The Black Lives Matter movement is our generation’s civil rights movement

Drayke Simpkins, J1 Staff Writer

Throughout the past few years, our country has watched as the issue of police brutality has become more apparent and more and more innocent victims have just become hashtags on social media. In turn, we have seen the Black Lives Matter movement created and praised by many to try to help and create a change. Although police brutality has existed for as long as most can remember, it is not debatable that lately we have seen been more aware of the unarmed, innocent minority races being killed in cold blood.

Trayvon Martin is my first personal account with this issue, although he was not killed by an official police officer– just the neighborhood watch organizer of George Zimmerman. This kind of thing struck me as very sickening; mostly because I was taught in elementary school about Martin Luther King Jr. as if he waved his magic wand and there was no way racism could exist anymore. This was easy for me to believe because I saw different races and ethnicities in my school, and I wasn’t taught about present-day discrimination. Not only that, but also this was a teenage boy, who looked similar to my brother, doing things that my brother does, and was killed pointlessly for that.

Since then, the Black Lives Matter movement has been created, but more murders of innocent people and racial profiling have captured our minds as well. From young Tamir Rice and his toy gun, to Eric Garner being choked and saying, “I can’t breathe”, to Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Philando Castile with his daughter in his backseat, the problem has not started to decrease even with a large light being shed on the issue. It is my hope for our society, that with talking about the issue, and big media sources like CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox News, etc. stop inflicting bias and let us see the raw footage of these killings. I hope that if we cannot stop this issue right now, we can at least stop making victims look guilty by using their mugshot from a drug stop years ago, and we can actually send to prison the people that kill the victims, whether they have a badge or not.