tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/trayvon-martin-6488/articlesTrayvon Martin – The Conversation2021-11-19T19:37:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1719082021-11-19T19:37:04Z2021-11-19T19:37:04ZRittenhouse verdict flies in the face of legal standards for self-defense<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432917/original/file-20211119-22767-aijzds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C338%2C5521%2C3099&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kyle-rittenhouse-center-looks-over-to-his-attorneys-as-the-news-photo/1236648370?adppopup=true">Sean Krajacic - Pool/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a two-week trial that reignited debate over self-defense laws across the nation, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/19/us/kyle-rittenhouse-trial">a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse</a> for shooting three people, two fatally, during a racial justice protest in Kenosha.</p>
<p>The Wisconsin jury believed <a href="https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-shootings-homicide-kenosha-jacob-blake-620ad5801a29c986b658f6a74d3f9649">Rittenhouse’s claims that he feared for his life and acted in self-defense</a> after he <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-testified-he-drove-himself-to-kenosha-without-weapon/">drove about 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois – picking up an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha</a> – in what he claimed was an effort to protect property during violent protests. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/06/racial-tensions-kenosha-police-shot-jacob-blake">The lakeside city of 100,000 was the scene of chaotic demonstrations</a> after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. </p>
<p>In delivering its verdict, a Wisconsin jury decided that Rittenhouse’s conduct was justified, even though the prosecution argued that he provoked the violent encounter and, therefore, should not be able to find refuge in the self-defense doctrine. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://apnews.com/article/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-kenosha-46770144a2673b7e8414dfc0c5aff9a9">prosecutor Thomas Binger said in his closing argument</a>: “When the defendant provokes this incident, he loses the right to self-defense. You cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create.”</p>
<p>The Wisconsin jury disagreed, and its decision may portend a similar outcome in another high-profile case in Georgia, where three white men are on trial for the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52623151">shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery</a> after they claimed the Black man was a suspect in a rash of robberies. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/rittenhouse-arbery-self-defense.html">Like Rittenhouse, the three men claimed they were acting in self-defense</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/rittenhouse-arbery-self-defense.html">Self-defense arguments are often raised</a> during trials involving loss of life. Juries are then asked to determine whether a defendant’s conduct is justified by principles of self-defense or whether the offender is criminally liable for homicide. </p>
<p>Complicating matters is that each state has its own distinct homicide and self-defense laws. Some states observe the controversial “<a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx">stand your ground</a>” doctrine, as in Georgia – or not, as in Wisconsin – further clouding the public’s understanding on what constitutes an appropriate use of deadly force. </p>
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<img alt="Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432064/original/file-20211115-21-m1t2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin on charges in the shootings of three people, two of them fatally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kyle-rittenhouse-testifies-about-gaige-grosskreutz-having-a-news-photo/1236480828?adppopup=true">Photo by Mark Hertzberg-Pool/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Five elements of self-defense</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10870/Sullivan">professor of criminal law</a>, I teach my students that the law of self-defense in America proceeds from an important concept: Human life is sacred, and the law will justify the taking of human life only in narrowly defined circumstances. </p>
<p>The law of self-defense holds that a person who is not the aggressor is justified in using deadly force against an adversary when he reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. This is the standard that every <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx">state uses to define self-defense</a>.</p>
<p>To determine whether this standard is met, the law looks at five central concepts. </p>
<p>First, the use of force must be proportionate to the force employed by the aggressor. If the aggressor lightly punches the victim in the arm, for example, the victim cannot use deadly force in response. It’s not proportional. </p>
<p>Second, the use of self-defense is limited to imminent harm. The threat by the aggressor must be immediate. For instance, a person who is assaulted cannot leave the scene, plan revenge later and conduct vigilante justice by killing the initial aggressor.</p>
<p>Third, the person’s assessment of whether he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury must be reasonable, meaning that a supposed “reasonable person” would consider the threat to be sufficiently dangerous to put him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. A person’s own subjective view of this fear is not enough to satisfy the standard for self-defense.</p>
<p>Fourth, the law does not permit a first aggressor to benefit from a self-defense justification. Only those with “clean hands” can benefit from this justification and avoid criminal liability.</p>
<p>Finally, a person has a duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as it can be done safely. This reaffirms the law’s belief in the sanctity of human life and ensures that deadly force is an option of last resort. </p>
<h2>‘Stand your ground’</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-law-basics/states-that-have-stand-your-ground-laws.html">proliferation of states that have adopted “stand your ground” laws</a> in recent years has complicated the analysis of self-defense involving the duty to retreat. </p>
<p>Dating back to early Anglo-American law, the <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935352.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935352-e-5">duty to retreat</a> has been subject to an important exception historically called the “<a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx">castle doctrine</a>”: A person has no duty to retreat in his home. This principle emerged from the 17th-century maxim that a “man’s home is his castle.” </p>
<p>The “castle doctrine” permits the use of lethal force in self-defense without imposing a duty to retreat in the home. Over time, states began to expand the non-retreat rule to spaces outside of the home. </p>
<p>“Stand your ground” laws came under national scrutiny during the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/05/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-fast-facts/index.html">Trayvon Martin</a>.</p>
<p>In that case, Martin, 17, was walking home after buying Skittles from a nearby convenience store. At the time, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who called police after spotting Martin. Despite being told by the 911 operator to remain in his car until officers arrived, Zimmerman instead confronted Martin. </p>
<p>It remains unclear whether a fight ensued, who was the aggressor and whether Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims of being beaten up by Martin. Zimmerman was the sole survivor; Martin, who was unarmed, died from a gunshot wound.</p>
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<img alt="George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432060/original/file-20211115-15-1pdbodx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted in Sanford, Florida, of second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/george-zimmerman-leaves-court-with-his-family-after-a-jury-news-photo/173418429?adppopup=true">Photo by Gary W. Green-Pool/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/19/148937626/trayvon-martin-killing-puts-stand-your-ground-law-in-spotlight">In the Zimmerman</a> case, for example, under traditional self-defense law, the combination of first-aggressor limitation and duty to retreat would not have allowed Zimmerman to follow Martin around and kill him without being liable for murder. </p>
