To what extent has the Black Lives Matter movement influenced legislation changes to the removal of
The positive aspects of BLM as well as negative. What the statues represent good and bad.
ANSWER
To What Extent Has the Black Lives Matter Movement Influenced Legislation Changes to The Removal of Confederate Statues
Introduction
Police brutality and systemic racism have been a major problem in the United States since its foundation. In 2013, three Black organizers Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors established a political movement centered on black lives. The organization features many black liberation organizations like Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, Assata’s Daughters, the St. Louis Action council, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle among others. The movement was called Black Lives Matter and it started as a hashtag on social media following the acquittal of George Zimmerman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in 2012. After the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York in the hands of police officers, the movement gained national recognition and outlook. The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 precipitated a wave of protests such as has never been witnessed in recent days (Rickford, 2016). The Black Live Movement gained traction and systematically targeted symbols of hate like confederate monuments. Protesters mutilated and even removed some confederate monuments. Other organizers lobbied for legislation to legally remove confederate monuments from public spaces. This paper discusses the extent to which the Black Lives Matter movement influenced legislation changes to the removal of confederate statues.
Legislation on the Removal Confederate Monuments
On May 25, 2020, an unarmed black man, George Floyd in Minneapolis was choked to death by a white policeman, Derick Chauvin who knelt on his neck for 9 minutes (Samayeen et al., 2020). What followed was very significant in shaping American society and its views towards racial issues. This precipitated national outrage that revamped the Black Lives Matter Movement and even increased its activities and favorability rating among Americans. In all cities in the United States, there were protests against police brutality that the culture that has bread such behavior for years and watched on the sidelines as many people of color suffer. Floyd was a 46-year-old black man who was arrested by Minneapolis police for allegedly passing a fake $20 bill at a nearby grocery store. His alleged crime seemed small and negligible but it cost him his life and many Americans read a pattern where innocent black people pay with their lives for things that not white Americans would suffer for.
The BLM marches have been very helpful in assisting in drawing public attention to the ills of policing in the United States. BLM protesters were quick to pounce on some of the most ardent symbols of the confederacy all over the United States. In cities with prominent confederate statues, various organizers took the law on their hands and destroyed the symbols of hate. Even though some people including the then President of the United States Donald Trump cried out, the protester moved with resolve and brought down these statues where they could. As the anti-confederate statues wave gained prominence, many jurisdictions saw it wise to act and do away with these monuments. Many city councils, state legislatures, and executive wings of various governments in the United States responded to the BLM movement by drafting legislation and directives that were aimed at removing all confederate monuments in public places.
The United States Congress responded to the BML movement by taking a raft of symbolic and legislative measures aimed at solving the underlying issues precipitating the protests. The United States house of representatives approved legislation that ordered the removal of statues honoring people who were part of the confederacy during the American Civil War. All confederate figures in the Capitol were to be removed according to the legislation The legislation also ordered the removal of the bust of former Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney who authored the decision that denied slaves their rights. His burst was replaced by the bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall who was key in setting civil rights progressiveness in the United States Supreme Court. This came after the hose had passed a bill that sought to rename all Army bases that bear the names of Confederate generals. These have been consequential symbolic moves by Congress following the pressure issued by the BLM in the country (Leyh, 2020).
The 117th Congress is the most diverse in the history of the United States. About 23% of the US house of representatives comes from racial or ethnic minority groups. 124 lawmakers in the U.S. congress identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, or Native American and this number has increased tremendously since the onset of the BLM. The rate of minority representatives in the 117th congress has increased by 10% indicating very significant progress in the electoral front.
Influence of the Black Lives Matter Movement
The movement has since then had a national outlook and even captured imaginations in the international environment. The movement has focused on demonstrations in protest of police brutality and systemic racism that target black people, overwhelmingly. The protesters got a familiar foe in Confederate statues that have been used as a symbol of oppression and white supremacy. Al over the united states, there numerous confederate statues that glorify an evil establishment that fought to the death for their right to own black people as property and deny them their God-given rights for eternity. As a result of nationwide protests, many legislatures across the nations have passed laws to bring down confederacy monuments with the state of Mississippi even changing its flag that features the confederate flag.
