Truth and POWER: BLM Notes

• Black women attempted to bring their wants for change into a town hall meeting with a presidential candidate, explaining the strife of the black community
• BLM protestors fought the arrest of a kid for public intoxication, which lead to police retaliation
• The boy was eventually released, marking a victory against the oppressive system for the black community
• BLM members are tracked by the government, are considered threats, and are seen by some as terrorists
• BLM started after the George Zimmerman trial, where a white man was found not guilty in the murder case of a young boy named Trayvon Martin
• This clear white privilege lead to a white man walking free after killing an unarmed black child
• Alicia Garza created the term “Black Lives Matter” in a post on Facebook, which lead to her and Patrice Colors co-founding the movement and spreading the hashtag
• Social media was responsible for the spread of BLM
• The movement grew with every new story of a black person dying by the hands of police, meanwhile the officers responsible walked away scot free
• One significant example is the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as a police officer shot him dead in the street, his body lying there for hours
• The peaceful protest that followed was overshadowed by massive amounts of looting, police brutality against protestors, and the subsequent tracking of BLM members by the police which lead to many arrests
• Certain companies, like the Science Applications International Corporation, provide tech that helps police stop protests and violate people’s right to peaceful protest and privacy
• The media has attempted to discredit the movement by sharing false news about the message of BLM
• The government is utilizing tech that should be used to target credit card debt, and is using it to track activists and journalists
• The US has been involved with buying tech that is being used by law enforcement and the government from companies like Hacking Team, which gave that same tech to some less than reputable governments in other countries
• This brings up the question of laws concerning surveillance in the US
• “Code moves faster than law”
• Surveillance can be used for good, like the bust of Daniel Rigmaiden who used a false identity to siphon money from the government
• But the utilization of this tech is proving very troublesome when it comes to civil liberties