton Slave Burial Ground appears much as it may have three hundred years ago. The stone chimney of the plantations boiling house still stands. There is still the sea on the horizon and bristling pastures of sugar cane in every direction.

The burial site, too, is still an open field, but for the park benches recently installed at its edges, and rows of bougainvillaea and crotons lining the perimeter. They are freshly planted, some still seedlings, and dwarfed by the surrounding cane fields, but growing.

The map in this article was amended on 30 November 2021 to add detail about the dispute over the British Indian Ocean Territory/Chagos Islands.

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Nelson, BLM and new voices: why Barbados is ditching the Queen - The Guardian

As a protest against violence toward African-Americans, Black Lives Matter burst onto the national scene just two years ago. But according to Harvard scholars, it is a movement that has historical roots that go back more than 300 years.

Violence against black lives began when slave ships brought black people to America, said Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies.

In the history of African-Americans, the story of struggle has been a constant one, she told an overflowing crowd Tuesday at Robinson Hall Lower Library.

Sponsored by the Harvard History Department, the seminar #BlackLivesMatter in Historical Perspective underscored the growing movement for racial justice taking hold across the country.

On Monday, the president of the University of Missouri resigned in the wake of student protests against racial tensions.

In August 2014, Black Lives Matter chapters demonstrated after Michael Brown was shot dead by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.

The movement was born in 2013 after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin.

Higginbotham drew parallels between earlier protest movements and Black Lives Matter, which describes itself as a chapter-based national organization working against police violence and anti-black racism.

She compared Black Lives Matter to the anti-lynching campaign of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by Ida B. Wells and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909. The campaign brought international attention to extrajudicial killings of black people in the United States, Higginbotham said.

Some were lynched because they stood up to a landowner. Some were lynched because they crossed the color line, consensually; and some were lynched because they were successful, Higginbotham said.

The NAACP understood that you didnt have to look a certain way to be lynched, she added, because they lived daily with the fear of not only violence but with the fear of constant segregation.

Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and a professor of African and African American studies, spoke about St. Louis history of segregated neighborhoods.

St. Louis, Missouri, is to this day one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States, said Johnson. What happened in Ferguson is that the history of structural racism was expressed in the systemic racism of the Ferguson police department.

Black Lives Matter also bears similarities to the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s, said Brandon Terry, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies. That movement, he said, also supported black self-determination and aimed to galvanize the public into action.

Terry said Black Lives Matter represents a unique moment in the history of black political thought because it rejects the idea of black uplift, which proposes that educated blacks are responsible for the well-being of the black population.

Black Lives Matter folks dont get dragged into that argument, said Terry. They think thats not what theyre supposed to do and that its kind of crazy to think that a group of activists are supposed to solve this centuries-long problem.

In shedding light on African-American life from the beginning of slavery to the anti-lynching crusade to the Civil Rights Movement, the speakers shared their hope that history can provide clues for Black Lives Matter to achieve its stated goal of changing a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.

History is crucial, said Elizabeth Hinton, an assistant professor of history and of African and African American Studies. It helps us figure out ways in which we can move forward and transcend the institutions and systems that have made black lives not matter for the entire history of this nation.

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Background on Black Lives Matter Harvard Gazette