User:DraconicDark/Black Lives Matter Portal
Portal maintenance status: (February 2019)
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Introduction
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. The movement began in response to the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Rekia Boyd, among others. BLM and its related organizations typically advocate for various policy changes related to black liberation and criminal justice reform. While there are specific organizations that label themselves "Black Lives Matter", such as the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the overall movement is a decentralized network with no formal hierarchy. , there are about 40 chapters in the United States and Canada. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" itself has not been trademarked by any group.
In 2013, activists and friends Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi originated the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two more African Americans, Michael Brown—resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri—and Eric Garner in New York City. Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter activists became involved in the 2016 United States presidential election.
The movement gained international attention during global protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. An estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, making it one of the largest protest movements in the country's history. Despite being characterized by opponents as violent, the overwhelming majority of BLM demonstrations have been peaceful.
The popularity of Black Lives Matter has shifted over time, largely due to changing perceptions among white Americans. In 2020, 67% of adults in the United States expressed support for the movement, declining to 51% of U.S. adults in 2023. Support among people of color has, however, held strong, with 81% of African Americans, 61% of Hispanics and 63% of Asian Americans expressing support for Black Lives Matter as of 2023. (Full article...)
Selected general articles
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Image 1
George Floyd Square, officially George Perry Floyd Square, is a memorialized streetway in Minneapolis for the section of Chicago Avenue that intersects East 38th Street. It is named after George Floyd, a black man who was murdered there by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. The commemorative street name is signed along Chicago Avenue between East 37th Street to East 39th Street and includes the 38th and Chicago intersection.
Public outrage over Floyd's murder resulted in the largest mass protest movement since the civil rights movement, largely over issues of systemic racism and police brutality. In the following weeks, racial justice activists and some community members erected barricades to keep 38th and Chicago street intersection closed to vehicular traffic for over a year during 2020 and 2021. Artists and demonstrators installed several exhibits, paintings, sculptures, and other works of art to memorialize Floyd and visualize racial justice themes. (Full article...) -
Image 2Police misconduct is inappropriate conduct and illegal actions taken by police officers in connection with their official duties. Types of misconduct include among others: sexual offences, coerced false confession, intimidation, false arrest, false imprisonment, falsification of evidence, spoliation of evidence, police perjury, witness tampering, police brutality, police corruption, racial profiling, unwarranted surveillance, unwarranted searches, and unwarranted seizure of property. (Full article...)
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Image 3
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts a weekday radio talk show, Keepin' It Real, which is nationally syndicated by Urban One, and he is a political analyst and weekend host for MSNBC, hosting PoliticsNation.
Sharpton is known for making various controversial and incendiary comments over his career. He has been accused of making homophobic, antisemitic and racially insensitive remarks as well as inciting incidents of violence. In 1987 he was highly active in publicizing the Tawana Brawley accusation in the media; the allegation was later proved to be false. (Full article...) -
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Teressa Raiford (born 1970) is an American activist and politician in Portland, Oregon. She founded the local Black-led non-profit Don't Shoot Portland. (Full article...) -
Image 5The shooting of Ralph Yarl was on April 13, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri. The 16-year-old African American teenager was shot twice after ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while dispatched to pick up his twin brothers.
Andrew Daniel Lester, an 84-year-old white man, was charged on April 17, 2023, with armed criminal action and first-degree assault, the equivalent of attempted murder in Missouri. The Clay County district attorney stated that there was a "racial component" to the shooting. If convicted, Lester faces 10 years to life in prison. (Full article...) -
Image 6
Blackout Tuesday was a collective action to protest racism and police brutality. The action, originally organized within the music industry in response to the murder of George Floyd, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the killing of Breonna Taylor, took place on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. Businesses taking part were encouraged to abstain from releasing music and other business operations. Some outlets produced blacked out, silent, or minimal programming for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the originally reported length of time that police officer Derek Chauvin compressed Floyd's neck. (Full article...) -
Image 7Mothers of the Movement is an activism group, created by a number of women whose African American children have been killed by police officers or by gun violence. Members of the group have appeared on various television shows, news broadcasts and segments, at award ceremonies, and political events to share their experiences losing a son or daughter to police violence and advocate for political change, stricter gun laws and more police regulation.