<p>But, in a stand-your-ground state such as Florida, Zimmerman had a lawful right to patrol the neighborhood near Martin’s home. As a result, during his trial, all Zimmerman had to prove was that he was in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury. </p>
<p>In Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was also able to put in evidence that he was in reasonable fear of death. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse testified. “I defended myself.” </p>
<p>The prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse was not reasonably in fear for his safety. This represents a high bar for the prosecution. They were unable to surmount it. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the conditions under which Jacob Blake was shot.</em></p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In its decision, the Wisconsin jury believed Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense – not recklessness, as prosecutors alleged – when he shot three people, two fatally.Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Professor of Law, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421532020-07-13T11:50:49Z2020-07-13T11:50:49ZSmartphone witnessing becomes synonymous with Black patriotism after George Floyd’s death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346396/original/file-20200708-3987-18z1qle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C0%2C4473%2C3078&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters against racist police violence encounter police in Washington, D.C., on May 31.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-protesting-the-death-of-george-floyd-talk-to-news-photo/1216617277">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A flashbulb emits a high-pitched hum. A photograph of the legendary 19th-century abolitionist and newspaperman Frederick Douglass fades in on-screen.</p>
<p>We hear the “Hamilton” alumnus actor Daveed Diggs before we see him.</p>
<p>“What, to my people, is the Fourth of July?” <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE">Diggs asks</a> in a plaintive voiceover, as a police siren and the opening chords of Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” clash aurally.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WuCeUyItpzE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘What, to my people, is the Fourth of July?’</span></figcaption>
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<p>In just two minutes and 19 seconds, the <a href="https://m4bl.org/">Movement for Black Lives</a> short film released in 2020 provided a highlight reel of African American oppression that spans 400 years. </p>
<p>The juxtapositions are jarring in the Independence Day-themed video. A historic <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=23">image of a Black toddler picking cotton</a> slams into a modern picture of a <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=24">masked Black boy marching in protest</a>. Imagery of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=15">fireworks at the Lincoln Memorial</a> follows footage of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=12">flash grenades</a> being lobbed at protesters. Regal shots of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=20">Black soldiers standing in formation</a> dissolve into a forlorn image of a <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=28">homeless Black veteran</a>. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=84">Hurricane Katrina</a> footage. <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=40">Amy Cooper in Central Park</a> footage. Photos of <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=41">slaves at work</a>. <a href="https://youtu.be/WuCeUyItpzE?t=43">Emmett Till</a>’s remains. Police in riot gear. And so much more.</p>
<p>Perhaps what is most remarkable about this short film, however, is not the sheer volume of source material with which the producers had to work. It’s that this film is rooted in a concept I call “Black witnessing.” </p>
<p>This patriotic form of looking, which documents human rights injustices against Black people, dates back to the days of Frederick Douglass – and it may just be the crowning achievement of the Movement for Black Lives.</p>
<h2>What is Black witnessing?</h2>
<p>In my book, “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bearing-witness-while-black-9780190935535">Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism</a>,” I defined Black witnessing as a defiant, investigative gaze that has three qualities. </p>
<p>First, Black witnessing glares back at authorities in times of crisis or protest, using any available medium that it can to track violence against Black people. In the days of Frederick Douglass, the medium was the <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">slave narrative</a> or the Black <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/abolitionists-douglass-published-north-star/">newspaper</a>. </p>
<p>During the civil rights movement, Black activists aimed to appear on the 15-minute evening news broadcasts on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08821127.2020.1715328?journalCode=uamj20">television</a> to highlight sit-ins or marches. Now, freedom fighters have smartphones to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cellphone-videos-of-black-peoples-deaths-should-be-considered-sacred-like-lynching-photographs-139252">capture fatal police encounters</a> or die-in demonstrations.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pll_5s10ils?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A CBS News report looks at how the civil rights movement used the media to deliver its message across America.</span></figcaption>
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<p>With these media-making tools, Black witnessing achieves its second characteristic. It forges a historic narrative that links new atrocities against African Americans, such as police brutality, with the original corporeal sins against Black people: slavery and lynching. </p>
<p>Many Americans now may connect the killings of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin together, for example, even though the boys died more than 50 years apart, since <a href="https://time.com/4228372/trayvon-martin-emmett-till-video/">Black witnesses talk about their deaths</a> as part of an ongoing racialized saga, rather than a mere isolated incident. </p>
<p>This spirit carries through the July 4 Movement for Black Lives video too, as it jumps back and forth through time to reimagine Frederick Douglass’ July 5, 1852 speech, “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html">The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro</a>,” through Daveed Diggs’ poetic voice.</p>
<p>The third quality of modern Black witnessing is that all of these historic narratives – and the viral messaging for which the Movement for Black Lives is so well known – rely on Twitter as its key distribution platform. The social network is like an ad-hoc Black news wire service that bypasses the gatekeeping role of the news media. </p>
<p>At the height of the George Floyd protests, for example, people tweeted the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BlackLivesMatter">#BlackLivesMatter</a> roughly 47.8 million times on Twitter from May 26 to June 7, which represents record level use since the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floyds-death/">Pew Research Center</a> started tracking the hashtag in 2013. </p>
<p>These data mirror <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">recent polls</a> that indicate 15 million to 26 million people have demonstrated in more than 550 U.S. cities since George Floyd’s death, making Black Lives Matter the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">largest social movement in U.S. history</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/10/blacklivesmatter-surges-on-twitter-after-george-floyds-death/ft_2020-06-10_blm_01_new/"><img src="https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ft_2020.06.10_BLM_01_new.png?w=640"></a></p>
<h2>Black witnessing as the responsibility of patriots</h2>
<p>In my book I argue that we are living in an era of heightened Black witnessing, the likes of which we have never seen before, thanks to the perfect storm of smartphones, social media and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/29/views-of-racism-as-a-major-problem-increase-sharply-especially-among-democrats/">America’s changing attitudes</a> toward racial justice. </p>
<p>During Frederick Douglass’ lifetime, for example, Black slaves could not gaze upon one another as they were being beaten or otherwise punished, lest they incur the wrath of the master themselves.</p>
<p>Similarly, in the days of lynching, there were no Black people on the fringes of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cellphone-videos-of-black-peoples-deaths-should-be-considered-sacred-like-lynching-photographs-139252">murderous mob photographs</a>. </p>
<p>But now, for the first time, African Americans can use their smartphones to be there, physically, in a moment of shared trauma. Though it is excruciatingly painful to hit “record” during a violent police encounter, the Black witness is saying to the victim: “I will not leave you alone in your final moments. I will tell your family what happened. I will hold police accountable. I will say your name.” </p>
<p>Independence Day 2020 was the perfect time to reevaluate what all of the Black witnesses of centuries past have tried to tell America. From slave narratives to smartphones, they have highlighted the cruel hypocrisy that exists when the country celebrates freedom for some in the U.S., and bondage for others.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346140/original/file-20200707-194423-l0wno9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass, a powerful abolitionist orator and writer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-frederick-douglass-american-abolitionist-and-news-photo/515448848">Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The Movement for Black Lives video is a true exercise in Black witnessing. It glares back at the July 4 national holiday. It’s gone viral on Twitter and YouTube. And it connects our nation’s current moment to Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech. He delivered it to the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100425400">Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society</a> in Rochester, New York, amid a <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/28/nyregion/heat-struck-july-1852.html">record-breaking, statewide heat wave</a>. </p>
<p>As Douglass gazed around the room at his audience on that day, I like to imagine that he dabbed sweat from his brow before he exhorted: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? … This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”</p>
<p>By the time Douglass finished his fiery oration, he used the word “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html">witness</a>” himself, pledging never to leave the work of abolishing slavery in his lifetime. He added: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.”</p>
<p>Black witnessing, therefore, is not a denouncement of one’s patriotism; it is an exercise of it. When African Americans press “record” to film police brutality, they are calling for accountability. They are standing in the gap for the dead, who can no longer speak. And they are, perhaps most importantly, challenging a nation not to look away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allissa V. Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When African Americans press ‘record’ to film police brutality, they are challenging a nation not to look away.Allissa V. Richardson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1399372020-06-12T12:16:07Z2020-06-12T12:16:07ZA short history of black women and police violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341267/original/file-20200611-80789-14bg7jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester holds up a sign with Breonna Taylor's name. Taylor was killed by police officers on March 13.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gather-with-balloons-for-a-vigil-in-memory-of-news-photo/1218020612?adppopup=true">Brett Carlsen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">Breonna Taylor</a>, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home. </p>
<p>The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found. </p>
<p>But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers. </p>
<p>Although the majority of black people killed by police in the United States are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men">young men</a>, black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The <a href="https://aapf.org/shn-campaign">#SayHerName campaign</a> has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue. </p>
<p>Police violence against black women is <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">marginalized in the public’s understanding of American policing</a>. There is a perception among many Americans that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. </p>
<p>This perception could not further from the truth.</p>
<p>Breonna Taylor’s story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a <a href="http://abwh.org/2020/05/31/by-remembering-our-sisters-we-challenge-police-violence-against-black-women-and-legacies-that-eclipse-these-injustices/">long-standing pattern</a>: For decades, black women have been targets of police violence and brutality. </p>
<p>And for decades, their stories have been <a href="https://time.com/5847970/police-brutality-black-women-girls/">sidelined in public discussions about policing</a>. Many scholars point to <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">misogyny</a> to explain the continued marginalization of black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/5edc95fba357687217b08fb8/1591514635487/SHNReportJuly2015.pdf">#SayHerName report</a>, <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/sayhername-police-violence-against-black-women-and-girls-an-interview-with-andrea-ritchie/">explains</a>, “Women’s experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men.”</p>
<p>Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.</p>
<h2>Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence</h2>
<p>Civil rights leader <a href="https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence. </p>
<p>Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s. </p>
<p>After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">only 5% of the state’s 450,000 black residents were registered</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Fannie Lou Hamer attended the Democratic National Convention in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ds.07134/">Warren K. Leffler/U.S. News & World Report Magazine</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter’s workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat. </p>
<p>The restaurant owners made it clear that black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/voice-that-could-stir-an-army-fannie-lou-hamer-and-the-rhetoric-of-the-black-freedom-movement/oclc/1062296766&referer=brief_results">immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her</a>.</p>
<p>Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fannie-lou-hamer-the-life-of-a-civil-rights-icon/oclc/729961147&referer=brief_results">later recalled</a>, “They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn’t bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That’s how I got this blood clot in my left eye – the sight’s nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back.” </p>
<p>Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html">recounted her story before a live, televised audience</a> of millions. </p>
<p>In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories – and the stories of their loved ones. </p>
<h2>From lynch mob to violent police</h2>
<p>During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">grassroots initiative in New York City</a> to combat police violence in black communities. </p>
<p>In 1984, Mary Bumper’s 66-year-old mother, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520061">Eleanor Bumpurs</a>, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/14/nyregion/honor-student-17-is-killed-by-policeman-on-west-side.html">Veronica Perry’s 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed</a> by a plainclothes police officer. </p>
<p>Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.</p>
