ABC News takes a look back at the Black Lives Matter movement. The phrase "Black Lives Matter" was born in a Facebook post by Alicia Garza in response to the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot Martin. The movement emerged as a reaction to the perceived violence and systemic racism by police toward African-American communities.
#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. (BLM Website Statement)
Read MoreThere is a major conversation happening globally between those affected by racism and those with the privilege not to be affected. The latter have an opportunity and a responsibility to learn about it.
If you’re white, this work might feel uncomfortable. It’s supposed to. Canada is not immune to racism.
Read MoreWhat is an ally? An ally is any person that actively promotes and aspires to advance the culture of inclusion through intentional, positive and conscious efforts that benefit people as a whole. Sheree Atcheson, author of "Demanding More : Why Diversity & Inclusion Aren't Happening & what you can do about it", writes about why being an ally is so important to anti-racism.
Read MoreWarner Sallman's 1940 oil painting "The Head of Christ" is believed to be the most reproduced religious work of art. It's been copied a billion times, if you include lamps, clocks and calendars. It came to define Christianity for generations of Christians in the United States and beyond.
When Emily McFarlan Millergrew up and began to study the Bible on her own, she started to wonder about that painting and the message it sent.
Read MoreBlack Lives Matter co-founder and artist Patrisse Cullors presents a luminous vision of the spiritual core of Black Lives Matter and a resilient world in the making. She joins Dr. Robert Ross, a physician and philanthropist on the cutting edge of learning how trauma can be healed in bodies and communities. A cross-generational reflection on evolving social change in this wonderful interview with Krista Tippett at The On Being Project.
Read MoreMany Canadians view slavery as something that happened in the United States of America from the arrival of the first slave ships in 1619 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but fail to understand that the buying, selling, and enslavement of Black and Indigenous people went on for about 200 years in our own country (beginning with the arrival of Olivier le Jeune in 1628 to New France and ending with the Slavery Abolition Act, August 1, 1834).
Read MoreKrista Tippett begins - “The show we released with Minneapolis trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem in the weeks after George Floyd’s killing has touched listeners, and galvanized searching, with an extraordinary reach. So I said yes when he proposed that he join me in conversation again, this time together with Robin DiAngelo. She is perhaps the foremost voice in our civilizational grappling with whiteness; her book, White Fragility, is one of the most widely read books in the world right now. Hearing the two of them together is electric — the deepest of dives into the calling of our lifetimes.”
Read MoreResmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, trainer, and speaker, and the author of the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Healing Our Hearts and Bodies. Here are four blogs he has written for Psychology today concerning Somatic Abolitionism, how it affects our bodies and the way we think.
Read MoreResmaa Menakem describes Somatic Abolitionism as a living, embodied anti-racist practice and cultural building —a way of being in the world. It is a return to the age-old wisdom of human bodies respecting, honoring, and resonating with other human bodies. It is not a exclusively a goal, an attitude, a belief, an idea, a strategy, a movement, a plan, a system, a political position, or a step forward.
Somatic Abolitionism is not a human invention. It is the resourcing of energies that are always present in your body, in the collective body, and in the world. Somatic Abolitionism is an emergent process.
Read MoreIt has become clear that in regards to anti-racism, the best laws and diversity training have not gotten us anywhere near where we want to go. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” Krista Tippet, The On Being Project, sat down with him in Minneapolis, where they both live and work, before the pandemic lockdown began. In this heartbreaking moment, after the killing of George Floyd and the history it carries, Resmaa Menakem’s practices offer us the beginning to change at a cellular level.
Read MoreFor people living in the Arctic, climate change is hacking away at their foundation. It drives storm surges, washes out roads and clogs rivers with sediments. It produces sinkholes and triggers landslides capable of altering the topography and tilting houses. The climate crisis is even seen by some as a form of environmental racism — a problem created down south and suffered up north. Susan Nerberg, from Broadview.org headed up north to witness these dramatic changes.
Read MoreKrista Tippet from The On Being Project, interviews Jane Goodall. Goodall’s early research studying chimpanzees helped shape the self-understanding of our species and recalled modern Western science to the fact that we are a part of nature, not separate from it. From her decades studying chimpanzees in the Gombe forest to her more recent years attending to human poverty and misunderstanding, she reflects on the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her, and what she is teaching and still learning about what it means to be human.
Read MoreIn this podcast from The On Being Project with Krista Tippet, Krista speaks with one of her beloved teachers, Ellen Davis, as they ponder the world and our place in it, through sacred text, with fresh eyes. We’re accompanied by the meditative and prophetic poetry of Wendell Berry, read for us from his home in Kentucky. If you are interested in how our Biblical text connects to the environmental movement, here is a wonderful exploration of farming, scripture, and how we are bound in a sacred relationship with our earthly home.
Read MoreHere is a short film created for the parents and care givers of black children living in the United States - though the reasons for it surpass geography. This important infographic, "10 Rules of Survival If Stopped By the Police,” developed by David Miller (founder of the Dare to be King Project) was made in the wake of the death of Michael Brown on December 14, 2014. If you think that racism does not exist, consider the fact that parents of white children are not compelled to have ‘this talk’ with those in their care.
Read MoreIn "The Skin We're In," Desmond Cole, journalist and activist, creates an incriminating account of institutionalized white supremacy. Cole gained prominence as a journalist thanks to a story he wrote for Toronto Life in 2015 detailing his own experiences with police carding.
Read MoreBrian Bantum says that race is not merely an intellectual category or a biological fact. Much like the incarnation, it is a “word made flesh,” the confluence of various powers that allow some to organize and dominate the lives of others. In this way racism is a deeply theological problem, one that is central to the Christian story and one that plays out daily in the United States and throughout the world.
Read MoreFour members of Shelburne’s Anti-Black Racism, Anti-Racism and Discrimination Task Force discuss their mission and the vision they have for Shelburne.
“The death of George Floyd hit everyone in the heart. White people do not walk out of their house with the fear they will be treated differently and killed because of something they can’t control. But Black people do,” says Soha Soliman.
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