We say “Black Lives Matter” but shit, the fact that matter is, we just Black matter to them, this shit keep happening.

In a uniquely Aboriginal articulation of the global Black Lives Matter movement, Batdjala rapper Birdz sings not of Rice, Garner, Martin or Bland. Instead he sings of Mulrunji, Elijah, Yock, Hickey and the Bowraville children – each of whom died in seemingly different circumstances.

What ties them together, however, is the indifference to their deaths and the apparent disposability of Black lives in Australia.

Birdz performs his song Black Lives Matter for NAIDOC Week live on triple j.

Much of the media attention in Australia surrounding the US-led Black Lives Matter movement has focused on police brutality and the murder of young African-American men on public streets, captured on smartphones and dashboard cameras.

Meanwhile, the murders of Aboriginal people in Australia have been less visible. If mentioned at all, Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the state are variously framed as “suspicious”, “unknown”, “accidental” or “inevitable”, despite the presence of CCTV footage, protests, perpetrators, witnesses, coronial inquiries and a royal commission.

Further reading: Deaths in custody: 25 years after the royal commission, we’ve gone backwards

Where murder is not even considered manslaughter, where Black witnesses are deemed “unreliable”, where royal commission recommendations aren’t implemented, where coroners refuse to exercise their power to make recommendations, and where White murderers of Black children enjoy the privilege of being unnamed for their own protection, it is blatantly clear whose lives really matter in Australia.

A print ad for GenerationOne that was released in March 2010. GenerationOne/Coloribus

And there really is nothing mysterious about the deaths of Aboriginal people in Australia, either.

The settlers have long insisted that our death was destined, that our race was doomed, and that we, as a people, were vanishing. Our disappearance was

inevitable because it was necessary to sustain terra nullius, the foundational myth of Australia. Black deaths rationalised White invasion and land expansion in Australia.

In a little over 100 years of White presence, they did not feel it was necessary to include us in their Constitution. Having been so successful in their work, they were anticipating our imminent departure – not to another land, but rather to be buried in our own lands.

In our dying, rather than in our living, our bodies mattered most to the colonial project.

Black lives matter: in death and deviance

White indifference to Black suffering has a long tradition in Australia. It remains ever-present, even in the supposedly benevolent contemporary policy agendas of “Indigenous Advancement” and “Closing the Gap”.

We are told by the Australian government:

The Australian government made Indigenous affairs a significant national priority and has set three clear priorities to make sure efforts are effectively targeted – getting children to school, adults into work and building safer communities.

Clearly, what is actually targeted here are Black lives and the unsafe Black body – which, we are told, are incapable of working or attending school. We see the gaze transfixed not on the systems that create disadvantage, but on remedying the behaviours of Black people through compliance to systems that have always failed us – and, let’s be honest, have deliberately excluded us.

Focusing on Black lives in this instance both lays blame on, and makes claims of, Black deviance from White norms, values, standards and expectations. The deviation from Black lives to White lives sanctions a “new” targeting of Black lives by the state, and necessitates the continuation of White control over us and our lands.

Black deviance (statistical or otherwise) has been a useful narrative device for the settlers.

Black deviance supports claims of White benevolence, in which White people are simultaneously positioned as our aspirational goal and saviours. It suggests to us that Black lives matter to them. Yet in emphasising our deviance, the sins of a system that White people uphold and benefit from remains unnamed and unnoticed.

Only last month we witnessed the routine deployment of Black deviance to sustain White virtue in the Queensland Department of Education and Training’s own marketing.

The Black lives we see are not her students, but they need not be. Black lives only matter when they prop up claims of White intellectual and moral superiority, and it is in a state of deviance that our bodies, that our troublesome children and their neglectful parents, are suddenly hyper-visible.

But Black deviance doesn’t just make settlers look good: it rationalises them taking greater control over the lives and lands of Aboriginal people. Let’s not forget that it was via mythologies of Black deviance that the Northern Territory Emergency Response (otherwise known as the Intervention) was introduced and the Racial Discrimination Act suspended.

Despite the Intervention’s inherently racist nature, it was framed as a benevolent act to Black women and children. Through the narratives of Black deviance and allegedly neglectful #IndigenousDads, attention was shifted away from the actual abuse of Aboriginal children within the youth justice system in the Northern Territory.

Further reading: Ten years on, it’s time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention

Black deviance has worked well for the Australian health system too, in rationalising the enduring and appalling health inequalities that Indigenous peoples suffer. Much like the education system, the health system asserts a public moral stance of benevolence to avoid scrutiny over its ongoing refusal to care properly for Aboriginal people.

The coronial inquiry into the tragic death of Ms Dhu in police custody ruled that it was also medical staff who “disregarded her welfare and right to treatment during her three visits to hospital in as many days”.

The failure of the health system to provide care to Aboriginal people is nothing new. And access to basic health care has been a long and hard-fought battle led by Indigenous activists across Australia over many decades. It was not until 1989, after two centuries of invasion, that the first National Aboriginal Health Strategy was devised.

Since 2013, the current National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan has had, as its vision, a health system free of racism for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But a cursory glance at coronial inquiries into Aboriginal deaths in hospitals in recent years reveals any number of preventable deaths that came about through an indifference to Black lives and Black suffering.

From the excessive use of restraints to the refusal to provide appropriate health care, the names of the deceased remain unknown to most Australians – as do the crimes of the healthcare professionals responsible, thanks to the health and justice systems that protect them.

Even in death, descriptions of Aboriginal victims at the hands of the state frequently focus on Black deviance as a mitigating factor.

Vernon Ah Kee/Milani Gallery

Black deviance operates as an alibi for racism and White supremacy. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, where Black deviance was successfully deployed to deflect attention away from the role of police brutality.

The inquiry found that not one of the 99 Aboriginal deaths investigated was a result of “unlawful, deliberate killing of Aboriginal prisoners by police and prison officers”.

Instead, we were told that 37 of these deaths were attributable to disease, while 30 were self-inflicted hangings and 23 were caused by “other forms of trauma, especially head injuries”. Another nine were associated with dangerous alcohol and drug use.

Consequently, much of the attention around Black deaths in custody has focused on the apparently inevitable deaths of sick Aborigines rather than the violence of the state. But when police officers threaten Aboriginal men with tying a noose around their neck and publicly mock Aboriginal people who have died in custody as a result of alleged “self-inflicted hangings”, it is little wonder that Aboriginal people are sceptical.

Black lands matter

White benevolence really does feel brutal for Blackfullas in this country. So, it is hardly surprising that the Black Lives Matter movement, with its emphasis on countering racism and White supremacy, has a certain appeal for Blackfullas.

Co-founder Alicia Garza explains that the movement seeks to tackle the “deep-seated disease” of racism through a deeper conversation around citizenship:

We really need to be talking about this question of citizenship, which I think is huge. I feel like what Black folks are fighting for in this moment is what we’ve been fighting for the whole time – which isn’t citizenship, like papers, but it’s citizenship like dignity. Like humanity. Right? And access.

Despite the promise of Black Lives Matter, it has not been taken up as a central political movement by Blackfullas in Australia. Perhaps it is because, as a people who are both Black and First Nations, we cannot embrace an emancipatory agenda that is silent about the significance of the relationship between Black lands and Black lives.

