Today's #BlackLivesMatter digest covers the list of demands that activists have presented to the Minneapolis Police Department, news of the government surveillance of #BLM activists, and #SafetyIs, a powerful hashtag that trended on Twitter today.
Moving forward, I will be using a lot of Twitter embeds, because so much activism is going on using that medium and it is a good way to present the movement without the filtering of mainstream media.
As a reminder, here is what I will not do:
1. Offer commentary.
The purpose of these diaries is to get out of the way of the leaders and participants of the #BLM movement.
2. Include anything related to the presidential election.
There will be no coverage of or advocacy for or against any of the presidential contenders.
3. Assume I'm doing this well and don't need any help.
I'm very well aware that my privilege will provide an unintentional filter to this coverage, so please call me out on it when necessary. Please share links in the comments or message me if there's something I'm not covering or that I'm covering incorrectly or incompletely. I also claim no ownership over this series, and would be thrilled at entries being written by fellow Kossacks.
Starting off today with Unicorn Riot reporting on the Minneapolis protests:
On July 31st, 2015, hundreds of Minneapolis residents marched through downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota to raise awareness around the death of Sandra Bland other Black women who died in police custody or were killed by police.
The ‘Sandra Bland Solidarity Action’ was led by Black women wearing nooses created from plastic police tape to bring attention to Sandra’s story which claimed she hung herself with a trash bag in her jail cell. The action started at 6pm with hundreds of people pouring into the streets and roving thru main intersections in downtown Minneapolis shutting down traffic, taking up space, and eventually ending at the doorsteps of the Hennepin County Jail (Public Safety Building).
This protest has led to concrete demands of the Minneapolis Police Department:
Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney for the ACLU Racial Justice Program, reports today about the government surveillance of the #BLM movement:
Records from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination show that since August 2014, DHS officials have been trolling public social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, to map and collect information on #BlackLivesMatter protests –and supposedly related events. Targeted activities include silent vigils held across the country following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, an anti-police brutality protest in Philadelphia, and an April 2015 #BlackLivesMatter protest in Washington D.C. The documents even show a plan to gather information on a funk music parade in a historically Black neighborhood in the nation’s capital.
Perhaps most troubling are the Google maps and live updates tracking, minute-by-minute, the movements of participants in an April 2015 #BlackLivesMatter protest in Washington, D.C. A DHS email released to the Intercept confirms that on the day before the event, several DHS officials were aware of a Federal Bureau of Investigation joint intelligence bulletin characterizing the protest as a “First Amendment-protected event,” and noting that there was “no information suggesting that violent behavior is planned for Washington, DC.”
#SafetyIs has been trending on Twitter today as community members vocalize what a truly safe community would look like. I learned of this hashtag following Elon James White, who appears to be the origin of the hashtag.
Today's digest concludes with a selection of these tweets: