Barbara Ransby - the Blacklivesmatter Movement

...

movements taking place today. But the Civil Rights Movement should not be the only one accredited for creating such a foundation. Different movements had different objectives but many of their goals to achieve those objectives overlapped. To name a few, there was the goal of reducing discrimination, expanding welfare, securing reproductive rights and accessing equality through enfranchisement. Reform helped accomplish some of these goals but not all objectives were met. The Civil Rights movement was focused on securing basic political rights, access to education, ending segregation, establishing more economic opportunities for all people and to end racial violence. Many oppositional political movements sought to silence the voices advocating for Civil Rights, black voices in particular. Groups such as the KKK harassed, beat and killed Blacks for speaking out against their oppression. Many of these terrorist acts went unpunished. But even while facing violence, participants in the Civil Rights Movement developed a conscious strategy known as non-violence to combat the forces that oppressed them. Dr. Martin Luther King, who is widely known for his participation in the Civil Rights Movement and advocacy of non-violence, believed that racism could only be dismantled through struggle (Kelley, Lecture 13). King knew that non-violence would create violence exerted by the police that represented the attitudes of the state. That violence had to come to the surface in order to display the reality of racism to America and abroad. Since then, many movements have adopted the strategy of non-violence. Because this strategy gained great recognition during the Civil Rights Movement, it can be argued that the Civil Rights Movement developed the foundations of many movements that came after.

For example, the anti globalization movement is a social movement with an objective of tackling corporate capitalism. They oppose corporations having unregulated political power and limiting the safety of workers to maximize their profits. The Occupy Wall Street movement resists similar powers. They too do not approve the influence that major corporations possess in the democratic process. The Occupy Wall Street movement is about fighting the upper class that make up 1% of the nation. This upper class has power in the global economy and they use their power to increase their wealth and make affluence harder to access for the rest of the 99% that make up America. The Immigrant Rights movement is what the Dreamers movement continues to embody today. Their objectives are to push policies and other practices that end discrimination of immigrants in America in all aspects. Their goals are to provide people who are undocumented with employment, equal housing opportunity, economic ability and access to education.

Along with achieving and developing access, these movements have expanding democracy for the groups they are fighting for. The Civil Rights Movement helps establish the road to a broader democracy. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was made possible by the Civil Rights Movement, is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the U.S that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act increased Black Voter registration across the nation. But in the Jim Crow South, those rates were among the highest. In Georgia, black voter registration was at 19.3% in the year 1964. By 1969, that grew to 61.3% (Kelley, Lecture 14). The increase in voter registration amongst blacks happened not just because of the Voting Rights Act but it happened because of the many organizations that educated blacks on voting which ultimately lead to voter registration. In 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee launched Freedom Summer which brought activists of all backgrounds and racial groups to help Blacks register to vote. Many of these activists were white. SNCC wanted white activists to participate because in the past groups like the Ku Klux Klan brutalized blacks for helping blacks get access to the polls. SNCC believed that the KKK would not harm their own but this turned false. But this did not discourage other civil rights organizations from having voter registration drives throughout the country. Voter registration continued to grow. In 1975, the Voting Rights Act was extended to cater to language minorities by translating ballots. This was a success achieved by organizations and people within the Civil Rights, Immigration and Dreamers movements.

Objectives of various movements and the organizations within are to not only achieve accessibility amongst their people. They also have the responsibility to access liberation within self through the elevation of consciousness and developing safe spaces for stories to be shared and valued. A successful movement is one that embodies those particular traits and believes in the concept of a leaderless movement. Movement-building is forged in struggle, through people building relationships within organizations and collectives. (Ransby, Ella Taught Me: Shattering the Myth of the Leaderless Movement). A leaderless movement is not a movement that has a single leader that people seek for political salvation. A leaderless movement is full of leaders that utilize their own platforms for social influence to have persons assist with working towards and achieving the objective through accurately analyzing the problem and creating solutions.