Blackfullas are not seeking a revitalised citizenship that recognises our dignity and humanity – we are insisting upon our sovereignty as First Nations peoples.

We refuse to talk about our lives independently of our land. We remind them every day that we are still here in this place – and it is their presence on our lands that poses the real problem, not our lives.

We refuse to appeal to the benevolence of the colonisers for our lives to matter, because we know that their existence on this continent remains legally predicated upon our non-existence.

That’s why I’m with Birdz on this one:

Shit. The fact that matter is, we just Black matter to them.

You can read the first article in the series here.

The post We just Black matter: Australia’s indifference to Aboriginal lives and land appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM) will be awarded the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize in November. The Movement for Black Lives, of which BLM is part, has galvanised the globe from California to London to Australia, and #BlackLivesMatter has proven to be a rallying cry for a new chapter in the long Black Freedom struggle. But how much do you really know about this important movement? Here are 10 things you should know about its origins, leaders, and purpose.

1. BLM IS ABOUT LOVE

Black Lives Matter started with a love letter.

In 2012, 17-year-old , unarmed Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch who felt Travyon, walking home after buying a pack of Skittles at a nearby service station, was ‘out of place’ in the middle-class area. Zimmerman was acquitted for all charges.

Alicia Garza retells the experience: “Trayvon could have been my brother. I immediately felt not only enraged, but a deep sense of grief. It was as if we had all been punched in the gut. Yet soon people shrugged, as if to say: “We knew he was never going to be convicted of killing a black child,” and “What did you expect?””

Turning to Facebook, Alicia wrote a ‘Love Letter to Black Folks’: “We don’t deserve to be killed with impunity. We need to love ourselves and fight for a world where black lives matter. Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.”

In a matter of moments, fellow community organiser Patrisse Cullors created the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, and Opal Tometi created the website and social media platforms that soon connected people across the country. Black Lives Matter was born, and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter started spreading like wildfire. A year later, it went viral during the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, when people took to the streets with a simple demand: Stop Killing Us.

“As we say ‘Black Lives Matter’, you see the light that comes inside of people from Black communities and other communities. People are like, ‘I’m going to stand on the side of Black lives.’ You see people transforming, and that’s a different type of work. For me, that is a spiritual work, a healing work. What a great time to be alive.”

Patrisse Cullors

This movement was born out of love, and love always wins.

2. BLM WAS A THING BEFORE IT WENT VIRAL

In 2013, steadily and strategically, the co-founders started to build the scaffolding of a nationwide on-the-ground political network.

Enter Ferguson. On August 9th, 2014, just a few weeks after Eric Garner died in a NYPD officer’s chokehold in New York City, Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by twelve police bullets in Ferguson, St Louis. Police left his body in the street for four and a half hours, steps away from his mother’s house.

The events that followed Mike Brown’s death have often been described as ‘the catalyst’ for the revolution-like protests that followed. “I can’t breathe” and “hands up, don’t shoot”, the last words of Eric Garner and Mike Brown, were chanted loudly – people young and old mobilised to mourn and protest police brutality and racism. They were met with tanks, riot police and tear gas.

For the Black Lives Matter Global Network, it meant that the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag went viral on social media. Black Lives Matter became a slogan that leapt into the streets. Technology accelerated the pace of organising people, and allowed the movement to amplify their calls in ways that were impossible before.Over 500 members from across the US joined Patrisse Cullors in a #BlackLivesMatter ‘freedom ride’ to Ferguson to support the movement in St. Louis.

We were humbled when cultural workers, artists, designers, and techies offered their labor and love to expand #BlackLivesMatter beyond a social media hashtag.

Alicia Garza

For some ‘Black Lives Matter’ was a wakeup call, for many others the words gave voice to a deep seeded awareness of what it felt like to be black in America.

Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry that captivated the country, galvanising a national movement for dignity, justice and respect.

3. BLM IS ABOUT MORE THAN ‘JUST’ POLICE BRUTALITY

Black Lives Matter is an intervention.

It is an affirmation of the value of Black life, and a condemnation of the racism that devalues it.

On their website, BLM writes: When we say Black Lives Matter, we are 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. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors says: “Black Lives Matter is our call to action, it is about replacing narratives of black criminality with black humanity, a tool to re-imagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live, and a tool for our allies to show up for us”.

Black Lives Matter demands that American society reconsider how it values black lives by identifying where and how black life is cut short, whether in viral videos of police brutality, the self-fulfilling prophecy of the criminal justice system, or in areas where black communities disproportionally face homelessness, poverty and economic disparity.

Black Lives Matter is about structural change. It is about sparking dialogue and changing the conversation: If it is true that black lives matter, then what does that mean for police reform, for our justice systems, for schools, for jobs, for infrastructure, and for economic development? If black lives matter, then what needs to change in politics and in the media?

To steer these conversations, over 50 organisations – including the Black Lives Matter Global Network – united in the Movement for Black Lives to launch “A Vision for Black Lives” in August 2016, ahead of the Presidential election. Following a year-long consultation process, a series of 40 policy goals calls for divestment from law enforcement (including ending the death penalty and mass incarceration) and investment in black communities through reparations, educational reform, jobs and infrastructure, and increased community control of neighbourhoods.

4. BLM IS ABOUT A THING CALLED ORGANISING

Protests are just one tool in a big toolbox of tactics for change.

BLM’s disruptive actions and protest strategies are modern and bold, and regularly make media headlines. But whilst protests may get lots of media attention, organising is what builds sustainable, resourced movements. Organising includes building critical communities connections, convening member-led organisations where everyday people can strategise together, and cultivating local leadership. Organising includes creating space to reimagine what a fair and just society looks like, and to develop political thinking and ideas. Organising includes finding allies and co-conspirators, and building collective power to demand changes. Organising also means fostering peoples’ skills to hold office bearers accountable for their decisions, and creating space for the celebration and humanisation of Black lives.

BLM’s persistence and evolvement has breathed new life into the legacy of the black freedom struggle, reenergising older activists who are eager to connect with a new generation of organisers.

I identify as an organizer versus an activist because I believe an organizer is the smallest unit that you build your team around. The organizer is the person who gets the press together and who builds new leaders, the person who helps to build and launch campaigns, and is the person who decides what the targets will be and how we’re going to change this world.

Our folks have continued to organize locally, not just hit the streets. Many of our people are thinking about how to enact a political strategy. How do we build black power in this moment? How do we actually get people in office?

It’s not a hashtag that built the movement. It was organizers, activists, educators, artists — people who built an actual infrastructure so that a movement can exist and have life. 

Patrisse Cullors

5. BLM IS NOT JUST A #HASHTAG, IT’S A GLOBAL NETWORK 

For Alicia, Patrisse and Opal, #BlackLivesMatter was never meant to be ‘just’ a hashtag or social media meme. Long before the protests that grabbed the world’s attention,  the Co-Founders started to organise people across the country, encouraging a broader and deeper conversation about what justice and dignity for black people might look like in an era of increasing inequality, mass incarceration and relentless police violence—and how people could join forces and build the power needed to achieve it.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network now has over 40 chapters worldwide, scattered across the US, Canada, the UK and with a growing presence in South African and Australia.

Activists for black, brown, and Indigenous rights around the world have adopted the Black Lives Matter slogan alongside homegrown movements against racism and police brutality.

Last month, BLM marked its four-year anniversary and released a report about its guiding principles, challenges, and plans for the future, along with a snapshot of where its member organisations have been.

“Four years later, we still declare with conviction that Black Lives Matter everywhere.”

Patrisse Cullors

6. BLM IS LEADERFUL

Many people have called Black Lives Matter the civil rights movement of a new generation. There is a great deal of nostalgia in comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but if it’s up to the Network, this movement will look very different.

The Founders are committed to building a movement that relies less on the establishment voices of a single or few very charismatic, cisgender men. Rather, they nurture a decentralised movement from the bottom-up: A movement that encourages different voices to emerge and shape their leadership based on experiences and needs rooted in the community they organise. The Network is truly a grassroots movement with a commitment to a ‘leaderful’ structure.

It is in this spirit that the three Founders have accepted the Sydney Peace Prize for the Black Lives Matter Global Network:

The Sydney Peace Prize is an affirmation and reminds us that we are on a righteous path. Accepting this award is about our people on the ground striving for justice every single day. It’s truly meaningful to be recognized in this way.  We’ll continue to push forward until structural racism is dismantled and every Black life matters. It’s our duty in times like this to keep our eyes steadfast on the freedom we deserve.

Opal Tometi, Co-founder Black Lives Matter and Executive Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)

7. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER

The Black Lives Matter Global Network was founded on the values of inclusivity and love.

Black Lives Matter means ALL black lives matter and are creators of this space. Queer Black lives, Trans Black lives, formerly incarcerated Black lives, differently-abled Black lives, Black women’s lives, immigrant black lives, Black elderly and children’s lives. We rise together.

The Founders want the faces of this movement to reflect the change they strive towards in their own communities, which is that all black lives matter, regardless of their gender, class, sexual orientation, or age. Everyone’s contribution is valid as long as people commit to uphold a number of Guiding Principles. These include working “collectively, lovingly and courageously”, making space for queer leadership, respecting diversity, practicing empathy, and working towards an intergenerational network.

Black Lives Matter is committed to “(re)building the Black liberation movement”: the Network supports those who were previously on the margins and invisible from the public eye – women, LGBTQIA people, undocumented immigrants, people with disabilities, and people with records – to take centre stage.

8. BLM DOES NOT SAY THAT ONLY BLACK LIVES MATTER

When people counter Black Lives Matter’s call for justice with the phrase “all lives matter,” there is undoubtedly a fallacy is this response.

While all lives should matter, this is a utopia as we do not currently live in a world where all lives are equal. The statement “Black lives matter” is not an anti-white proposition. Contained within the statement is an unspoken but implied “too,” as in “black lives matter, too,” – it is a statement of inclusion rather than exclusion. Only when Black lives matter will all lives matter. Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation.

Therefore, to say “all lives matter” in response to Black people saying “Black lives matter” is actually saying that Black lives don’t matter.

“But we’re a group that’s looking at the totality of anti-black racism and its effects on communities of color,” Cullors says.

Black Lives Matter sprang from a place of love, and inclusivity is at the very heart of their important work. A common misconception is that Black Lives Matter is only a trendy hashtag or that it only fights police brutality or vigilante violence against black people. BLM is not about saying yes to one identity, but about looking at how all marginalised people are impacted by Trump and his regime. BLM looks at the totality of anti-black racism and its effects on communities of color, collaborates with other progressive coalitions (sometimes under the banner of ‘The Majority‘) and supports other minority groups. For example, they have stood in solidarity with the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, and were amongst the first to gather at airports to protest President Trump’s Muslim ban, declaring:

“We must rise in solidarity whenever and wherever necessary. (…) We know that these attacks do not live in a vacuum and that our issues are connected. This fight is for all who believe in justice.”

 

9. BLACK LIVES MATTER FIGHTS WHITE SUPREMACY EVERY DAY

White supremacy, both the visible and more insidious invisible incantations of it, is alive and well across the globe. The rise of Trump in the US saw the emboldening of hate groups across the US. To garner votes and stoke anti-establishment flames, Trump latched on to the ideology of white supremacy and incentivised violence on the campaign trail, promising his supporters — some of whom carried the banners of Nazism and Klansmanship — he would “pay for the legal fees” of anyone who got violent with anti-Trump protesters.

While Trump can certainly be credited with fanning the flames of white supremacy, it is undeniable that violent racial inequality is woven into the very fabric of the American story (as is the case here in Australia). The sickening violence at the  white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, made visible structural imbalances and privileges that have historical roots and continue to divide a nation and drive inequality. It is clear that white supremacy is not on the fringes of our society – it is in the White House and in Trump’s Cabinet, but also in our work places, living next door to us, and serving us our morning lattes.

“To be shocked really means folks have an ahistorical analysis of this country. What we saw in Charlottesville, and what we’ll continue to see across the country as white nationalist groups rise up and take to the streets, is that this is very much the fabric of American culture.” 

Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors

Black Lives Matter is working across geographical and issue areas to call attention to white supremacy and build sustainable, resourced movements to significantly reduce it. Organisers are taking the fight to their own backyards, organising people in local communities, having courageous conversations with people who would not otherwise have courageous conversations with us, or encouraging our allies to have those conversations in our stead.

10. BLM RESONATES HERE IN AUSTRALIA

We can’t talk about Black Lives Matter without looking at our own backyard.

Racism and systemic discrimination is all to prevalent in Australia. Whilst the struggles are different in many ways, various communities feel a strong resonance with the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.

As BLM Co-Founder Alicia Garza, who in 2016 spoke with Stan Grant at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, says: People in Australia tend to highlight how big BLM is in the States, but Australia has some serious, serious issues around Black lives mattering.”

Australia struggles to come to terms with its past and fails to right ongoing wrongs. Australia’s First Peoples have fought for justice and dignity for decades, very few people know about Australia’s past of slavery or ‘blackbirding‘ of which our South Sea Islander community is still feeling the repercussions, and Australia’s treatment of refugees and migrants, whether on Australian soil or in overseas detention centres, reeks of racism and discrimination.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network declared “we receive this award with tremendous gratitude and in solidarity with organizers throughout Australia who, in the face of egregious oppression, fightback against the state and proclaim that all Black Lives Matter.”

Particularly Australia’s First Peoples continue to endure systemic inter-generational injustice and trauma.

Most of the 339 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths have been gathering dust for years, yet imprisonment rates for Indigenous Australians are at an all-time high. In the Northern Territory and Western Australia more than 80 percent of the prison population is Indigenous, and the number of deaths in custody is increasing. In Western Australia, Indigenous suicides are eight times the national rate, and children as young as eight years old are suiciding. Since Kevin Rudd’s Apology, children have been removed from their families four times as often than during the Stolen Generations.

When Ms Dhu died after being jailed for unpaid fines, and when Elijah Doughty’s killer was found not guilty of manslaughter, communities around the country used ‘Black Lives Matter’ to demand justice for all Black victims.

