Britney Packnett has penned a powerful piece of Time asserting the continued existence of Black Lives Matter and the fight for racial justice.
It has been 17 months since Michael Brown lost his life in Ferguson, Mo., and protestors took to the tear-gassed, blood-stained streets near my home in St. Louis county to call for justice and revive this black freedom movement. Since then, the Black Lives Matter movement has gone from an unpopular effort to a cause célèbre. And along the way, some have predicted the movement’s demise.
After all, we challenge traditional norms of social movements. Our movement is decentralized and creative. We stand in Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, but we have no single leader. We innovate with new media, modernize civil disobedience, and maintain pressure in the streets and the policy table simultaneously.
And I can tell you, unequivocally, that we aren’t going anywhere.
