Democracy Dies in Darkness

National

How the Black Lives Matter

movement went
mainstream

Protesters in front of Los Angeles City Hall last week. (Philip

Cheung for The Washington Post)

By Jose A. Del Real, Robert Samuels and Tim Craig

June 9, 2020 at 3:36 p.m. GMT-5

The three words were once a controversial

rallying cry against racial profiling and police
violence. Now, “Black lives matter” is painted
in bright yellow letters on the road to the
White House. Celebrities and chief executives
are embracing it. Even Sen. Mitt Romney, a
Republican former presidential candidate,
posted the phrase on Twitter.

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As consensus grows about the existence of

systemic racism in American policing and
other facets of American life, longtime
organizers of the Black Lives Matter
movement are trying to extend its momentum
beyond the popularization of a phrase.
Activists sense a once-in-a-generation
opportunity to demand policy changes that
once seemed far-fetched, including sharp cuts
to police budgets in favor of social programs,
and greater accountability for officers who kill
residents.

“It’s now something where the Mitt Romneys

of the world can join in, and that was
something unimaginable back in 2014. That is
the result of six years of hard work by people
who are in the movement and have put
forward so many discussions that really
changed people’s hearts and minds,” said
Justin Hansford, who was an activist in
Ferguson, Mo., during the unrest after the
police killing of an unarmed black teen there.
He is now the executive director of the
Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at
Howard University.

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[D.C. Council passes police reform legislation,

prompted by protests]

But activists’ demands to “defund” police

departments have already become a point of
division politically, with some prominent
people who have expressed support for the
movement — such as Romney (Utah) — saying
they do not support what they see as an
extreme policy position. President Trump has
already suggested that his presumed
Democratic opponent, former vice president
Joe Biden, would be forced to cut funding to
police under pressure from the left, even
though Biden has also said he does not
support defunding the police.

Where the conversation lands will be a test of

just how mainstream Black Lives Matter has
become.

The movement was sparked by the death of

Trayvon Martin at the hands of a
neighborhood-watch volunteer in Florida in
2012 and coalesced two years later amid
demonstrations over the death of Ferguson 18-
year-old Michael Brown, who was fatally shot
by a white police officer. The protests drew an
aggressive ​response by law enforcement,
which stunned and radicalized a generation of
activists.

Since then, the deaths of unarmed African

Americans at the hands of police have become
a mainstay of news coverage. And the
developments of recent weeks show how the
movement has embedded in the mainstream
in ways that would have been unthinkable just
a few years ago.

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Americans have turned out for what

researchers are calling the most sweeping and
sustained protests in the country’s history,
with demonstrations in all 50 states and the
District of Columbia over two weeks.
Corporate giants such as Walmart have added
messages pledging a commitment to racial
equality to their websites.

Last week, National Football League

Commissioner Roger Goodell said that “we
were wrong for not listening” to players who
peacefully protested police brutality “and
encourage all to speak out and peacefully
protest.” He has not clarified what that might
mean for athletes who kneel during the
national anthem at football games, or for Colin
Kaepernick, the quarterback most closely
associated with the gesture, who was
ostracized by the league for protesting police
brutality.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll released

Tuesday found that 69 percent of Americans
say the death of George Floyd in the custody of
Minneapolis police last month reflects a
broader problem in the way black people are
treated by police, compared with 29 percent
who say it was an isolated incident. It reflects a
striking shift in public opinion since 2014,
after Brown’s death, when a Post-ABC News
poll found that 43 percent of Americans
believed recent high-profile police shootings
reflected a broader problem and that
51 percent said they were isolated incidents.

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And the current protests appear to have

bipartisan support — 87 percent of Democrats,
76 percent of independents and 53 percent of
Republicans say they support the
demonstrations today, according to the Post-
Schar School poll.

“Seven years ago, people thought that Black

Lives Matter was a radical idea,” Alicia Garza,
the co-founder of the Movement for Black
Lives, told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the
Press” on Sunday. “And yet Black Lives Matter
is now a household name and it’s something
being discussed across kitchen tables all over
the world.”

It did not always seem likely — or even

possible — that the American public would
reach such an agreement about the role of
racism in policing.

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There was a time when it seemed to

Dominique Alexander, an activist in Dallas,
that the Black Lives Matter movement might
collapse under the weight of scrutiny about the
tone of its message and accusations about
“reverse racism” against white people —
accusations its organizers strongly rejected.

Alexander recalled the rally he organized in

Dallas during the summer of 2016 to protest
the deaths of two black men — Philando
Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in
Louisiana — who were fatally shot by police.
That day, a sniper who was not affiliated with
the protesters killed five Dallas police officers.

Critics pounced, amplifying long-running

accusations that the movement’s organizers
encouraged anti-police violence. Black Lives
Matter was intentionally a decentralized and
diffuse movement that came together on the
principle of the phrase itself. Still, activist
leaders throughout the country had to figure
out how to address the issue. Most asserted
that the movement was against violence and in
support of life — Alexander’s group held a
prayer vigil for the slain officers the following
week. Only 100 people showed up, a mere
fraction of the numbers a week before.