Senator Patrick Dodson, 2008 Sydney Peace Prize Laureate, strongly supported the choice of the Jury: “This movement resonates around the globe and here in Australia, where we have become inured to the high incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It’s as if their lives do not matter. When there is ignorance, hostility, discrimination or racism, and they are allowed to reign unchecked, then we are all diminished.”

The post 10 things you should know about Black Lives Matter appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

“Building the kind of people power to organize our country into a safe place for Black people — one that leads with inclusivity and a commitment to justice, not intimidation and fear.“

Last year’s presidential campaign trail banter was not unlike that of election year’s past, in that it was full of nasty, backhanded, gender-based undercuts aimed at delegitimizing opponents and drawing out emotional responses at the ballot box. Noticeably different from previous year’s strategies, however, was the Trump campaign’s deliberate courting one of America’s oldest and biggest threats to a civil and just world: white supremacists.

To garner votes and stoke anti-establishment flames, Trump latched on to the ideology of white supremacy and incentivized violence on the campaign trail, encouraging his supporters — some of whom carried the banner of Nazism and Klansmanship — to physically harm people, promising at a February 2016 rally to “pay for the legal fees” of anyone who got violent with anti-Trump protesters. Trump used political dog-whistles to signal a 21st century ideological war, one that has also included hate speech and deadly violence.

This past weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, made visible what many organizers and activists have been warning since the 2016 campaign season: Donald Trump promised more death, disenfranchisement and deportations — and now he’s delivering on that promise. The violence he will inflict in office through through policy, and the permission he gives for others to commit acts of violence, is just beginning to emerge.

White supremacy is a web of violent and abusive behaviors bolstered by white nationalists, racist elected officials, violent police and law enforcement, corporate money, and you.

The good news is that we’re not helpless; there are many things we can all do to fight white supremacy. Some of these things are changes we can make to our everyday lives, while others are issues that need to be addressed on a systemic national scale. But we need to know exactly where to begin — and what brand of white supremacy we’re dealing with at every turn.

It’s important to remember that white supremacy is not just people in hoods, nor can it be reduced to only people who are poor, rural and white. White supremacy is a web of violent and abusive behaviors bolstered by white nationalists, racist elected officials, violent police and law enforcement, corporate money, and you. Yes, you. And me, too. White supremacy is an insidious spectrum ideology, so most of us perpetuate it even if we don’t mean to.

If we want to win this battle, we need to open our eyes to all the symbiotic ways white supremacy touches each and every one of our lives — and then come up with the best course of action to fight it.

1. Organize Courageous Conversations

Black Lives Matter, and the Movement for Black lives more broadly, are working across geographical and issue areas to call attention to white supremacy and build sustainable, resourced movements to significantly reduce it.

For some of the most explicit brands of ideological white supremacy — like that espoused by the white supremacist who plowed into anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, VA last week, killing local activist Heather Heyer — organizers are taking the fight to their own backyards, organizing people in local communities, having courageous conversations with people who would not otherwise have courageous conversations with us, or encouraging our allies to have those conversations in our stead. For example, take a cue from the Dream Defenders and host a Day of Dinners and ask people to “open their hearts and homes to start a new conversation about the country we want and a future worth fighting for.”

We must reckon with the anti-blackness of America’s history that led to this political moment. And we must get justice for those hurt along the way.

The same organizing we’ve been doing for decades is being replicated all over the country. Organizing that includes building and convening member-led organizations where everyday people can strategize together about how to build power for ourselves. Organizing that holds the officials we elect to office accountable for their decisions. Organizing that demands a just and fair society for us all. Building the kind of people power to organize our country into a safe place for Black people — one that leads with inclusivity and a commitment to justice, not intimidation and fear.

Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images

In other ways, we are challenging white supremacy by helping bring democracy within reach. Organizers from Greensboro to St. Louis are creating opportunities for civic engagement — some organizers are running for political office themselves and others pushing candidates to use the Movement for Black Lives Vision for Black Lives Policy Platform. Anyone in the US can send this platform to their legislators and ask them to use it to drive change through their campaigns.

Additionally, Black organizers are training to make ideological interventions through the media to help transcend barriers to empathizing with and understanding Blackness and the plight of Black communities in America. For example, through Channel Black, organizers are supplementing tried-and-true, on-the-ground organizing tactics with media interventions like correcting misinformation about who movement is and what we stand for, and putting members of the movement front and center.

By increasing the diversity of faces and opinions debating issues that impact America’s most oppressed, we are reducing racial bias and prejudicial treatment by law enforcement, vigilantes, and everyday people.

2. Pressure Elected Officials

A less explicit, but equally devastating, brand of white supremacy involves our elected officials turning a blind eye to systems of oppression that directly, and often physically, harm people of color — like when elected officials knowingly harmed thousands of Flint, Michigan, residents by giving them a water supply tainted by lead and other poisons, which killed a dozen and left many others with lead poisoning and lifelong chronic illness; years later, officials still refuse to take responsibility. In response, organizations like Color of Change are using digital organizing and campaigns to mobilize everyday people and put pressure on decision makers.

The importance of these efforts cannot be underscored enough — we must reckon with the anti-blackness of America’s history that led to this political moment. And we must get justice for those hurt along the way.

You can pressure your elected officials by showing up to their committee meetings, flooding their voicemails and emails with your questions and concerns (and kudos when they’re deserved), and by supporting organizations who hold them accountable with your dollars and time.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Democratic frontrunners Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams are giving Black people and other people of color hope for a political experience that is dignified and where we can see ourselves, our families, and our values reflected — even if it is an imperfect process. However you feel about the electoral process, having policy makers who are eager to make important interventions in Congress is critical to ensuring that white supremacists have less — not more — power.

3. Demand Justice

Police brutality and violence and bias within the criminal justice system is the brand of white supremacy that the most people turn a blind eye to, either because solutions feel intimidating and out of reach, or because the assumption of security is too comfortable to question. Every year, people are killed by law enforcement, correctional officers, immigration thugs, security guards, and violent vigilantes. And every time an enforcement officer or vigilante kills someone they’re meant to protect and is acquitted, that is white supremacy in action. All of America must take responsibility for and contend with our deadly policing system. All of us.

This political moment may feel new, but we’ve been here before. There isn’t a difference between the so-called Alt-Right and neo-Nazis, and racist confederates of the days when Black people were chattel slavery — we are talking about the same exact thinking. And as long as it has existed, Black organizers and their allies have been here to combat it.

The question is, are we the same nation that turned a blind eye as statues of Confederate soldiers were erected, and prisons were built to incarcerate African Americans at five times the rate of whites — or are we different? Are you different?

This articles was written by Shanelle Matthews, Director of Communications at the Black Lives Matter Global Network, and first appeared on Bustle on 16 August.

The post What Black Lives Matter Organizers Are Doing To Fight White Supremacy At Every Level appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

In the US, the Black Lives Matter campaign is forcing a long-overdue reckoning with that country’s history, with (in the wake of the Charleston massacre, in particular), activists launching a new conversation about the Civil War iconography that litters much of the South.

Already, the Confederate flag’s gone from the South Carolina state house. In Kentucky, talk’s turned to the removal of a Jefferson Davis statue. In New Orleans, pressure is building on the memorial to Robert E Lee while Memphis ponders the future of its multiple statues of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. In communities across the south, public history is suddenly up for debate.

The fissures revealed by the Adam Goodes controversy suggests the need for a similar project here. As it happens, in his new book Australian Confederates, journalist Terry Smyth draws out some fascinating connections between Australia and the American south.

myth focuses, in particular, on the 42 Australians who, in 1865, secretly enlisted to fight for the slave-owning states when the Confederate ship Shenandoah docked in Port Phillip Bay. In passing, however, he acknowledges the broader significance of the Civil War, which opened sudden opportunities for another nations to export agricultural crops.

As historian Kay Saunders has said, the northern blockade of Confederate cotton and sugar meant that “Queensland was regarded potentially as a second Louisiana”.

Aspiring local planters tried to seize the moment, inducing British mill workers to immigrate and establish a local cotton industry. But they quickly discovered that men from England’s industrial towns would not accept the conditions prevailing on plantations in the Australian rural north.

“In 1863,” Smyth writes, “shipping magnate and entrepreneur Robert Towns established a cotton plantation on the Logan River, in Queensland. Convinced that the venture would never turn a profit if he paid white man’s wages, he sent a schooner to the South Pacific to recruit Islanders. The ship returned with 67 Melanesian men who were put to work picking Towns’ cotton. ‘Kanakas’, they were called – originally Hawaiian for ‘free man’ but used by whites as a derogatory term akin to ‘nigger’.

“Although Towns’ islander labourers were offered wages, food and housing and a promise they could return home if they wished, the practice of so-called indentured labour, as it spread throughout eastern Australia, soon degenerated into a form of slavery called ‘blackbirding’.”

Australian South Sea Islanders at Farnborough, Queensland, circa 1895.

Between 1863 and 1904, 62,000 South Sea Islanders were brought to Australia, landing in Brisbane, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, Innisfail and Cairns. The majority of the indentured labourers came from today’s Vanuatu, with a substantial proportion from the Solomons, as well as smaller islands. Some came voluntarily (even accepting multiple trips). Others did not – and varying degrees of deception and outright coercion were used by blackbirders to persuade them.

By the 1890s, the so-called “Kanakas” were providing 85% of the workforce for the sugar industry.

The conditions the Islanders faced in Australia were extraordinarily harsh.

Smyth describes a notorious case in which “a certain John Tancred was charged with stealing an islander boy named Towhey, the property of Arthur Gossett. The complainant swore he could prove his ownership of the boy because he had branded him not once but twice – on the leg and on the side – which he demonstrated to the court. The judge fined Tancred 10 pounds for theft, and Gossett walked way with his young slave in tow.

“The press report of the case heartily approved of the outcome, helpfully suggesting: ‘perhaps it may not yet be too late for the Assembly to insert a ‘branding’ clause in the Polynesian Labourers Bill.’”

Not all sugar growers conducted themselves like southern slave owners. But, by definition, indentured labour in Queensland was, as the academic Tracey Banivanua Mar argues, “a legalised system that bound mainly young men to three years of coercive labour under physical conditions considered to be fatal to Europeans, and in standards of accommodation and care that were largely negligent and often fatal”.

Between 1868 and 1889, Islanders’ mortality rate in Queensland was something like 19%. There’s no mystery as to why. In a July 1880 discussion of high death rates on plantations owned by R Cran and Company, the liberal Queenslander newspaper explained that the “the islanders were being killed mainly by overwork, insufficient or improper food, bad water, absence of medical attention when sick, and general neglect”.

If this history isn’t generally known, we shouldn’t be surprised.

At federation, the fate of the Islanders – many of whom had by that time lived in Australia for decades – was hotly contested. Edmund Barton, the first prime minister, argued for their deportation in order to preserve the racial purity of White Australia. In doing so, he explicitly referenced the experience of the American south.

“The negro cannot be deported now because of his numbers, and because his race has become rooted in American soil,” he said. “We do not propose that either of these conditions should ever arise in Australia.”

Thus a key piece of legislation in the first ever parliament was the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, which mandated the forcible deportation of 7,500 Pacific Islanders and banned the entry of any other Islanders after 1904.

“The country did not feel the need of the imported nigger before he came and his loss will not be felt when his gone,” explained the West Australian Sunday Times.

“We do the nigger no injustice by deporting him to his native land in better condition than when he left it.”

What does this have to do with Adam Goodes? A recent survey by regional newspapers in Victoria showed a great majority of respondents saw nothing racist about the hostility directed by fans at Goodes.

Godfrey Charles Mundy’s depiction of the 1838 Slaughterhouse Creek massacre. Illustration: Godfrey Charles Mundy/Australian War Memorial

In the US, many whites have reacted to the Black Lives Matter campaign with similar incomprehension. They’ve never had any trouble with the police – and they don’t see why the experiences of African Americans should be any different.

The debate about southern history taking place across America matters because it provides that missing context.

As Brent Staples says in the New York Times, the confederate monuments were mostly erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the period in which the former slave states were introducing, usually with great violence, so-called Jim Crow laws to abolish voting and other rights for African Americans.

The statues, in other words, were an adjunct to a racialised terror enforced by the police as much as by the KKK. That’s what Angela Davis means when she says “there is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan”.

In the same way, white Australians might think nothing of being called an “ape”. But Goodes’s response to the taunt arises from a history that shares far more with the US south than we’d like to think.

In 1960, Faith Bandler, who would become a crucial campaigner for Aboriginal rights, met the legendary African American singer and polymath Paul Robeson during his only Australian tour. Robeson was the child of a slave.

So, too, was Bandler. Her father had been blackbirded from his island in the New Hebrides and then had escaped deportation by fleeing to northern NSW. Faith grew up in a country town shaped by de facto segregation – and, because of that, always identified with Robeson and other American civil rights activists.

She later recalled her meeting with him:

I had an occasion to … show him a film that was made on the Warburton Ranges. And I shall never forget his reaction to that film, never. It was a film taken on a mission station where the people were ragged and unhealthy and sick, very sick. And we took this film and we showed it to him. [A]s he watched the film the tears came to his eyes and when the film finished he stood up and he pulled his cap off and he threw it in his rage on the floor and trod on it and he asked for a cigarette from someone. Well a lot of people smoked in those days so there was no shortage of cigarettes and [his wife Eslanda] said to me, ‘Well it’s many years since I’ve seen him do that’. He was so angry and he said to me, ‘I’ll go away now, but when I come back I’ll give you a hand’. He was beautiful, but he died and he didn’t come back.

Robeson was a long-time campaigner for African American rights. He knew the appalling conditions in the deep south – but the situation facing Indigenous Australia still moved him to tears.

Indeed, historically, the local press openly acknowledged that Aboriginal people were treated far worse than even the Islanders imported to make Queensland a “second Louisiana”.

For instance, in 1880, the Queenslander launched a campaign against what it called “the sickening and brutal war of races that is carried on in our outside settlements”. This, it said, “is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the aboriginal inhabitants are treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there.”

‘It’s very rare – indeed, almost unheard of – for towns to acknowledge the men, women and children killed not in France but here in Australia defending their land against settlement.’ Photograph: Nla

A prolonged debate ensued in its pages, with some correspondents minimising or justifying the violence, and others providing astonishingly frank accounts of frontier atrocities.