<p>United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City – <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/street-justice-a-history-of-police-violence-in-new-york-city/oclc/1004798959">an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing</a>. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.</p>
<p>On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders. </p>
<p>“We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry insisted</a>. </p>
<p>Her comments emphasized black activists’ recognition that the fight for black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence – whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, spoke after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gwen-carr-the-mother-of-eric-garner-speaks-to-a-group-of-news-photo/1215876745?adppopup=true">Stephen Maturen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The struggle continues</h2>
<p>In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/25/nyregion/jury-acquits-all-transit-officers-in-1983-death-of-michael-stewart.html">Michael Stewart</a>, who died in police custody in 1983. </p>
<p>Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/27/archives/boy-15-shot-to-death-pointblank-officer-arrested-in-east-new-york.html">Randolph Evans</a> was killed by New York police in 1976. </p>
<p>At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. “We as a people have to stand together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Mary Bumpurs explained</a>. “It takes each of us banding together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry added</a>.</p>
<p>Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women’s grassroots organizing during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role black women play in challenging police violence. </p>
<p>These women’s political work continues today through the “<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a38111/who-are-mothers-of-the-movement-dnc/">Mothers of the Movement</a>,” a group of black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.</p>
<p>This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to <a href="https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/eric-garners-mother-gwen-carr-talks-police-chokehold-ban-cops-kneeling-taking-a-knee-george-floyd-protests">push for legislation</a> that would fundamentally change American policing. </p>
<p>In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/502114-trayvon-martins-mother-sybrina-fulton-qualifies-to-run-for-county">run for public office</a>. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for <a href="https://abc7ny.com/rev-al-sharpton-eric-garner-gwen-carr-corey-johnson/6226857/">greater police accountability</a> and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of black people in the United States.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keisha N. Blain has received funding from the American Association of University Women and the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>Young men make up the majority of black people killed by police in the US. That’s fed a perception that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. They aren’t.Keisha N. Blain, Associate Professor of History, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/854492017-10-12T01:18:51Z2017-10-12T01:18:51ZBlack Lives Matter is a revolutionary peace movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189568/original/file-20171010-19989-ozew98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The call for Black lives to matter is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtumesoul/15401077114/in/album-72157660313134374/">Annette Bernhardt/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the first in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">Black Lives Matter Everywhere</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a>. To mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/black-lives-matter/">2017 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the authors reflect on the roots of and responses to a movement that has reignited a global conversation about racism. The 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 2 (<a href="https://events.ticketbooth.com.au/events/22459">tickets here</a>).</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Black Lives Matter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise. <strong>– Black Lives Matter mission statement</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On July 13, 2013, hundreds of thousands of people – mostly Black people – flooded the streets of US cities following the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html">acquittal</a> of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. </p>
<p>For weeks, we had been glued to our televisions as police and “friends” of Zimmerman tried to disparage the high schooler – to make the victim some kind of predator. But we had seen his face. We saw his eyes dance, his brown skin glisten, and his smile warm hearts. He was a child, a lovely, beautiful boy-child who looked like our own children. And Zimmerman had no right to steal his life, regardless of what a court says.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2012 Trayvon Martin was shot for ‘looking suspicious’. He was 17.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fleshmanpix/6863999486">Michael Fleshman/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>So, the verdict came down, and we erupted. Our spirits filled with the righteous indignation of generations past. Transgenerational memories came rushing back of <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515">Emmett Till</a>. </p>
<p>Trayvon was born to Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, but he was ours – all of ours.</p>
<p>Black bodies filled the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting White shoppers and making the normalcy of White American middle-class existence less certain. </p>
<p>As our ranks swelled and our presence became more intentionally targeted at White epicentres of escapism (including tourist attractions like Hollywood and Highland), we began to understand the power of disruption. In disrupting these spaces, we refused to allow our collective pain to be confined to Black communities. Others may not see their own children in the face of Trayvon, but they would not be permitted to dismiss us.</p>
<p>On the third day of protest, in the midst of our first freeway shutdown, a text message found its way to a few of us. It read like words from the Underground Railroad: “Meet at St. Elmo Village at 9pm” (a Black artist community in mid-city Los Angeles). </p>
<p>The message was from <a href="http://patrissecullors.com/bio/">Patrisse Cullors</a>, a young, powerful, emerging organiser in Black Los Angeles whose work had centred on ending sheriffs’ violence. Her text was passed onto other organisers by <a href="http://www.thandisizwe.net">Thandisizwe Chimurenga</a>, a Black independent journalist who had been most recently active in the struggle for justice for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Oscar_Grant">Oscar Grant</a>. </p>
<p>As the summer night settled in and demonstrators scurried from highways, dodging the police who came in with sticks, beanbag guns and tear gas, the mamas collected our young children, walked home and prepared to go back out that same night.</p>
<h2>A movement, not a moment</h2>
<p>I was late to the meeting. By the time I arrived, a few dozen folks, including about ten of my spirit-children/students were closing out discussions of what it means to build “a movement, not a moment”. </p>
<p>Many of us had been involved in what <a href="http://www.history.ucla.edu/faculty/brenda-stevenson">Brenda Stevenson</a> terms “episodic organising”, or demands for justice that are limited to a person or a moment in time. But what we came to embrace that night is that the murder of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/10/local/me-brown10">Devin Brown</a> before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2002/dec/13/local/me-tyisha13">Tyisha Miller</a> before him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/21/news/mn-56723">Margaret Mitchell</a> before her … and so many others, was not accidental. </p>
<p>Perhaps the names and specifics of each case unfolded independently, but the system of American policing was designed to produce these outcomes. The system is brutal, murderous and violent. Only by transforming the way that we vision justice can we realise peace. </p>
