The mainstreaming of # Blacklivesmatter

It’s a photo that’s impossible to forget. A lone woman being arrested by excessively armed Baton Rouge officers. this was Ieshia Evans, a nurse from Newyork, who was protesting the killing of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man who was shot several times at close range while held down by white police officers. Ieshia said, ‘As Africans in America we’re tired of protesting that our lives matter, it’s time we stop begging for justice and take a stance for our people. It’s time for us to be fearless and take our power back.’

This year saw the Black Lives Matter movement broadcast into millions of homes around the world (115m people watched Beyoncé’s Black Panther-inspired Superbowl performance in February) and straight on to people’s smartphones, too. In July more than five million of us watched a Facebook Live video of Philando Castile’s final moments. Castile, 32, was shot seven times at close range by a Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop, when he reached into his pocket to produce his ID. His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, was in the passenger seat and live-streamed the 10-minute aftermath, which was essentially footage of her boyfriend bleeding to death, her daughter on the back seat.the heartbreaking video, in which Diamond can be seen saying, ‘You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his licence and registration, sir,’ ends with her being forced to kneel before being handcuffed.you can hear her four-year-old girl’s soothing words in the background. Later in the year, another little girl – Zianna Oliphant – tearfully took the stand at a Charlotte City Council meeting to appeal for an end to police brutality: ‘We are black people, and we shouldn’t have to feel like this. We shouldn’t have to protest because y’all are treating us wrong…’ #Ziannaoliphant was quickly trending.