What started as an outburst of anger against a random case of police brutality grew to claim a prominent place in a centuries-long struggle for the emancipation of communities of colour, to draw a direct ancestry line to epic victories over slavery and segregation.
Intrinsically woven into an unprecedented tangle of 2020 crises, the BLM movement tapped its rage from coronavirus pandemic disparities, fed on quarantine constraints, was exploited by warring political camps for electoral gains and used them in return.
Say His Name
The wheels of history were set in motion on 25 May when Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis policeman, used a chokehold detention technique on George Floyd, an African American man suspected of passing a $20 counterfeit bill. With the officer’s knee pinning his neck to the ground Floyd begged for mercy until he became unresponsive.
"I can't breathe", the man's final words, made a rallying cry for many thousands of Americans who took to the streets from coast to coast, shocked and infuriated by the torment that was captured on video in every disturbing detail. "Say his name!" chanted crowds in New York and Philadelphia. "George Floyd!" responded Seattle and Los Angeles. "Defund the police!", demanded protesters whose appearance at the very gates of the White House reportedly prompted the Secret Service to hastily evacuate President Donald Trump to a safe bunker.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) identified over 7,750 BLM demonstrations in 2,440 locations of all 50 states and Washington, DC between 26 May and 22 August.
Researchers believe that the movement became one of the largest protests in US history "in part because it emerged within a socio-economic environment deeply disrupted by the pandemic" with the African Americans hit disproportionately hard due to their working in front-line jobs, earning less and lacking access to adequate healthcare.
Protesters were mobilised by Floyd's killing but demanded justice for many other African American victims of police violence and racism, including Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Ahmaud Arbery. Even as the campaign went on, more names were appearing on the remembrance list - from Rayshard Brooks, killed in Atlanta to Jacob Blake, shot seven times and severely wounded in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Devoid of a unified command and coherent agenda, protests across the country pressed mostly for the lowest common denominator - a prosecution of culprits and a sweeping police reform, something federal and state authorities swiftly committed to, but almost none went as far as to agree on slashing law enforcement budgets.
"Instead of using strange men with guns to inflict violence on people you reduce harm and prevent it ahead of time by serving people, keeping their basic needs met, creating community-oriented solutions that don’t involve men with guns arresting people", an activist in rebellious Portland once explained the concept of defunding police to Sputnik.
Many BLM activists have a more ambitious goal in mind though. They seek to eradicate the remnants of racist mentality and behaviour permeating American society.
"Getting in an elevator with a white person, you can see the fear by the look on their face. You can see it when you walk to a shopping mall and they get over to the other side of the street. You can see they clasp their purse, lock their doors when they pull out next to you waiting for a bus on the street corner", a black resident of Houston, Texas, told Sputnik on the fringes of Floyd's funeral.
"Microaggressions" they speak about sound like a routine evil, not brazen enough to make headlines, but it poisons - drop by drop - the everyday lives of many African Americans, who are less and less eager to condone it.
Rage and Tears
A Russian reporter was hit by a non-lethal projectile on a night of riots in front of the White House. A foam-tipped sponge bullet, as big as a champagne cork, didn't penetrate skin but left a visible bruise, journalist's first frontline injury in a career that included covering the Second Lebanon War, a military coup in Egypt and multiple rounds of hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
His compatriots and colleagues were attacked, beaten and had their equipment destroyed by law enforcement officers during clashes in Portland. Another crew from a major Russian broadcaster survived an attack of a marauding gang in Philadelphia that was pillaging a footwear store on the margins of citywide demonstrations against another instance of law enforcement brutality.
Protests were frequently hijacked by radicals, marred by violence and looting, police overreaction or inaction. It took the authorities three days to quench the unrest in Washington, DC by enforcing a curfew and deploying thousands of National Guard soldiers, Secret Service and Drug Enforcement agents, Border Protection officers, and policemen of all stripes to patrol the streets, close major intersections, isolate neighbourhoods, disperse crowds and push their remains away from the White House.
The capital police were criticised for being on the defensive at best and allowing violent rioters to reach the gates of the presidential compound, torch buildings, burn cars, smash windows and vandalise historic landmarks in the heart of the city.
"We are tired of this shit. Police brutality over and over again", two African-Americans in similar balaclavas and assault vests told Sputnik after rioters crushed with wooden sticks a Mercedes sedan. "If I die by the police, burn America down. They say George Floyd didn’t want it. How do they know? Did he write it down somewhere?"