<p>So, we committed to building a new peace movement – one that was driven by the way that Trayvon had embedded his spirit in our collective souls and opened itself to the chorus of voices whose bodies had been stolen by the state before and after him.</p>
<p>All of this intuitive work had already happened prior to our gathering in the courtyard, and remains hugely important to the building of this movement. For a movement to grow, it must be organic, flowing from the hearts of the people.</p>
<p>Every transformative struggle for justice has been rooted in heart work. Attempts to insert causes into communities ring as false and ultimately fall flat. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘What if it were my son, my brother?’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work of organisers, with the most effective organisers being part of the communities that they seek to organise, is to tap in to the souls of the community, hear the collective outcries and distil the issues and cast them in the context of a larger vision. They work to harness the energy as the movement builds and seize the time as communities make demands and arrive at solutions. </p>
<p>Civil rights, Black Power and Black Lives Matter organiser Greg Akili says that organising is “getting people to move on their own behalf and in their own interest”. </p>
<p>As the intuitive work was happening in the streets, Patrisse was assembling with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/alicia-garza-on-the-beauty-and-the-burden-of-black-lives-matter">Alicia Garza</a> and <a href="http://opaltometi.com">Opal Tometi</a> to organise us, visioning beyond the moment and strategising how to build a new iteration of Black freedom struggle.</p>
<h2>No justice, no peace</h2>
<p>Our mission emerged organically. It was summed up in the words penned by Alicia: “Black lives matter”. We have a right to our lives. Our children have a right to live and walk freely, without being hunted by the state, agents of the state, or wannabe agents of the state. </p>
<p>This is not debatable. There are no two ways to see it. This is one of those very basic, fundamental truths. </p>
<p>Getting to freedom and getting to justice, however, is a much more challenging charge. We are heirs of struggles that are also black-and-white: calls to end chattel slavery and lynching, demands for basic civil rights and voting rights, and the constant call for the end to police brutality. </p>
<p>While a hawk’s-eye view of these demands offers very obvious conclusions, the complication becomes the entrenchment of systems that produce unjust outcomes. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/736-how-capitalism-underdeveloped-black-america">How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America</a>, Manning Marable offers that “the system exists not to develop, but to underdevelop Black people”, with each advancement for White society coming at the expense of Black freedom.</p>
<p>So, while there are clearly just outcomes, like ending slavery and lynching, ushering in civil rights and voting rights, ending police brutality and now demanding an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people, such demands require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189570/original/file-20171010-17703-1m83209.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recurrences of state-sanctioned violence against Black people are not accidental.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtumesoul/15997561326/in/album-72157660313134374/">Annette Bernhardt/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Black freedom movements, including Black Lives Matter, are clearly working for what is just, the disruption that they pose to current systems is often cast by that system as problematic, even violent. </p>
<p>Because systems are designed to protect themselves, they utilise their vast powers to contort the messages of those who seek to challenge them. They use the laws that they created, the media that they control and the social structures that they erected to present those who challenge them as essentially “enemy combatants”. </p>
<p>Examples of this date back to the hefty bounty put on the head of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman">Harriet Tubman</a>, the bombing of the office of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells">Ida B. Wells</a>, the 40 times that Martin Luther King was imprisoned, the assassinations of King and Malcolm X and the targeting, imprisonment and exile of members of the Black Panther Party, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton">Huey P. Newton</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur">Assata Shakur</a>. Today, Black Lives Matter organisers and other Black freedom fighters are the new targets. </p>
<p>The call for Black lives to matter and for an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people (and by extension all people) is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission. The kind of peace sought by Black Lives Matter results from justice. </p>
<p>Peace cannot be compelled or forced. It is earned when the people benefit from and see themselves as a part of the societies in which they are housed. Peace is not a tactic of struggle, it is an outcome. </p>
<p>As we struggle for a world where Black lives are no longer intentionally and systematically targeted for demise, it means that the systems that prey on us must be not simply reformed but re-imagined and transformed. </p>
<p>Peace calls for an end to incarceration and criminalisation in favour of real public safety solutions. Peace calls for the meeting of basic human needs, including safe housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical care. Peace calls for quality education as a universal right and the ability to engage fully in the arts, culture and spirituality.</p>
<p>Peace requires revolutionary vision – and Black Lives Matter is a peace movement.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/black-lives-matter-everywhere-44608">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melina Abdullah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The peace and justice Black Lives Matter seeks require a fundamental transformation of a system that preys on and benefits from Black suffering.Melina Abdullah, Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies, California State University, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453512015-08-12T10:18:07Z2015-08-12T10:18:07ZWhy historically black colleges and universities matter in today’s America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91485/original/image-20150811-11101-absev2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black colleges and universities exemplify the American ideals of civil rights and equality. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bamakodaker/16704335209/in/photolist-82BswR-7EsE7K-7Ewn1y-7EwxhL-82BsFp-tvsZ1W-aHqDdH-ekUZAR-azaPFH-rs75Tt-fo3syA-fnNmLM-66u27S-66pHYt-66pJHB-66pJkt-66u2xJ-7EsxTK-82EBQs-82EC3E-ekUZi4-ekUZi8-ekUZg2-rGgNbo-nw87ii-nNyKKm-nNjGdB-nNsevU">LloydGallman</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.change.org/p/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin">Trayvon Martin</a>. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop">Michael Brown</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html?_r=0">Eric Garner</a>. <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/9002747/sandra-bland-arrest-video">Sandra Bland</a>. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debbie-hines/renisha-mcbride-black-wom_b_6630968.html">Renisha McBride</a>. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/martese-johnson-university-of-virginia-student-in-bloody-arrest-makes-first-court-appearance/">Martese Johnson</a>. And now <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33856887">Tyrone Harris</a>.</p>
<p>All these names remind us how precarious black lives can be. Martin, Brown and Garner were killed in their own neighborhoods. And that’s not all. Even religious settings seem to offer little protection. As we know, nine black people were murdered while attending services at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. </p>
<p>Through the years, predominantly black spaces such as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have sheltered black people. More than that, they provide an important space for the fight for civil rights, equality, and black liberation. </p>
