First written 11th June 2020. Submitted unsuccessfully to Quadrant and Catallaxy Files.Black Lives Matter has its own website. That’s no surprise. The About page summarises BLM (Emphasis mine.)
#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.
We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.
We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
The element that jumps out from this is the trigger for the founding of BLM: the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Trayvon Martin wasn’t murdered, or so the jury found. George Zimmerman, described as a “white Hispanic,” insisted that he had acted in self-defence, and that explanation was accepted by the jury in the teeth of a ferocious campaign of black racism – the most public legal circus since the trial of O. J. Simpson. The United States’ most prominent black citizen, President Barack Obama, poured petrol on the flames. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Only in the sense of being black, of course.
By way of comparison, imagine that, in 2028, Catholic churches in Australia are being burned by #WeBelieveYou mobs enraged in the first instance by the eventual acquittal of George Pell, and that the WBU madness is spreading to the USA and the UK.
George Zimmerman was acquitted eight years ago. Today, he is suing Trayvon Martin’s family, their lawyer and Florida prosecutors – a total of eleven defendants – for $100m in damages. Zimmerman had been cleared by police until the release of a recorded interview with Trayvon’s putative girlfriend, who was on the phone to him up to the time he attacked Zimmerman. Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer, had spoken to the girl, Diamond Eugene, and in the call she alleged she had heard “wet grass sounds” and that she had heard Trayvon saying “Get off, get off.” A year later, a letter came to light, signed by Diamond Eugene, with a version of the night’s events consistent with Zimmerman’s story. It had been written by Diamond and given to Trayvon’s mother, who kept it from police. Zimmerman alleges that the woman who testified in court, Rachel Jeantel, claiming to have been the woman on the phone, and to have dictated the letter and signed it using a pseudonym, was in fact the half-sister of Brittany Diamond Eugene, who was actually Trayvon’s girlfriend. He alleges that all of the family and Ben Crump were aware of the fraud, and that the prosecutors either knew or were culpably negligent in allowing the substitution.
The allegation of witness fraud were first raised by a film-maker, Joel Gilbert, in The Trayvon Hoax, a film he made laying out in excruciating detail (and irrelevant dramatic asides) the process of locating Brittany Diamond Eugene. The accusations are explosive; especially in that the whole BLM organisation was constructed on this “black narrative” of race-driven murder of an innocent youth.
This lawsuit is probably the most important case now before an American court, notwithstanding recent SCOTUS decisions. The BLM boondoggle is threatening to dismantle the political and social order in the United States. The Red&Black Guards are on the rampage, and they have the support of powerful vested interests, who imagine that they can bridle the tiger when it is convenient for them. Good luck with that.