People march in a Black Lives Matter rally in Oklahoma City, Sunday, July 10, 2016

A new civil rights movement

 “Black people. I love you. Our lives matter.” The line came at the end of a Facebook post in 2013 by a 35-year-old writer, Alicia Garza, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman who shot to death a young unarmed black teenager in 2012. Patrisse Cullors, one of Garza’s close friends, read the post and started sharing Garza’s words online. She used a hashtag each time she reposted: #blacklivesmatter.

The hashtag became a trend. The trend became a campaign in the summer of 2014, which saw the worst race riots in a generation after a white police officer shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The campaign has become the biggest racial protest movement since the 1960s.

Black Lives Matter has no leaders in the style of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. It is primarily a social media movement and those most involved are young digital activists in their twenties, composing their speeches in Twitter-friendly soundbites. It is powerful because it has created a point of connection for all the different cases of police brutality and other incidents of racial injustice around the county, publicising them and coordinating street protests in consequence.

                          Rupert Morgan, adapted from I Love English World, February 2017