In Seattle BLM protesters established around an abandoned police precinct an "autonomous zone", independent of government control. The city authorities were initially supportive of the experiment, but three weeks later forcefully reclaimed the area when it spawned an upsurge of criminal violence, including four shootings with two teenagers dead.
In Portland federal law enforcement agents deployed to protect court buildings against a handful of anarchists soon alienated the entire city, the whitest in the US, by tear-gassing, beating, arresting and shooting indiscriminately scores of people - peaceful and violent protesters, journalists, volunteer medics, human right activists.
Thousands would turn out for nightly demonstrations that embraced BLM rhetorics and aesthetics until the contingent was withdrawn.
Tensions were further exacerbated across the country when counter-protesters stepped in to defend communities and back the police, who they believe needed help as their hands are tied by the politicians. According to ACLED, over 360 counter-protests were recorded around the country, of which 43 - nearly 12 percent - turned violent.
A Sputnik reporter observed hundreds of antiracism protesters and self-defined "American patriots" from predominantly white militias confronting each other in central Louisville. Both sides wielded an impressive array of firearms with magazines attached but didn't go beyond verbal barbs and occasional fistfights in the stunning absence of the police.
"The police get their orders from the government and have been told several times to stand down. They can't show a force", a militiaman, who introduced himself as Squelch, said. "Guess what? We are not police, we are allowed to speak out, to say 'Enough is enough'".
Altercations don't always stay bloodless. In Kenosha, a 17-year-old militiaman shot and killed two protesters who apparently attacked him. In Portland, a member of the right-wing Patriot Prayer group was shot dead by a suspect allegedly associated with the Antifa movement.
A popular perception of BLM as an essentially violent phenomenon is not supported by scientific data though. ACLED study claims that more than 93 percent of all summer protests were peaceful with "violent demonstrations" reported from fewer than 220 locations. Researchers attribute the aberration to "the media focus on looting and vandalism".
Vote Like Never Before
The BLM movement predictably became a major issue in the 2020 Presidential race with Joe Biden and his Democratic camp seen as sympathetic to protesters' demands while their Republican rivals, including Trump, focused more on the "law and order" agenda - an upsurge of violence and the need to counter it.
On a campaign trail, Biden comforted victims of police brutality and Kamala Harris, his running mate of an African American descent, addressed one of the largest BLM demonstration timed to Martin Luther King's March on Washington. During protest events political activists would routinely advocate electoral activism as a solution to racism-related grievances, urging everyone to vote "like we never voted before," use mail-in ballots and assist neighbours in coming to polling stations.
Pro-Biden mainstream media were frequently criticised for overlooking and downplaying violent riots, while outlets sympathetic to the incumbent, fewer in number and weaker in voice, were accused of sowing fears among well-off suburban dwellers and ignoring fundamental causes of the BLM movement.
Trump himself chose sides when 25 minutes before a curfew he sent the police to disperse with flashbangs, pepper spray and sheer physical force a demonstration in front of the White House - to secure a passage for the Presidential photo-op at the historic St John's Episcopal Church that had caught fire during earlier riots.
Trump also seized on the issue of cultural wars when protesters mounted attacks on monuments seen as celebrating America's colonial and racist legacy and even attempted to knock down President Andrew Jackson's equestrian figure in front of the White House. He issued an executive order authorizing federal agents to pursue demonstrators who pull down statues, putting a lid on the phenomenon that threatened to spare neither Christopher Columbus nor Abraham Lincoln.
Symbolically, Washingtonians celebrated en masse Biden's victory over Trump on a recently founded BLM Square - the 16th and H streets intersection, a few thousand feet away from the White House. The same motto - Black Lives Matter - is painted in giant yellow letters on the pavement.
From the outset, President-elect stays true to his promise to address equality issues and is compiling the most diverse administration ever. He has thus far nominated at least seven women and nine people of colour for Cabinet-level positions, including Lloyd Austin, the first African American to be Secretary of Defence, Janet Yellen, the first female Secretary of the Treasury, Alejandro Mayorkas, the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
"I don't see this election as being about choosing a candidate who will be able to lead us in the right direction. That will be about choosing a candidate who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving antiracism movement", Angela Davis, a veteran and an icon of America's antiracism movement, said in an interview to RT. "Biden is very problematic in many ways... But - I say 'But' - Biden is far more likely to take mass demands seriously, far more likely that the current occupant of the White House".
