One of the women who founded Black Lives Matter wants a grassroots movement to counter what she calls the suppression of African American opportunity.
Patrisse Cullors told an audience at Bradley University, today’s political environment is not new. She compares it to the time when she grew up in the 1980s and early 90s.
Cullors says she was, “a young child in Los Angeles witnessing the decimation of over incarceration and over-policing in my neighborhood, witnessing the decimation of a lack of reinvestment into black communities and I would argue a divestment from our communities.
The Black Lives Matter movement came to-be in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s death in Sanford, Florida. Cullors watched the proceedings on television, and remembers her feelings when George Zimmerman was found not guilty of Martin’s death. In that moment Cullors says she, “witnessed a modern day lynching go without conviction, without responsibility and without justice.”
Cullors says Black Lives Matter is designed to put the deaths of unarmed black men at the center of national attention. She told an audience of about 900 at Bradley University Thursday night it is important to build coalitions locally to create more opportunities for minorities, and to hold local officials accountable or to remove them from office.