On 2 October 1880, for instance, one contributor wrote:

I am no sentimental black protector, and have lived in this Cook district since 1873, when it was first settled. … We are in this district in a state of open warfare with the natives, and if I met a mob anywhere in the bush I should feel justified in firing on them. But there are things done to blacks and black women by some of the police which equal the Bulgarian atrocities that thrilled Europe with horror. In this district a cattleowner who often has to do his own ‘dispersing’ made a raid about a year ago on the blacks, and captured a young gin. She was brought home to the station, and was employed carrying water from the river to the house during the day, and at night was chained by the leg to a verandah post, to prevent her escaping and to ‘civilize’ her. One of the boys employed on the station took a fancy to her, and she was looked on as his wife.

He goes on to outline, in the polite euphemisms of the 19th century, a horrific account of sex slavery and gang rape.

The series of articles concluded on 20 November 1880 with the editorialist writing:

[P]roperty acquired by conquest, no less than that which is transmitted by inheritance, has its duties as well as its rights, and … we, in common with the other States on this continent, have shamefully fallen short of our duty towards the inferior race whom we have dispossessed. That it should be necessary for any section of the Press, in order to ensure a hearing at all, to argue on purely utilitarian grounds against the policy of deliberate extermination that has been unremittingly pursued hitherto; that it should have been incumbent on us to lay stress, not so much on the wickedness and cowardice as on the unprofitableness of shooting down like vermin the helpless savages whose homes we have invaded – all this is evidence of a blunting of the moral perceptions of our own community such as would appear morbid and unnatural if manifested in any other sphere of human relations.

The peculiar reference to “unprofitableness” probably harks back to a debate in the Queensland parliament in the previous month.

There, on 21 October, the MP John Douglas (who would later go on to become premier), had explained, as Hansard put it:

The colony was now introducing Polynesians, and he did not believe that there was any such great distinction between them and the aborigines of Northern Australia as to prevent the hope that some use might be made of the latter. In Western Australia the natives had been, he believed, in some cases captured, and as prisoners of war had been compelled to submit to a period of pupilage, afterwards becoming useful settlers. … It would be quite possible to take the natives prisoners, instead of shooting down and killing them, though he doubted whether the House would sanction a law by which these people, taken in open warfare, might be kept in a state of captivity. At all events, that would be a more benevolent process than shooting them down and taking their lives. No doubt to shoot them down was the easiest way of getting rid of them.

Here, then, was the liberal position: Queenslanders should cease murdering Indigenous people. Instead, they should enslave them, thus sparing themselves the necessity of blackbirding indentured labour.

That’s the context in which a racialised insult flung at Goodes possesses rather more power than, say, the mean remarks that Andrew Bolt sometimes finds in his comments threads.

In his recent book Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds notes the obvious disparity between Australia’s commemoration of the first world war (something that has now cost nearly half a billion dollars) and the almost complete indifference shown to the frontier wars fought by settlers against Indigenous people, even though the latter possesses far more significance in the development of the nation.

Just as most towns in the American south boast a cairn to the Confederate dead, every tiny community in regional Australia has its a shrine to the dead of the Great War. But it’s very rare – indeed, almost unheard of – for towns to acknowledge the men, women and children killed not in France but here in Australia defending their land against settlement.

As Reynolds says, the Australian War Museum honours farcical engagements like the Sudanese war but makes no reference to the “sickening and brutal war of races” the Queenslander so openly discussed, even though the frontier war was clearly the most important conflict in Australian history.

Tony Abbott famously thinks that, before the arrival of Europeans, Australia was “nothing but bush”. It would be foolish indeed to expect the prime minister to commemorate people he seems to believe never existed.

But what’s fascinating about the debates taking place in the US is that they’re driven by ordinary people rather than politicians. The Confederate flag at South Carolina’s State House was first lowered not by a legislator but by African American activist Bree Newsome, who went to jail as a result. All across the country, it’s Black Lives Matter campaigners who are insisting on a discussion of the nation’s history, precisely because that discussion necessarily intersects with politics today.

The Frontier Wars in Australia were fought out with different tactics in different places at different times. Remembering the conflict thus necessitates localised histories, specific accounts of what was done in specific places. An official statement about the past is all too likely to dissolve into platitudes and empty symbolism.

But a grassroots campaign to identify and commemorate particular histories would take on a different dynamic. It would necessitate an engagement with the community, for a start: a serious public debate about historical injustice. It would also link the past with the present, inevitably posing questions that go beyond the treatment of Adam Goodes into the shocking statistics about, for instance, Indigenous unemployment and incarceration.

Australian history and American history are not the same. But it’s very hard to read, say, Amy McQuire’s account of the death last year of Julieka Dhu in police custody without asking the questions currently being posed in the US: do black lives matter or not?

This articles is written by Jeff Sparrow and first appeared in the Guardian on 7 August 2015.

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“Black Lives Matter is a call to action and a tool where we can re-imagine a world where Black people are free to exist and live, and also as a tool for our allies to be able to show up for us. ”

“[Winning the Sydney Peace Prize] is a tremendous honour, it’s amazing that it’s the first time a movement and not a person has been awarded the Prize. It’s an honour and it shows other people what Black Lives Matter is doing and what we’re trying to do…For some folks who haven’t been paying attention, I hope this will draw their attention to get to know what we’re really about and maybe join and help us to make sure all Black live do matter.”

The Black Lives Matter phrase and hashtag was first coined in a social media post against the acquittal of George Zimmerman, for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin 4 years ago.

The movement against racial inequality and police violence in the US which began as a powerful hashtag has gone international, and Cazembe Jackson is a leader of the movement in Atlanta, Georgia.

He believes the objectives of the movement have universal appeal to People of Colour, the world over.

Listen to the full interview between Cazembe Jackson and Larissa Behrendt below.

This interview first appeared on ABC’s Speaking Out on 9 July 2017

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The founders of The Black Lives Matter Movement — Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi — will be receiving the Sydney Peace Prize. Sydney, as in Sydney, Australia, a country whose reputation includes the colonization of its Aboriginal population.

Similar to the Nobel Peace Prize, the University of Sydney awards individuals who have made marked contributions towards world peace through human rights activism and combating injustice. I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving of this award and humbled by it, than these three amazing black femmes.

The trio has remained pretty low key since they founded BLM in response to the miscarriage of justice that was the Trayvon Martin trial. A wise move considering the speed which the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter” instantly resonated worldwide. They encouraged the statement “black lives matter” to stand on its own volition, and they’re certainly aware that not everyone will appreciate, respect, or accurately report on the work they’re doing.

Although BLM’s decentralized leadership approach has allowed its founding members a level of protection from the senseless scrutiny — from the conservative media and our government (which has a history of gunning down our leaders in their sleep) — the lack of a central figurehead vocalizing BLM’s goals has led to the commercialization of the movement as well as misinterpretations of the motives of the organization. Some folks have run off with the name — printing it on shirts, writing it on walls. More dangerous, some critics, out of sheer spite, have actively sought to muddy BLM’s agenda by labeling it a hate group and calling for BLM’s disbandment.

