What is Black Lives Matter?

Alright guys, our two Racial Justice meetings this month will be back-2-back. Saturday, September 12th and Saturday, September 19th. Both meetings will begin at 10:30am. We will meet upstairs at Faith Promise North Campus in the Next Steps room.

Sept 12th – Discussion what is Black Lives Matter?
Sept 19th – Discussion what is the NAACP?

We had a great discussion!

We touched on the following…

 

  • How do you define Black Lives Matter?
  • National BLM vs. Local BLM.
  • BLM origin.
  • Discussed the BLM movement and what we personally believe.
  • Power of social media. Hashtags #blacklivesmatter.  July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
    • https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/
  • Knoxville BLM – This past week I had the opportunity to sit down with a representative of the local BLM Knoxville chapter. We shared notes from that conversation, and info from other conversations about the BLM organization & “movement.”
    • Black Lives Matter Knoxville Chapter was originally organized by: Amelia Parker, David Hayes & Andre Canty. All three no-longer work with the local chapter.
    • It is now a coalition of organizations with a similar vision.
      • Black Moms Bailout – petty cash bails
      • Community Defense of East Tennessee – This is Participatory defense. Showing up for these people in court.|
      • Man on a Mission – Focussed on youth. School to prison pipeline
      • CCM – City Council Movement, Turning activists into politicians (https://www.facebook.com/citycouncilmovementknoxville/)
      • Woman LLC – Stopping or slowing down the gentrification in our community. Buying the Block
      • Includes others that do the work of servitude in our community.
        • Sleeves for needs, SEEED & several others.
  • We also discussed the churches missing presence in the movement.
    • Churches have failed us. “
    • Before: MLK met in churches. Malcolm X even met in churches.
  • Misleading and Misdirection by other organizations.
    • How they are dealing with Fake events
  • Martin vs. Malcolm approach.
  • We will discuss the NAACP approach on Sept 19th.