Remember Me? Well, There's More!

Posted by Rahmir Powell in English 1 · Giknis · E Band on Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 8:52 pm

Remember me? The kid with the Black Lives Matter project. If not, let me catch you up. Previously in my last blog post, I spoke about the significance of the movement, and why it was important to me. I think it’s safe to say I did pretty well. But let’s not get off topic because I’m sure you’ve been waiting for more. In my research, I’ve dug up more interesting facts and information that I’d like to share with you and the world.

When I first began this project, I hadn’t even thought of how the Ku Klux Klan reacted to the start of this movement. In my recent research, I’ve learned that there are multiple BLM Hate groups. The most popular one is ‘White Lives Matter’. White Lives Matter is a Neo-Nazi organization, similar to the KKK. According to the coordinator, White Lives Matter “has no ties with the KKK.” On their website, their are 917 documents hate groups, and 33.1 percent are white supremacists/racist towards African Americans. This is a incredibly high amount for the BLM Movement to deal with. But in even more interesting news, there are 193 Black Separatists groups, which have ties to the Zulu and Black Panthers.

This is a photo of a black separatist army.

Now, for my original research plan I decided to do two options, an interview and a field observation. For my field observation, I went to a BLM Philly event, which was a speech about hunger in our communities, and while I was there, I conducted interviews. The community was so energizing and engaged in the topic at hand. Everybody had questions and concerns, and people were relating to the topic in friendly conversation. There was little hostility and the environment made me feel comfortable. Of all the people I spoke with, my best interview, was with a middle-aged man, with 5 children. Unfortunately, I cannot present the audio recording, but he believed that very little progress has been made in reference to the BLM Movement. “As a black community, we only seem to galvanize when a large controversy takes place, and then at that, we only talk about it for a few days until it dies off.”

That was the statement I most agreed with because in the media, when we hear about an African-American being killed by police, we only tweet the hashtag for a few days before we move on to the next thing. This is not how I think we should handle situations. Unity is key. We should scream until our voices are heard. We should fight until the truth hurts. This is the only way we’ll make a difference. Once we realize that as a community, we’ll be successful.

Thank you for making it to the end, and for coming on this wonderful journey with me. If you learned something new, feel free to let me know! That means I’ve done my job. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me: rpowell@scienceleadership.org. Until we meet again, I’m signing off.

See my annotated bibliography here.

Photo of those who attended the BLM event.

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