By virtue of all this, the general public is misinformed. Even French Montana shouted black lives matter for a reason unbeknownst to all of us. And, make not mistake, the reasons why black lives matter activists use that specific phrase are important.

So with this celebration near, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all of the ways BLM is actually a peaceful organization.

Consider, firstly, the inclusiveness of the movement. If you visit BLM’s official site and click on the guiding principles link, you will find a clear list of all the things BLM is, all the variations of blackness and marginalized identities BLM embraces. From unapologetically affirming inter-generational, queer, non-binary and transgender identity to centering the unique struggles of disabled black communities, and so many others.

Unlike its predecessors, such as the Civil Rights Movement, BLM does not have an exclusionary nail in its foundation. The founding members understand that for black lives to matter, all categories of black identity must be recognized. They understand that as a Black person shouting “Black lives matter,” you are subscribing to the fact that all lives will not matter until ALL Black lives matter. Not just the lives that are related to you; not just the lives of Black people like you, or who hold your values. But, all Black lives. The Black lives you appreciate and the Black lives you can’t quite get are deserving of equal respect, without issue.

Consider, secondly, the kinds of events BLM sponsors.  Take a look at this list of ongoing events and initiatives which are actually sanctioned by BLM.

• For mother’s day, Black Lives Matter organized National Black Mamas Bail Out Day to reunite mamas with their families.
• They host teach-ins and panel events nationwide to educate people on their rights and ways to interact with the police. You can attend many of those for free.
• College classes have been created in their name. BLM stays proactive and relevant by providing black people with a safe space to simply exist in an America which refuses to let them.

What about supporting black mothers, hosting nationwide teach-ins, or deepening higher-ed curriculum with BLM-themed readings translates to hate and violence? Nothing. Peace, true peace, demands this kind of work. It’s essential and timely.

Lastly, consider BLM’s trained instinct for self-criticism. Using an intersectional lens to frame the contemporary struggles of Blacks, BLM was the first movement to call out even the most well-meaning Black activists for their phobias, just as Kimberle Crenshaw, the founder of intersectional feminist theory, called out her white women counterparts.

People affiliated with and sympathetic toward the black lives matter struggle know that they are called upon to embody the goals set forth by Cullors, Garza and Tometi. They are required to do more than exclaim “Black lives matter” or add a #BLM to their Twitter bio. They are required to option transformative love and reconciliation over hate, as avenues that lead to real peace.

Real peace is only possible when we draw attention to the invisible worlds that made BLM’s now famous rallying cry necessary. We come closer to its quarters when we take seriously what the name of this struggle has been trying to get across to people of privilege for years: “We matter! Please don’t kill us, someone will mourn us!”

Those who truly understand what the BLM movement is about will continue to work on behalf of the goals discussed above. Furthermore, awarding the founding members the Sydney Peace Prize affirms the goals and the work accomplished by BLM so far have been crucial to any modern peace-building initiative.

To reiterate a point I made earlier, given Australia’s history of colonization and violence towards Aboriginal people, it is refreshing to witness their support of BLM.

But, why stop here? Our question now is, hey Nobel…where you at?

This article, written by Joy Mohammed, first appeared on Wear Your Voice on 26 May 2017. 

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As the Sydney Peace Prize is awarded to the Black Lives Matters movement, Cullors discusses the formation and philosophy of the movement while Rule explains how the group resonates with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, and how it has influenced their campaigns for Indigenous justice. Latoya’s brother Wayne Morrison died in custody in South Australia last year.

Latoya and Patrisse speak about the problems their communities face with policing, surveillance and jailing; the harmful stereotypes that see Black and Aboriginal people as deviant, criminal, violent or needy; how the movement’s campaign #SayHerName stood in support and solidarity with the family of Ms Dhu, who was killed in 2014; and their resolve to use Black Lives Matter as a global intervention to change culture, affirm black humanity, reimagine what a world looks like where all black lives matter, and build the power needed to create change.

For me, seeing the Black Lives Matter movement coming up was quite refreshing and exciting for where we can take it here in Australia. As Aboriginal people we identify as black people as well, so I love that it crosses over boundaries and tries to incorporate what I would call indigenous and native voices. This is very important for our movement against colonial white patriarchy and genocide in Australia. It’s really important to adopt a little bit of the Black Lives Matter movement for our struggles as well.”

Latoya Aroha Rule

The conversation about our movement is global: We have to talk about our global movement. We have to talk about our relationship to Black folks in Brazil, we have to talk about our relationships to Aboriginal and Maori folks, we have to talk about our relationships to Afro-Latino folks who are undocumented. And we are. We are doing that both in or theory and our practices. An that’s powerful. It’s powerful when you get to be a part of a movement that’s trying to make global connections.

Patrisse Cullors

This Podcast was published by The Guardian on May 23, 2017.

Read more about Latoya Aroha Rule’s journey here.

The post BLM’s Patrisse Cullors & Aboriginal activist Latoya Rule: ‘We want to re-imagine humanity’ appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

The prize recognises the work of the amorphous racial justice movement that exists under the catch-all moniker, but has nevertheless managed to unite activists from around the world, including in Australia.

The phrase and hashtag was first used by activist Alicia Garza in a mournful, angry Facebook post following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, in 2013, for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The African-American boy was gunned down by the neighbourhood vigilante while walking home – unarmed – from a trip to a corner store.

I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter,” Ms Garza wrote at the time, “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.

The hashtag gained real prominence though in 2014, after the deaths of two unarmed black men during encounters with police – Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York – which further focused the national and international spotlight on police brutality and the killings of unarmed black men in the US.

The phrase, which is also the name of the civil rights activist organisation founded by Ms Garza and two other black female activists, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, has proved enduringly powerful.

It has been taken up by anti-racist movements around the world – including by protesters in Australia calling for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody –  who feel the lives of black citizens are implicitly or explicitly treated as less valuable than others.

“For me there’s a the level of unapologeticness about it,” Ms Garza said of the phrase this week.

In a context where we’re often told, to not talk about race, that talking about race is somehow divisive, when in fact those of us who are on the losing end of racial relations want people to talk about it because we want to resolve the contradictions of some people having and some people not, of some people being discriminated against or being kept from opportunities.

Ms Garza visited Australia last year and observed some the parallels in the social and economic inequalities faced by both African-Americans and Aboriginal people, particularly on the issue of mass incarceration. Aboriginal youth in Australia are jailed at 24 times the rate of their non-Indigneous peers.

Ms Garza said though there was also a similarity in the attitudes of the broader ambivalence to this inequality.

My impression being in Australia was that people now understand how important Indigenous rights are, but still I think there is a bit of a politeness around what is a pretty serious crisis, particularly just in relation to the conditions that Indigenous communities are facing.

“And I think it’s similar in the US, where the way we talk about race here is that we’ve ‘moved on’ from it, when it’s in fact very salient.”

The phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ has also permeated pop culture and been seized on and inverted by its critics, such as those who chanted ‘Blue Lives Matter’ at the Republican National Convention last year to affirm their support for police officers. A raft of provocative proposed state laws that aim to classify killing police as a hate crime in some US states have been dubbed “blue lives matter” bills.

The Sydney Peace Prize jury’s citation for this year’s winners applauded the movement “for building a powerful movement for racial equality, courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism. And for harnessing the potential of new platforms and power of people to inspire a bold movement for change at a time when peace is threatened by growing inequality and injustice.”

The three women will travel to Sydney to accept the prize at the official ceremony in November, and to deliver the annual City of Sydney Sydney Peace Prize Lecture.

The Sydney Peace Prize prize is awarded each year by the Sydney Peace Foundation, which is located within the University of Sydney and receives support from the City of Sydney.

Past winners include prominent leftist thinkers including author and climate change activist Naomi Klein, journalist John Pilger and philosopher Noam Chomsky, as well as human rights campaigners such as author Arundhati Roy and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

This article, written by Josephine Tovey, first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 23 May 2017

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The movement, which was founded in the US by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2012 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, will be honoured in Sydney in November.

Each year the Sydney Peace Foundation honours a nominee who has promoted “peace with justice”, human rights and non-violence. Past recipients include Julian Burnside, Prof Noam Chomsky and the former Irish president Mary Robinson.

Western Australian Labor senator Pat Dodson, who was awarded the Sydney peace prize in 2008 for his advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, applauded the selection of Black Lives Matter as a movement that stood against “ignorance, hostility, discrimination, or racism”.

“This movement resonates around the globe and here in Australia, where we have become inured to the high incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” Dodson said. “It’s as if their lives do not matter.

“For our communities, the storyline is all too familiar: the minor offence; the innocuous behaviour; the unnecessary detention; the failure to uphold the duty of care; the lack of respect for human dignity; the lonely death; the grief, loss and pain of the family – the coronial report where no one is held responsible for a death in custody.”

Last year’s recipient, Naomi Klein, said Cullors, Garza and Tometi “embody the core principle of the Sydney peace prize: that there will never be peace without real justice”.

“This is an inspired, bold and urgent choice – and it’s exactly what our moment of overlapping global crises demands,” Klein said.

The selection is likely to be controversial with some who associate Black Lives Matter with images of week-long and occasionally violent protests at Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Mike Brown in 2014.
But those images, and the protests themselves, which have been repeated across the United States, only tell part of the story, said co-founder Patrisse Cullors.

“We’re not just about hitting the streets or direct action … it’s a humanising project,” she told Guardian Australia. “We’re trying to re-imagine humanity and bring us to a place where we can decide how we want to be in relation to each other versus criminalising our neighbours or being punitive towards them.”

Cullors said an aspect of that was evaluating the role of police, looking at the underlying causes of incidents which draw police attention and questioning whether police can address the problem.

“The complicated part of this is the question becomes: do we need police? Are police going to give us ultimate safety?” Cullors said.

“In our opinion: no, police are not going to give us safety. We’ve seen time and time again that actually what they do is provide death … In our country, police are the first responders to people with psychiatric issues, police are the first responders to drug use and overdose, police are the first responders to issues of domestic violence.

“And what we have seen time and time again, when they become the first responders, they don’t de-escalate. They actually escalate … When they become the first responders, our family members end up dying.”

Black people made up 266 of the 1,092 people killed by police in the United States in 2016, according to data collected by the Guardian. While more white people were killed, the rate at which black people were killed was three times higher: 6.6 people per million, second only to Native Americans who were killed at a rate of 10.13 per million.

The prize will be awarded to the co-founders at a Sydney Peace Foundation dinner in November. They will also deliver the City of Sydney peace lecture at a public ceremony.

This article, written by Calla Wahlquist, first appeared in The Guardian Australia on 23 May. 

This article was published alongside a Guardian Podcast, titled ‘Black Lives Matter: ‘We’re trying to re-imagine humanity’. Calla Wahlquist talks to Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and Aboriginal activist Latoya Rule, whose brother Wayne Morrison died in custody in South Australia last year. Cullors discusses the formation and philosophy of the movement while Rule explains how the group has influenced campaigns for Indigenous justice in Australia. Click here to listen to the podcast

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By Professor Stuart Rees

In answer to the comment ‘Stand up for Human Rights in Sri Lanka’, a young man wearing a sombrero and an Australian flag draped around his shoulders, responded, ‘Fuck human rights.’

It was 10:05 am on Thursday January 3rd, a hot blue sky day, perfect for the start of the Australia v. Sri Lanka Test Match. In the company of about thirty others, on a pathway some distance from the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), I was attempting to hand out leaflets which said, ‘Don’t Let Cricket Hide Genocide, Boycott Sri Lanka.’

The “fuck human rights” man was followed by other expletives from a few others, so several of the boycott protesters changed tack and tried to be informative, ‘40,000 Tamils slaughtered, do you care ?’ A middle aged couple hurried by, looked straight ahead but answered ‘No we don’t care, we’re going to the cricket.’

Others strode along stony faced, some apparently dismayed by the sight of the protest, some obviously embarrassed at the thought that if they took our pamphlets they might be filmed by the accompanying television cameramen.

To add to the ‘40,000 slaughtered’ plea, I tried, ‘Journalists have disappeared and others have been killed for criticizing the Sri Lankan Government.’ Most people stared ahead and kept on walking but a large, swarthy man in short shorts responded ,’That’s bullshit’ and a few meters behind a smaller man said, ‘Don’t support you mate.’

A more understandable response came from groups of young men daubed in green and yellow, some wearing wigs of curled hair in the same colours. They seemed to think the protesters were supporters of the Sri Lankan team, a perception which provoked their patriotic ‘Ossie, Ossie Ossie, Oi, Oi, Oi.’

With a few exceptions most cricket followers did not seem to want to know about the lives of Sri Lankan Tamils, let alone about any past slaughter.

The task of informing the public had been made more difficult when security guards representing the Moore Park Trust forbade the erection of placards outside a main entrance to the ground which they said was SCG Trust Land. The leaders of the protest were directed to move to a pathway 400 metres distant.

This official Sydney reaction, ‘ Don’t let human rights interfere with cricket’ contrasted with the response of officialdom at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on the opening of the Boxing Day Test when a similar Boycott Sri Lanka protest was permitted at a prominent entrance to the hallowed MCG. There are no regulations about political demonstrations outside the MCG.

That Melbournites might be more sympathetic than Sydneysiders towards protests against the appearance of the Sri Lanka team, could be implied from an Age poll taken on the day after the Boxing Day test . A sample of 650 readers of that newspaper were asked ‘ Should Sri Lanka be banned from world cricket?’ 66 per cent said yes. 34 per cent said no.

The case for boycotting Sri Lanka was listed on pamphlets taken by only a handful of people streaming towards the SCG. At least that small number could have read that the UN has called for a war crimes investigation of the Sri Lankan government over the murder of 40,000 innocent Tamil civilians, that the persecution of Tamils continues and largely explains the numbers of Tamils seeking asylum in Australia.

Former Sydney Morning Herald cricket writer, the late Peter Roebuck, wrote that a TV exposé of the execution, rape and abuse of Tamils had ‘provoked deep consternation’ among Australian cricketers. A heading in the London Guardian said, ‘A Sri Lankan Scandal; Cricket and the Killing Fields.’

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