Black Lives Matter did
something huge today
by Collier Meyerson
It’s a big day for the new civil rights movement known as Black Lives Matter. Up until now, the movement had famously opted to forgo hierarchies in favor of a diffuse coalition that more resembled Occupy Wall Street than, say, the ‘60s-era Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The movement’s decentralized approach has been criticized in the past, and its activists have butted heads with both civil rights leaders and the Obama administration. But on Monday morning, Black Lives Matter made a decision to be a movement with a plan, a platform, and concrete demands.
In a statement released by more than 30 organizations (and endorsed by an additional 50), BLM released six platform demands and “key solutions”—a list of more than 40 policy recommendations, including demilitarizing law enforcement, unionizing unregulated industries, and decriminalizing drugs. A centralized wing of the movement for black lives, M4BL Policy Table, has been working on the demands for a little over a year, according to Thenjiwe McHarris, who is part of the M4BL Policy Table Leadership team.