<p>Despite this connection, many wonder what the role is of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) today. I have been researching HBCUs to understand how education and its pursuit by black Americans represent a constant affront to white supremacy. </p>
<p>Historically, educating the formerly enslaved and their descendants represented a truly radical act. And today, as black Americans choosing to attend these schools know (and confirmed by researchers), these campuses are <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3fries-britt.html">psychologically</a> and <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3outcalt.html">socially more liberating</a> than the predominantly white ones. </p>
<p>This is but one reason we still need HBCUs. Their historic role in the pursuit of freedom is yet another.</p>
<h2>Key role played by black schools</h2>
<p>HBCUs have always been the vehicles for liberty and equality in the journey toward black liberation within America. </p>
<p>Black Americans have long understood the relationship between education and democracy. Following the Civil War, learning the rules of the American and southern political economy was <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=382">necessary</a> to take full advantage of one’s citizenship rights. </p>
<p>However, at the time, not only did most people believe the formerly enslaved had no desire for education, they also thought black Americans did not possess the <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=382">mental capacity to pursue it</a>. </p>
<p>The fervent efforts of the formerly enslaved to establish colleges in the post-bellum South ran counter to these beliefs, although the founding of <a href="http://www.lincoln.edu">Lincoln University</a> in Pennsylvania in 1854, even prior to the Civil War’s conclusion, proved beyond doubt that black Americans were keen to seek education.</p>
<p>The point is, HBCUs played a crucial role in transforming how America was to understand and envision what it meant to be black following the Civil War. And throughout the years, these schools have served as incubators for future generations of freedom fighters. </p>
<p>It was HBCUs, for example, where the carefully crafted educational strategies that birthed the mass protests and civil unrest of the 1950s and 1960s <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5939918.html">emerged</a>, a fact that many people today may fail to appreciate adequately. </p>
<h2>Contributions of black colleges</h2>
<p>HBCUs influenced the character of the black liberation struggle. They trained the leaders and served as key sites of exchange where ideals about the best paths toward freedom took shape. </p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www2.howard.edu/about/history">Howard University</a>, an HBCU founded in 1867, as an example. Without this school, our understanding of equality and access would be quite different. </p>
<p>It was Howard graduates who would use the law to challenge the idea that separate educational facilities could ever produce equal outcomes for black Americans. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91487/original/image-20150811-14995-vxbnyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thurgood Marshall trained in a black university environment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagobart/12707881243/in/photolist-kmXdmK-9ayLg-4RoeCR-4RoeSk-6vgUjD-avMUjn-avMUKZ-avMUSH-avQyZ9-avMR6R-avQx13-avMSoK-avMSSt-avMUcB-avMQTk-avMWVz-avQvJN-avQwmN-avMUZ6-avMUrk-avMUEp-avQxvG-avMRHT-avQytm-avQwyf-avMV7t-avQuVJ-8JHbcR-8JLdSh-8JHb28-sDsSPU-8JLdWJ-8JHaQg-8JLdsb-8JHawt-8JHaqz-8JHb6i-8JLe15-8JLdEd-ivaVq5-6vsPN7-89cnjY-4PrBRu-6vsPfm-6voCnv-9axYf-41zpBG-tgY3M8-avMRuF-avQv7o">PROBart Heird</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charles Hamilton Houston, vice dean of Howard Law School, viewed the school as a laboratory that would <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=7834">“create the select and talented corps of lawyers who would work to fulfill constitutional promises.”</a> </p>
<p>So it did. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.biography.com/people/thurgood-marshall-9400241">Thurgood Marshall</a>, the lawyer who would argue the Brown v Board of Topeka case and later became a Supreme Court justice, emerged from this environment. He came up with a brilliantly constructed critique of racially segregated education that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the system. </p>
<h2>Past and present challenges</h2>
<p>Predictably, black schools faced many challenges. From the start, defenders of white supremacy have understood HBCUs as spaces intricately connected to the fight for civil rights and black liberation. </p>
<p>To impede these schools’ ability to become training grounds for equality, political foes did all they could to make sure HBCUs <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6086-in-the-face-of-inequality.aspx">remained underfunded, underresourced and understaffed</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, southern state legislative bodies routinely diverted money away from HBCUs, leaving the schools to operate on <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1004277916909">razor-thin budgets</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1920s, foundations urged the schools <a href="http://upress.missouri.edu/product/Dangerous-Donations,434.aspx">to limit their curriculum</a> to politically neutral yet economically relevant subjects such as domestic service and agriculture, which were not likely to inspire students to challenge a system that denied their humanity. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, some of these challenges continue to this day. </p>
<p>Data from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities indicate, for example, that between 2010 and 2012, the state legislature underfunded South Carolina State University by more than <a href="http://diverseeducation.com/article/69727/">US$6 million</a>. </p>
<h2>Impact of black colleges</h2>
<p>Questioning the contemporary relevance of HBCUs is the modern-day equivalent of such efforts.</p>
<p>It is true that only about <a href="http://hbcu-levers.blogspot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions-faqs-about.html">9%</a> of all blacks enrolled in college attend HBCUs. And I can agree that if we understand the role of HBCUs only in terms of the numbers educated, then these schools are not as relevant to the majority of black Americans as they once were. </p>
<p>However, if we are to understand the role of HBCUs as vehicles of freedom and black liberation, then they still have an important role within our society.</p>
<p>In fact, when compared to predominantly white colleges, HBCUs continue to have a disproportionate impact on the production of college-educated black Americans. They may account for approximately 3% of all colleges and universities, <a href="http://www.uncf.org/sections/MemberColleges/SS_AboutHBCUs/about.hbcu.asp">but well over 20% of black Americans</a> continue to earn their degrees at these schools. </p>
<p>And about 25% of black Americans earning STEM degrees do so at HBCUs. </p>
<h2>Why we need black colleges today</h2>
<p>So, I find it troubling when people question their contemporary necessity. </p>
<p>Also, doubts about these schools’ continued relevance underestimate the relationship between HBCUs and the struggle for black liberation within America that continues to this day.</p>
<p>Students of these schools have been at the forefront of peaceful protests. Learning from past efforts that <a href="http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2980#.VcoprHh7B94">used art as a tool</a> for black liberation, students at Morgan State University created a <a href="http://news.morgan.edu/morgan-students-look-from-the-inside-out-to-show-the-value-of-black-lives/#.VaUteZNViko">large-scale photo installation</a> around the theme of “Black Lives Matter.” </p>
<p>Students from Howard University gathered in front of the White House to protest the <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/11/26/hbcu-students-unite-protest-ferguson-grand-jury-decision/">grand jury decision</a> in the Michael Brown case. Likewise, Morehouse College students staged a march and, in conjunction with students from nearby Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College, also held a peace rally protesting the decision.</p>