The Mothers of the Movement movement started as a result of the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman after he fatally shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin. The women have attended many conventions to spread awareness of the police brutality 'crisis' in the United States. The members of the movement use their grief to rally more people around their cause and increase involvement in their movement. They also highlight the injustice they have endured with the loss of their son or daughter's life. They also talk about life after loss, the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), and how to move forward after a traumatic event. (Full article...) -
Image 8"Freedom" is a song recorded by American singer Beyoncé featuring American rapper Kendrick Lamar for her sixth studio album, Lemonade (2016). The song was written by Jonny Coffer, Beyoncé, Carla Marie Williams, Dean McIntosh and Lamar; it contains samples of "Let Me Try", written by Frank Tirado, performed by Kaleidoscope; samples of "Collection Speech/Unidentified Lining Hymn", recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959, performed by Reverend R.C. Crenshaw; and samples of "Stewball", recorded by Alan Lomax and John Lomax, Sr. in 1947, performed by Prisoner "22" at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Its production was handled by Beyoncé, Coffer and veteran hip hop record producer Just Blaze.
Upon its release, "Freedom" managed to appear on various music charts. It peaked at number 35 in the US, on the Billboard Hot 100 and 40 in the UK. The song's music video is part of a one-hour film with the same title as its parent album, originally aired on HBO. Beyoncé performed the song live as part of the set list of The Formation World Tour (2016) and at the BET Awards 2016. It received a nomination for Best Rap/Sung Performance at the 2017 Grammy Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 9
The killing of Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. occurred on March 6, 2015, in Madison, Wisconsin. Robinson, an unarmed 19-year-old man, was fatally shot by Madison police officer Matthew Kenny during a "check-person" call. Kenny was responding to dispatch reports that Robinson was jumping in front of cars and acting erratically, and that he had harmed someone in an apartment. On May 12, 2015, the shooting was determined to be justified self-defense by the Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne. The death was protested by the Black Lives Matter movement; Robinson was biracial, with a black father and a white mother. (Full article...) -
Image 10Natasha McKenna (January 9, 1978 – February 8, 2015) was a 37-year-old African-American woman who died in Fairfax County, Virginia while in police custody. The catalyst event, extraction from her cell and being tasered while shackled, was captured on the video of the Fairfax County jail.
During a team's efforts to extract the mentally ill prisoner, who resisted, they tasered her four times while she was restrained. No charges were filed against the deputies who tasered McKenna, but the case became the subject of a federal civil rights investigation because of several related issues. (Full article...) -
Image 11James Craig Anderson was a 47-year-old American man who was murdered in a hate crime in Jackson, Mississippi on June 26, 2011, by 18-year-old Deryl Dedmon of Brandon. At the time of his death, Anderson was working on the assembly line at the Nissan plant in Canton, and raising an adopted son with his partner.
According to police, Dedmon and his friends, a group of white teenagers, robbed and repeatedly beat Anderson before Dedmon ran him over, causing fatal injuries. A motel security camera showed Dedmon and his associates, as well as Dedmon running Anderson over with his truck. (Full article...) -
Image 12During the nationwide protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, protesters, politicians, religious leaders, and other groups called for police reform in the United States. This has led to laws, proposals, and public directives at all levels of government to address police misconduct and systemic racial bias, as well as police brutality in the United States. Some of the common reforms involve bans on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and improvements to police data collection procedures. (Full article...)
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Image 13
The Wall of Moms is a group primarily made up of women who identify as mothers, who have demonstrated in George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon, as well as other groups in U.S. cities including Chicago, Seattle, and Tampa, Florida. The group's first protest was attended by approximately 40 women; hundreds to thousands have participated since then. (Full article...) -
Image 14
Brittany Lehua Kamai is an American astrophysicist and racial justice activist. Kamai is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the California Institute of Technology. She was the founder of #ShutDownSTEM, part of the Strike for Black Lives held on June 10, 2020. A native Hawaiian, Kamai grew up in Honolulu and graduated from President Theodore Roosevelt High School and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She completed her Master of Arts from Fisk University and her PhD from Vanderbilt University. Kamai is only the second native Hawaiian to earn a doctorate in astrophysics and the third to earn a PhD in physics. (Full article...) -
Image 15Two Distant Strangers is a 2020 American short film written by Travon Free and directed by Free and Martin Desmond Roe. The film examines the deaths of Black Americans during encounters with police through the eyes of a character trapped in a time loop that keeps ending in his death. Two Distant Strangers won the award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, marking distributor Netflix's first win in the category. (Full article...)
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Image 16The killing of William L. Chapman II, a black 18-year-old, occurred on April 22, 2015, in Portsmouth, Virginia, when Chapman was shot and killed in a Wal-Mart parking lot by Portsmouth Police Officer Stephen D. Rankin. Rankin had been responding to a report of suspected shoplifting and engaged in a physical struggle with Chapman, who instigated the altercation while trying to arrest him. The shooting occurred approximately four years after the killing of Kirill Denyakin, who died after being shot by Rankin in 2011.