The Black Lives Matter movement has influenced Americans to concentrate on the racist and oppressive history that confederate monuments hold in the American fabric. This has led to the reduced popularity of confederate monuments among Americans who have made various moves to eradicate them from public spaces. BLM has directly facilitated the formulation of legislation meant to block confederate monuments from public spaces. However, there has been backlash from ardent supporters of the confederacy and white supremacists (Fausset, 2017). A substantial portion of white Americans has seen the moves to remove confederate statues as an affront to their way of life and dominance that they have enjoyed for centuries. They have fought back fiercely to keep their monuments sometimes succeeding and other times failing.
The movement has achieved significant milestones like ousting of high-profile prosecutors. Prosecutors who have failed to properly prosecute corrupt police officers who have been involved in the killing of many innocent black people have been ousted by black live matter organizing campaigns. Prosecutors like Angela Corey who failed to convict George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin lost their jobs after great organizing from the movement. The movement has compelled the democratic party to change its platform and includes issues that affect black people like criminal justice reform. Far-fetched ideas like the defunding of police and abolishment of ICE were not imaginable concepts before BLM too them and mainstreamed them making them palatable for most Americans. The movement has also contributed towards the election of leaders concerned with making reforms in policing and other institutional racism issues.
The BLM movement’s unrelenting work on police corruption has led to the publication of demining reports on police brutality and corruption of major police departments like Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland. The movement has drafted expansive policy goals that if implemented can help reduce the problem of policing across many cities in the united states and give room for the establishment of a more just society. The pace at which such accomplishments have happened is an achievement and only points to the widespread influence of the movement.
The cultural impact of BLM has been immeasurably expansive in the United States and the world. In June 2020, the movement had gained so much prominence that 67% of Americans supported it according to a Pew Research publication. A movement that started on the fringe corners of social media successfully captured the imagination of Americans and pointed them towards what many were willing to look away systemic racism. The successes of other social media movements like the “me too” movement have been highly attributed to the groundwork initiated by the BLM movement (Bertilsson, 2021).
Goals of the Black Live Matter Movement
Addressing Police Brutality Systemic Racism
BLM movement has demanded that new police curriculums be introduced to ensure those police officers are equipped with necessary qualifications that can help them professionally deliver. Many have argued that police officers are needed to enforce the law yet many of them are not even aware of the demands of the laws that they seek to enforce. On these reformers have argued that police officers undergo rigorous training to learn the various laws that they seek to implement. The movement has also proposed for widespread training of police officers on implicit bias and various ways of handling people from different backgrounds. Most police officers have an implicit bias that often leads to deadly interactions with people of color.
Police Reforms
The United States spends over $100 billion on policing yet very limited expenditure in social programs like mental health programs and community empowerment programs. It often sounds like all American problems are expected to be solved by police even if the evidence is opposed to such notions. Police departments have military class weapons and machinery like they are fighting wars against very dreadful insurgents or foreign powers. Most city governments spend much on police while other social programs remained deprived of much-needed funds. The BLM movement advocates for the allocation of these funds to benefit community programs that do not require the involvement of the police. Programs like special services, education, housing, health care, and community resources should receive the highest funding because they address the deepest rooted systemic problems that have been the root cause of systemic racism in the united states.
Conclusion
The BLM movement has been one of the most consequential social movements in the history of the United States. Its successful navigation of the use of social media to achieve this much has even made it more consequential than any other online social movement. The movement has directed American’s attention to the systemic racism that society has been willing to ignore despite its impact on minorities and particularly Black people. The movement has called for systemic reforms in education, health care, criminal justice, law enforcement, and all aspects of American society. With its targeted protests, the movement has managed to get concessions from various hardliners and convinced the American public that fighting for Black lives is something that they can be proud of even if they are not Black. The movement has been central in the removal of confederate monuments some during protests and others using legislation from various legislative bodies including the U.S. Congress.
References
Bertilsson, N. (2021). Land of the (Un) Free: The Black Lives Matter Movement’s Objectives and Achievements.
Fausset, R. (2017). Tempers flare over removal of Confederate statues in New Orleans. New York Times, 7.
Leyh, B. M. (2020). Imperatives of the Present: Black Lives Matter and the politics of memory and memorialization. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 38(4), 239-245.
Rickford, R. (2016, January). Black lives matter: Toward a modern practice of mass struggle. In New Labor Forum (Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 34-42). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.
Samayeen, N., Wong, A., & McCarthy, C. (2020). Space to breathe: George Floyd, BLM plaza and the monumentalization of divided American Urban landscapes.