<p>The contemporary <a href="http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/RacialWealthGap_1.pdf">economic</a>, <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-rights-act-resource-page">political</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1">social precariousness</a> of black life in America indicates that we need more settings like HBCUs, not fewer. </p>
<p>If we as a society come to recognize that black lives matter, then we must do the same for the venues that cultivate and nurture these lives as well.</p>
<p>In fact, no set of institutions better exemplifies the American ideals of civil rights and equality than historically black colleges and universities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa E Wooten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Historically black colleges account for only 3% of all colleges and universities. But, even today, 20% of black Americans earn their degrees at these schools.Melissa E Wooten, Associate Professor of Sociology, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/227762014-02-06T03:03:20Z2014-02-06T03:03:20Z‘Stand Your Ground’: America’s violent culture written into law<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40830/original/yvn98fkm-1391640829.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stand Your Ground laws, used as a defence in high-profile US murder trials, implicitly justify a new breed of vigilante who has little regard for human life.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fibonacci Blue</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this week, a Florida court began hearing arguments in the murder trial of an older, white man accused of murdering an African-American teenager. </p>
<p>If you think this sounds familiar, you’re right. The case of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/murder-trial-opens-for-florida-man-killed-black-teen-over-loud-music_n_4718840.html">Mark Dunn</a>, who, in 2012, fatally shot Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old African-American, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/echoes-zimmerman-expected-fla-trial-22334297">has been compared</a> to the 2013 murder trial of George Zimmerman over the shooting of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-accumulated-injustices-of-the-trayvon-martin-case-16061">Trayvon Martin</a>. It has attracted international attention because, like the Zimmerman case, it raises the thorny issue of the “Stand Your Ground” defence in the American justice system.</p>
<p>Dunn claims he approached the teenagers playing loud music in their car. When he asked them to turn the music down, an altercation ensued. Dunn, claiming he saw one of the teenagers holding a gun, pulled out his own gun and fired eight times into the car. </p>
<p>He and his girlfriend then drove away, leaving Davis to die in the back seat of the car. Police later found no weapon at the scene. </p>
<p>Florida’s Stand Your Ground law <a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html">provides</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dunn’s attorney has <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/03/justice/florida-loud-music-murder-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t2">said</a> that Dunn acted in self-defence, and was behaving:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… as any responsible firearm owner would have under the same circumstances.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The case once again highlights the problematic nature of Stand Your Ground laws, which have been <a href="http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/states-that-have-stand-your-ground-laws.html">implemented</a> in almost 20 states across the US.</p>
<h2>Evolution of Stand Your Ground</h2>
<p>Stand Your Ground is a direct contradiction to the English common law tradition known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_retreat">“duty to retreat”</a>. When faced with a threat to one’s security or life, a person had a duty to remove themselves from the scene. </p>
<p>If this proved impossible, then self-defence – even if it resulted in the death of the attacker – was acceptable under the law. The one exception to this rule is known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine">castle doctrine</a>, where a person has no duty to retreat within their own home.</p>
<p>Challenges to the duty to retreat have a long history in America. Erwin v. State (1876) introduced the term “true man” to describe the duty of the American man to stand his ground against any threat to his person. In State v. Gardner (1905), judge Edwin A. Jaggard argued that the relationship between the “frontier” character of rural America and the deadly power of guns combined to make the duty to retreat doctrine unrealistic.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, states across America adopted variations of the castle doctrine, and the right to Stand Your Ground in a violent altercation became the norm in many states. In 2005, however, Florida enacted wide-reaching changes to its criminal laws in three main areas: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>In certain circumstances, it was no longer necessary to prove that one was in reasonable fear for one’s safety; </p></li>
<li><p>The Castle Doctrine was extended to include any place a person had a right to be. This included vehicles and any dwelling where the person had permission to be; </p></li>
<li><p>A person using this defence was now immune to criminal prosecution.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Racial discrimination in criminal justice</h2>
<p>The Zimmerman and Dunn trials raise serious questions about the effectiveness of Stand Your Ground laws and the disproportionately negative impact they are having on African-Americans. Several recent <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2079878">studies</a> have shown that states with Stand Your Ground laws have actually had an increase in homicides as opposed to the expected decrease. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40831/original/zy5mm599-1391641312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guns and the law have a long, intertwined history in the US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Donald Lee Pardue</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One explanation, given by Harvard professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. in <a href="http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=e655f9e2809e5476862f735da10dc772&wit_id=e655f9e2809e5476862f735da10dc772-5-3">prepared testimony</a> before the US Congress, is that Stand Your Ground laws have:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the invidious potential to encourage the very sort of vigilantism that ordinary law eschews. Indeed, it encourages a Wild West mentality that protects the ‘true man’ who engages in battle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Both Zimmerman and Dunn have demonstrated precisely this kind of vigilante mindset when justifying their actions in fatally shooting another human being. Zimmerman’s role as part of his neighbourhood watch formed an essential part of his defence. That he was out protecting his neighbourhood explained in part why he approached Trayvon Martin the first place. </p>
<p>Dunn, in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/18/jordan-davis-shooter-michael-dunn_n_4123805.html">letters</a> written while in prison, has claimed that black people are “thugs” and:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… if more people would arm themselves and kill these [expletive] idiots, when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behaviour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stand Your Ground laws have exacerbated the already prevalent <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377">discrimination</a> in America’s criminal justice system. Another <a href="http://urban.org/uploadedPDF/412873-stand-your-ground.pdf">recent study</a> assessing the impact of these laws found that a white man killing a black man is six times more likely to be acquitted when using the SYG defence. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://urban.org/uploadedPDF/412873-stand-your-ground.pdf">opposite</a> is true if the defendant is black. Stand Your Ground implicitly justifies a new breed of vigilante who has little regard for human life. What is even more troubling is that when a young black man is the target of this type of violence, it cannot be separated from patterns of racial discrimination in the American criminal justice system and society more broadly. </p>
