BLM: Addressing Violence Against African Americans

This essay is about the representation of a well-known hashtag #Blacklivesmatter. The point of this will be to address that this is more than a hashtag, this is a serious issue to be addressed. This essay will go through many articles to prove the point. Black Lives Matter is an activist platform that focuses on ridding the violence shown towards those of the African-American race. Presumably, everyone has heard of these following men and women that helped to form this hashtag and what it works to stand for: Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland.

These are known to be some of the most well-known unjust cases. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old boy, was shot by George Zimmerman on February 26th of 2012, because according to him he was acting in the order of self-defense. Trayvon was killed after coming back from the gas station having only an Arizona tea and a bag of skittles with him, and no form of weapons.

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Zimmerman was released, because there was no proof to show that he could have acted in the means of self-defense. Although, the ironic part being that Zimmerman was never known for having a clean record. In July 2005, Zimmerman was arrested and accused of resisting an officer with violence.”

In August of 2005, Zimmerman's wife filed for a restraining order due to reports of Domestic violence. These were before the shooting of Trayvon Martin. As for the trial itself, Zimmerman was charged then released about a year later. After the shooting, in September of 2013 he was charged for domestic violence against his new wife and her father, along with the threatening use of a gun.

The charges were dropped not even 2 months later. In November 2013, Zimmerman was arrested for a house disturbance. As clearly illustrated, Zimmerman had no reason to shoot someone in the reason of self-defense, because unless he was looking in the mirror there was no one that was a threat to this world. Eric Garner is about the “arrest” of a man who was accused of selling single cigarettes without a tax stamp. When the police officers went to arrest him for this they saw Garner as "resisting arrest" in which case the police officer wrapped Garner in a chokehold.

Even when Garner pleaded "I can't breathe”, the officer continued, although any kind of chokehold restraint is prohibited by the NYPD. After the chokehold the officer pulled him to the ground while four other officers continued to restrain him pressed against the sidewalk. Garner still continued to plead "I can't breathe”, until he had lost consciousness and an ambulance was brought to the scene. Due to his irregular breathing they were not allowed to perform CPR. Eric Garner was pronounced dead July 17th of 2014 an hour later in the hospital. The acquittal of Pantaleo, the main officer responsible, led to the outburst of the ridiculous actions taken towards a man never claimed as innocent or guilty. Michael Brown follows the case of an 18 year old shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Police officers were headed to the area for a reported theft of cigarettes. As the officer eyes Brown from his car he is shot while walking with his friend. The issue here being that an officer is not legally allowed to shoot anyone from the behind. (As you can see two cases so far have defied the rules of being a cop, and no action was towards them, ironic right?)

It was also shown that Michael Brown was unarmed as well when shot, and he had at one had resisted and fell to the ground with his hands up, and was still shot. Michael Brown was announced dead August 9th of 2014. As for the most recent and well known issue a part of the platform Black Lives Matter is Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland, just a regular 28 year old woman headed on her way to a job interview in Texas, in which she presided (See, I have to use past tense when referring to any of the aforementioned victims as they were all killed). Bland was pulled over for the failure to use her turn signal. Bland is threatened immediately after being pulled over, she is told to take her cigarette out, get out of the car as a Taser is pointed at her while the officer Encinia says "I will light you up." All of this seems quite unnecessary though for the failure of a turn signal. The issue being that it is. All the officer should have done was handed Bland a ticket, and let her continue on her with her day, but as she is forced out of her car the officer also wrestles Bland to the ground as she resists. The officer was put on administrative leave (which means she was on basically a paid vacation for again not following the procedures of being a cop).

The issue arises following her arrest. 3 days later in her cell Bland was found hanged by a trash bag (which shall I mind you are not accessible to the prisoners, meaning there must have been some kind of homicide in this case rather than a suicide). Another issue being that it is clear that her mugshots, which should be taken immediately when entering the prison, were taken after the committed "suicide." This can be depicted through the fact that you can tell she is clearly lying on the ground compared to the mugshots of other inmates. Her nostrils also appeared to be flared out and you are allowed to see up them, and her dreadlocks hit the background (the floor) rather than hanging down. Many have also stated that the mugshots released by the media were also photo shopped, and in the real ones she has her eyes closed, as she is dead when the picture is taken, 3 days later after being in jail, about 71 hours later than a mugshot should be taken. The activist platform does not only focus on addressing the violence clearly depicted, it is also to show the racism that we are surrounded by, or in other terms white privilege. If you are unaware of the term white privilege it refers to the array of things following. White privilege is never worrying about being a victim of a law officer, or being dressed up and mocked, or being labeled by the way you dress, being considered a debater rather than an "angry black person", having the higher likeliness to get a job with a criminal record over the black man or woman with no criminal record, or being constantly watched to see if you will steal something or shoot someone, or being labeled as "like another person", or become an object of racism (because I'm sure we all know that there is no such thing as reverse racism, or racism towards someone who has never been oppressed).

An actual example of this would be a single mom who was arrested for "abandoning" her kids at the food court while she interviewed for a job 30 feet away from them, compared to white parents who will not go to prison for locking their kids in a cage. White privilege is also the hashtag created to diminish the idea of Black Lives Matter, and that hashtag being All Lives Matter. The platform was never designed to exclude anyone, but rather to be included, while All Lives Matter was only made to mean that All White Lives Matter. All of these lives that they pretend to refer to are not constantly threatened by systematic racism. White privilege is Dylann Roof, who shot and killed 9 people in African American Church, and was given Burger King as lunch in prison, while Sandra Bland was killed (Wait. I obviously meant to say committed suicide). This is meant to show how apparent it is that black lives are treated unfairly, and still don't get equal rights, and how this should be fixed. Black Lives do matter, and maybe we should start proving that.