In September 2015, Rankin was indicted on the charge of first-degree murder in Chapman's death, and was found guilty by a jury of voluntary manslaughter on August 4, 2016. (Full article...) -
Image 17
DeRay Mckesson (born July 9, 1985) is an American civil rights activist, podcaster, and former school administrator. An early supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, he has been active in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland and on social media outlets such as Twitter and Instagram. He has also written for HuffPost and The Guardian. Along with Johnetta Elzie, Brittany Packnett, and Samuel Sinyangwe, Mckesson launched Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence. He is currently part of Crooked Media and hosts Pod Save the People.
On February 3, 2016, Mckesson announced his candidacy in the 2016 Baltimore mayoral election. He finished with 3,445 votes (2.6%), placing sixth in the Democratic Party primary on April 26. (Full article...) -
Image 18
"No justice, no peace" is a political slogan which originated during protests against acts of ethnic violence against African Americans. Its precise meaning is contested. The slogan was used as early as 1986, following the killing of Michael Griffith by a mob of youths. (Full article...) -
Image 19
Ayọ Tometi (born August 15, 1984), formerly known as Opal Tometi, is an American human rights activist, writer, strategist, and community organizer. She is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM). She is the former executive director of the United States' first national immigrant rights organization for people of African descent, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), working there in various roles for over nine years.
She started as an active community organizer in her hometown advocating for human rights issues. She has campaigned for advancing human rights, migrant rights, and racial justice worldwide. She also worked as a case manager for survivors of domestic violence. (Full article...) -
Image 20On July 26, 2018, Daniel Edward Hambrick, a 25 year old African-American was shot and killed by officer Andrew Delke of the Nashville, Tennessee police department.
Hambrick was shot as he was running away from Delke after allegedly pointing a gun at the officer. Delke was searching for a white Chevrolet Impala which he had attempted to pull over earlier that day. He saw a white car which he thought was the Impala, so he pulled alongside it. It was at this time that Hambrick began to run away while carrying a handgun. Delke then pursued Hambrick and gave him commands to drop the weapon. Hambrick refused to drop the weapon, Delke then fired four times with three of the shots striking Hembrick. He was hit in the back of the head, back, and left torso. Hambrick died shortly after the shooting. (Full article...) -
Image 21
"Hands up, don't shoot", sometimes shortened to "hands up", is a slogan and gesture that originated after the August 9, 2014, police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and then adopted at protests against police brutality elsewhere in the United States. The slogan implies one has their hands in the air, a common sign of submission, and is therefore not a threat to an approaching police officer. Witness reports from the Brown shooting are conflicted as to what Brown was doing with his hands when he was shot. One witness claimed Brown had his hands in the air before being killed, which was the basis for the slogan. (Full article...) -
Image 22"Rockstar" (stylized in all caps) is a song by American rapper DaBaby, featuring fellow American rapper Roddy Ricch. The song was released on April 17, 2020, as the second single from DaBaby's third studio album Blame It on Baby (2020). It was written by the two rappers. "Rockstar" spent seven non-consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Outside of the United States, "Rockstar" topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Greece, New Zealand, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and peaked within the top ten of the charts in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Its music video is set in a zombie apocalypse.
On June 12, 2020, DaBaby released a "BLM (Black Lives Matter) remix" of "Rockstar", which replaces the intro with an extra verse from him, before the rest of the song, regarding the George Floyd protests that started in May 2020, and his own experience with police abuse. The song received nominations for Record of the Year, Best Melodic Rap Performance, and Best Rap Song at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 23
In the early 2020s, the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in U.S. state of Minnesota experienced a wave of civil unrest, comprising peaceful demonstrations and riots, against systemic racism toward black Americans, notably in the form of police violence. A number of events occurred, beginning soon after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020. National Public Radio characterized the events as cultural reckoning on topics of racial injustice.
Many specific protests over Floyd's murder were described as peaceful events, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul experienced widespread rioting, looting, and property destruction over a three-night period in late May 2020 that resulted in $500 million in property damage, the second-most destructive period of local unrest in U.S. history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Local protests sparked a global protest movement over police brutality and racial justice, and affected state and local policies, local economic conditions, and residents' well-being. (Full article...) -
Image 24Manuel Ellis was a 33-year-old African American man who was killed by police during an arrest on March 3, 2020, in Tacoma, Washington by the Tacoma Police Department. The Pierce County Sheriff's Department initially claimed that Ellis had attacked a police car and officers, leading to the arrest. State prosecutors quoted civilian witnesses as saying that Ellis did not attack the police car or officers; they also said it was the officers who attacked Ellis after a conversation. Video of the incident showed officers repeatedly punching Ellis, choking him, using a Taser, and kneeling on him. State prosecutors stated that "Ellis was not fighting back", citing witness statements and video evidence. A police radio recording showed that Ellis said he "can’t breathe". Ellis told officers "can't breathe, sir" multiple times, according to prosecutors. Ellis was hogtied, face-down, with an officer on him, for at least six minutes, and a spit hood was placed on his head in this position, stated prosecutors. Ellis died at the scene while receiving medical aid from paramedics.
In early June 2020, Ellis's death was ruled by county medical examiner Thomas Clark as a homicide due to "hypoxia due to physical restraint", and with "contributing conditions of methamphetamine intoxication and a dilated heart". Prosecutors, in May 2021 documents, quoted Clark as saying that additional evidence that emerged after the autopsy concluded indicated that "Ellis's death was not likely caused by methamphetamine intoxication", and further indicated that restraint caused the death. (Full article...) -
Image 25On November 22, 2014, Tamir E. Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old white police officer. Rice was carrying a replica toy gun; Loehmann shot him almost immediately upon arriving on the scene. Two officers, Loehmann and 46-year-old Frank Garmback, were responding to a police dispatch call regarding a male who had a gun. A caller reported that a male was pointing "a pistol" at random people at the Cudell Recreation Center, a park in the City of Cleveland's Public Works Department. At the beginning of the call and again in the middle, he says of the pistol "it's probably fake." Toward the end of the two-minute call the caller states that "he is probably a juvenile", but the dispatcher did not relay either of these statements to Loehmann and Garmback.
The officers reported that when they arrived at the scene, they both continuously yelled "show me your hands" through the open patrol car window. Loehmann further stated that instead of showing his hands, it appeared as if Rice was trying to draw: "I knew it was a gun and I knew it was coming out." The officer shot twice, hitting Rice once in the torso. According to Judge Ronald B. Adrine, "...On the video the zone car containing Patrol Officers Loehmann and Garmback is still in the process of stopping when Rice is shot." Rice died the following day. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that Arkansas legislator Denise Jones Ennett took part in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the Arkansas State Capitol?
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Selected images
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Image 1Protest outside the U.S. Embassy in London, June 7, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 2Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter activists in Westlake Park, Seattle, August 8, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 3Ferguson, Missouri, August 17, 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 4Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., as seen from space on June 8, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 5Al Sharpton led the Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 6A demonstrator raising awareness of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, April 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 7Black Lives Matter protest against St. Paul police brutality at Metro Green Line, September 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 9Black Lives Matter protest at Herald Square, Manhattan, November 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 10"What happened to 'All Lives Matter'?" sign at a protest against Donald Trump, January 29, 2017 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 11A Black Lives Matter protest of police brutality in the rotunda of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, in December 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 13Vehicle with a BLM sticker, September 18, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 14George Floyd protests at Lafayette Square, Washington D.C., May 30, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 15Black Lives Matter protester at Macy's Herald Square, November 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 16Black Lives Matter protest in Aotea Square, Auckland, June 14, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 18Protest march in response to the killing of Philando Castile, St. Paul, Minnesota, July 7, 2016 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 19Protest in response to the Alton Sterling killing, San Francisco, California, July 8, 2016 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 21A Black Lives Matter die-in over rail tracks, protesting alleged police brutality in Saint Paul, Minnesota (September 20, 2015) (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 22Black Lives Matter protest on September 20, 2015, against police brutality in St. Paul, Minnesota (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 25Demonstration at Christiansborg Slotsplads, Copenhagen, June 7, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 26The empty pedestal of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Subject to increasing controversy since the 1990s, when his prior reputation as a philanthropist came under scrutiny due to a growing awareness of his slave trading, in June 2020 the statue was toppled, defaced and pushed into Bristol Harbour. (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 27Map depicting rates of police killings by state in the United States in 2018 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 28Black Lives Matter demonstration in Oakland, California, December 2014 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 29Protests in May 2020 after George Floyd's death (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 30"Black Lives Matter" on the facade of the Washington National Cathedral, June 10, 2020 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 32Protest march in response to the Jamar Clark killing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 33An activist holds a "Black Lives Matter" sign outside the Minneapolis Police Fourth Precinct building following the officer-involved killing of Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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Image 34One-year commemoration of the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson unrest at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, August 2015 (from Black Lives Matter)
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