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“That next year was a struggling year, because

people got scared with all the rhetoric going on
against us,” Alexander said. “But we needed to
keep going, and then people realized we were
going to have another hashtag, another person
that was killed [by the police], and another
one, and that brings us to right now.”

The tenor of public discussions about race and

racism in the United States changed
dramatically later that year, amid a
presidential election in which race relations
had become a central theme. Alexander and
others say Trump’s election prompted a larger,
more diverse group of Americans to back the
movement.

More recently, at a time of already heightened

tensions because of the coronavirus pandemic,
Floyd’s death unleashed a flood of energy and
frustration over the direction of the country.

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Jade Ashford, a 24-year-old college student

from suburban Maryland who recently
attended a protest in Washington, said she
recalled anguished family discussions about
race after Martin’s killing in Sanford, Fla., in
2012. But it was not until last month, when
video of Floyd began to circulate, that she
decided she wanted to participate in the
protests.

“I felt like when we had the Obama era, things

were getting better,” said Ashford, who is
black. “But then I realized we had this whole
other side of America who didn’t look like me
or like me for wanting to speak up.”

Veteran activists across the country have made

a similar observation — that Trump, who was
not yet in office when Black Lives Matter
activists began to organize, has brought
attention to racism in the United States among
white people who dislike the president.

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“I think a lot of the Black Lives Matter

movement’s rhetoric about how pervasive
racism was in America seemed far-fetched to
many people,” Hansford said. “But what our
expectations are and what our norms are
about race, all of that has changed because of
Donald Trump and his election.”

Trump, who famously said there were “very

fine people on both sides” at a white-
supremacist demonstration and
counterdemonstration in Charlottesville in
2017 has tried to combat perceptions that he is
racist by touting the strong pre-pandemic
economy, which he said benefited African
Americans, and his signing of a criminal
justice reform bill.

The current protests are happening against the

backdrop of a global pandemic that, in the
United States, has disproportionately hurt
minorities. The crisis has helped call attention
to the persistent resource gaps in black
communities, said Jason Purnell, a public
health expert in St. Louis, including
insufficient access to health care and high
rates of poverty.

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That, in turn, has forced fresh questions about

where government dollars are allocated and
what share of that money goes to police
departments compared with other spending
priorities such as mental health care and
education.

“We’re quite frankly expecting police to stand

in for behavioral health systems that we
haven’t fully funded and equipped, to stand in
for social services and social work functions.
But the police themselves will tell you that
they don’t feel equipped to deal with that,”
Purnell said. “We punish people for having
problems rather than helping to address the
problems that people have.”

Thenjiwe McHarris, a strategist in the

Movement for Black Lives, the coalition
formed by the three women who coined the
phrase “Black lives matter,” said much of the
movement’s work has happened away from
well-covered protests and speeches.

Activists across the country have developed

relationships with state and local leaders while
lobbying for governments to spend less on
policing and more on housing, mental health
and social work. These efforts have resulted in
drug intervention programs in the District and
the dispatching of social workers to 911 calls in
Dallas, McHarris said.

Some of the activists who rose to prominence

in Ferguson have become regulars on cable
television and maintain large followings on
social media. Others have joined academia,
where they help shape discourse on a variety
of social issues.

Chelsea Fuller, spokeswoman for the

Movement for Black Lives, said the
movement’s core idea — that black lives are
valuable — has benefited from its embrace in
popular culture, particularly the
“unapologetically black” aesthetic, which
merged black history and civil rights causes
with fashion and art. It seeped into Hollywood
with shows such as “Black-ish,” and Ava
DuVernay’s film “13th” and “When They See
Us” series, which highlight the consequences
of structural racism.

McHarris said that she is pleased to see the

movement broadening but that it is
“meaningless and harmful” when people join
marches and post “Black Lives Matter” but do
not advocate for substantive changes in policy.

One growing point of contention are the calls

on the left to “defund the police,” a shorthand
for redirecting police budgets to social service
programs and other community
infrastructure.

“It would be nuts to think we’re going to

reduce our commitment to the police,”
Romney told reporters Monday evening,
referring to calls to slash police budgets. “At
the same time, finding ways to reduce a bias
that may exist on the part of individual officers
or to reduce systemic racism, those are high
priorities, and it should be aggressively
considered and pursued.”

On Monday, Biden’s campaign put out a

statement that the candidate believes police
departments need additional funding to help
diversify their workforces and to invest more
heavily in body cameras.

“Vice President Biden does not believe that

police should be defunded,” said Andrew
Bates, a spokesman for the campaign. “He
hears and shares the deep grief and frustration
of those calling out for change, and is driven to
ensure that justice is done and that we put a
stop to this terrible pain.”

Scott Clement, Emily Guskin, Jessica

Contrera, Peter Jamison and Kyle Swenson
contributed to this report.

George Floyd’s death:

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Protests have spread across the nation
Updated June 9, 2020

Live updates on George Floyd’s funeral

and nationwide protests

Big majorities support protests over

Floyd killing and say police need to
change, poll finds

Investigation: What video shows about

the clearing of protesters for Trump’s
photo op

‘Defund the police’ gains traction as

cities seek to respond to demands for
police reformShow More

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