2014 was an epochal year for social justice. 2015 could be even more dramatic.
The shattering events of 2014, beginning with Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, did more than touch off a national debate about police behavior, criminal justice and widening inequality in America. They also gave a new birth of passion and energy to a civil rights movement that had almost faded into history, and which had been in the throes of a slow comeback since the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012. That the nation became riveted to the meta-story of Ferguson—and later the videotaped killing of Eric Garner in New York—was due in large part to the work of a loose but increasingly coordinated network of millennial activists who had been beating the drum for the past few years. In 2014, the new social justice movement became a force that the political mainstream had to reckon with.
This re-energized millennial movement, which will make itself felt all the more in 2015, differs from its half-century-old civil rights-era forebear in a number of important ways. One, it is driven far more by social media and hashtags than marches and open-air rallies. Indeed, if you wanted a megaphone for a movement spearheaded by young people of color, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than Twitter, whose users skew younger and browner than the general public, which often has the effect of magnifying that group’s broad priorities and fascinations. It’s not a coincidence that the Twitterverse helped surface and magnify the stories of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
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2 comments:
None of these stories or events has anything to do with race, is all I'm saying. When a police officer is physically attacked through the window of his car, the race of neither is of issue. When a bunch of cops try to stop a man from selling single cigarettes from a pack that was duly taxed, race has nothing to do with tax money any more than body fat mass vs. weight does.
Race is brought in to these situations by our federally famous race baiters who have absolutely no involvement except for their own special interests, whatever those may be.
They were never present at the time of the incident, and should never be considered in the aftermath.
You are living in a box if you don't think race is an issue. You always jump on the band wagon with these lying cops. Nothing has been reported about the paid witness in Furgerson who lied and were don't even at the scene but yet this evidence helped a murderer go Free. These cops are protected by the State Attorneys who lie , withhold evidence, and they make sure that white cops are not punished. Case in point the Black officers' the beat the 19 year old in NY were immediately fired. I understand why some whites feel the way they do because they are not put in the situation that Black people are, however I think you know because you are around these racist and you hear more than most of there racist attitudes.
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