<p>As more states adopt these laws, it seems inevitable that there will be more cases where young men like Martin and Davis are killed simply because they are young and black.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been amended since publication.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kumuda Simpson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Earlier this week, a Florida court began hearing arguments in the murder trial of an older, white man accused of murdering an African-American teenager. If you think this sounds familiar, you’re right…Kumuda Simpson, Lecturer in American Politics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162532013-07-22T13:31:04Z2013-07-22T13:31:04ZObama, Cameron and Trayvon Martin: ‘Boyz n the Hood’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27786/original/htb5qn7m-1374398280.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Barack Obama's comments that murdered teen Trayvon Martin 'could have been me' continue a long trend of Obama using 'intimate politics'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Shawn Thew</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Barack Obama’s “Trayvon Martin could have been me” <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/19/trayvon-martin-obama-white-house">speech</a> has been heralded as a political landmark. American commentators <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/07/barack_obama_speaks_out_about_trayvon_martin_the_president_s_remarks_on.html">have lauded</a> its seamless fusion of different voices: “a president, an African-American, and…a former law professor”, all acquainted with the vulnerability of black youth, spoke as one. The trio adeptly explained why the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-accumulated-injustices-of-the-trayvon-martin-case-16061">George Zimmerman acquittal</a> has sparked outrage, without directly criticising the verdict.</p>
<p>Striking as it was, the speech was not entirely unexpected. It’s a thoughtful coda to the “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/23/obama-trayvon-martin_n_1375083.html">address</a> of March last year. And it echoed Obama’s <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/father-newtown-victim-introduces-obama-senate-vote-defeat-background-check-deal-article-1.1319708">controlled rage</a> as he spoke alongside grieving Newtown parents, after Congress refused to pass stricter gun control laws. Meaningful action against the prevalence of firearms, and the circumstances that make people feel as if they need them, would surely stand as a satisfying legacy for Obama’s second term.</p>
<p>Intractable as those predicaments are, there’s reason for hope. The fate of youth is a potent rhetorical device.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Hanging_Tree.html?id=mqG8a74SkRMC&redir_esc=y">The Hanging Tree</a>, historian Vic Gatrell examines why English public executions ended in 1868. The passing of what had been a popular source of entertainment began with the hanging of 14-year old <a href="http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng608.htm">John Amy Bird Bell</a>. Bell was no Trayvon Martin. He had deliberately murdered a younger boy for money. And he wasn’t the first, or even the youngest child to be hanged in England. But, according the Gatrell, this was the first time that English society contemplated the body of a child swinging from a noose and thought: “is this how civilised societies should behave”?</p>
<p>Bell was made to be different, by no lesser figure than British politician and Australian colonial pioneer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wakefield-edward-gibbon-2763">Edward Gibbon Wakefield</a>. Gatrell credits Wakefield with instigating the abolition of public execution. Thinking about Wakefield’s story today after Obama’s speech, it seems likely that this leading figure in Australian history was driven by his own “I could have been Trayvon” moment.</p>
<p>In Wakefield’s poignant story of Bell’s dispatching, even the hangman was touched by a tiny teen who barely understood what was happening. Gatrell regarded this account as a watershed in political theatre; an effort to shift law with emotion-laced reason.</p>
<p>Wakefield was understandably fervent about crime and punishment: he’d served three years for kidnap. In a period where the poor were often hung for lesser sins, a “there but for the grace” shudder must have rippled through him at Bell’s demise. At any rate, his outrage at the injustices of the English penal system eventually contributed to a dramatic change in attitudes to the law.</p>
<p>While in opposition in the UK, David Cameron set about rebranding the Conservative Party, trying to connect with young victims of circumstance. While visiting Manchester to discuss the UK’s own problems with guns, Cameron’s entourage walked past a group of teenagers in hooded tops. One of them, a certain Ryan Florence, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1543715/Hoodie-needs-a-role-model-says-Cameron.html">pretended to shoot</a> the future prime minister. Amidst the outcry that followed, Cameron called for greater understanding of people like Florence, warning against stereotyping “hoodies”, in what became known as the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13669826">“hug a hoodie”</a> policy.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/27790/original/sskff8s3-1374408910.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In contrast to Obama, British PM David Cameron was unable to have his ‘could have been me’ moment to connect with troubled youth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When journalists tracked Florence down, the errant teen <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6389277.stm">scoffed</a> at the idea that an old Etonian knew much about Manchester housing estates. But in my research with young people in neighbouring Liverpool, it did seem that Cameron was on to something. In that work, teenagers who identified as hoodies often spoke about feeling afraid. One young man told me that when he walked around in a black hood, it was usually because he just wanted to fit in with his peers. Nevertheless these young people knew the world viewed their style with suspicion, so in the end they just felt trapped.</p>
<p>Cameron’s problem was that he couldn’t muster that “could’ve been me” moment. But the knack of articulating the political present with youthful experiences has become a common electoral talent. The matter of what US presidential hopefuls did or did not do as young people (their <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/14/opinion/bill-clinton-s-vietnam-test.html">war service</a> or their <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/30/news/30iht-bill_1.html">drug habits</a>, in Bill Clinton’s case) has featured in several elections over the last quarter of a century. The idea that political commitments depend on youthful moments where life could have taken a wrong turn has become a familiar motif.</p>
<p>Added to this, the accelerating reach of media has encouraged what sociologist James Stanyer calls a new form of intimate politics, and Obama is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-more-years-that-obama-tweet-and-the-politics-of-intimacy-10606">master practitioner</a>. Politicians are used to “letting us in” to their private lives, such that the ability to blend political and personal personae is a de facto requirement of office. According to Stanyer, nobody does it better than the 44th President of the United States.</p>
<p>So, the “Trayvon could have been me” speech pulsated with the history of political communication. Getting back to Gatrell, one of the motivations for his 600 plus page study is the fact that eventually opinion and law on public execution changed really quickly. </p>
<p>Will future historians write of a similar “Obama effect”?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article draws on research and case studies from Andy Ruddock's recent book, "Youth and Media".</span></em></p>Barack Obama’s “Trayvon Martin could have been me” speech has been heralded as a political landmark. American commentators have lauded its seamless fusion of different voices: “a president, an African-American…Andy Ruddock, Senior Lecturer, Research Unit in Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.