My Thoughts on the Black Lives Matter Movement

Girl Talk |

Black Lives Matter is a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of Black life (blacklivesmatter.com). According to the organization, “Black Lives Matter means broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state.  The Black lives matter brings to the forefront the ways in which they believe Black lives are deprived of their basic human rights and dignity”.

While Black Lives do matter, I believe we (African American community) do ourselves a grave disservice when we implement a movement that appears to be exclusive rather than inclusive.  The importance or relevance of a life is not based or measured by the color of one’s skin just as poverty, injustice, bigotry, violence and murder is not a color or race but an intolerable act or a unacceptable state of being.

I believe that All Lives Matter and uniting on that front makes our nation stronger. Martin Luther King did not rally just the African American Community in getting his message across during the civil rights movement, he said injustice and poverty anywhere is injustice and poverty everywhere.  Likewise, under no uncertain circumstances does the concept “All lives matter” nullify or diminish the need for legislative reform and accountability in terms of fair sentencing and unjustifiable shooting in the African American community; oh the contraire, statics, facts and history speak to that.

Unlike Black Lives Matter, an All Lives Matter movement is inclusive and signifies Americans not only care about police brutality, but the relentless murders in impoverished communities; it means Americans care about the mass shootings, like Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and SC Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting… It means collectively we mourn the injustice of Trayvon Martin, John Crawford III and the killings of the Mansion murders in DC.

“We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.

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