The BlackLivesMatter Movement

On Friday 5 June 2020, around 1,000 young people gathered at the Mainwiesen following a call from the Anti-Racism Department of Uni Würzburg, the BI_PoC university group, Schwarzlicht Würzburg and Antifa Würzburg to demonstrate peacefully there. The catalyst for these worldwide demonstrations was the brutal death of African American George Floyd. He died on 25 May when white police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the back of his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. The police did not respond to calls from bystanders to remove the officer's knee from the man's neck. After these nearly nine minutes, George Floyd suffered a brutal death and was transported away from the scene by ambulance. 

Racism is nothing new in Western European and US society, it was simply filmed in the USA and ended up online. The BlackLivesMatter movement, which emerged in 2013 following the death of high school student Trayvon Martin by gunshot, has now attracted more people worldwide than ever before. What started as a peaceful movement ended in the USA with thousands of arrests and violence against demonstrators. Videos of police SUVs driving into crowds and police officers beating demonstrators with metal batons have become commonplace on social media. During the day there are demonstrations and at night cars burn. Shop windows are smashed, businesses looted. Looking at the USA, conditions resemble a civil war. One side demands the abolition of the police – the other side demands military deployment. Two fronts collide like waves against the shore. The spray that emerges from this are the dreams of BI_PoCs and People of Colour, as well as all white people who have joined the BlackLivesMatter movement, for a world in which Black people and People of Colour possess the same rights as people who define the "white norm".  

It is admirable to see so many people unite their democratic right to public political participation for a cause. Nevertheless, the following applies: Within the BlackLivesMatter movement, the voices of Black people and People of Colour should be heard. It is the task of white people to listen to them, to give them priority and not to put themselves in the spotlight according to the motto of "white saviorism". It is a struggle in which we support our Black fellow citizens, but should not take away their voice. Therefore, it is important for white people to reflect on themselves, to free up space and to take a step back. 

Looking at Germany, several thousand people took to the streets, 25,000 in Munich, 15,000 in Berlin and Leipzig and 14,000 in Hamburg. Because structural racism and discrimination also prevail in Germany. Institutions such as the police treat BI_PoC differently, all solely on the basis of an assumed origin or their skin colour. In Germany alone, there have been 159 deaths of BI_PoC in custody [1] (Death in Custody) since 1990 and the KOP (Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence) has published a 300-page report on racist incidents from 2000 to 2020. The terrible thing about this: the actions of the officers often have no consequences for them. The victims do not file a criminal complaint, but are all too often prosecuted themselves. The NSU trials, which have still not been fully clarified, also testify to Germany's racist problem.  

In Berlin and Hamburg on 6 June, young BI_PoCs were arbitrarily and brutally arrested by police officers at the BlackLivesMatter demonstration. A cynical act – on the grounds that the demonstrators' signs had provoked – which puts these supposedly loyal servants of the state in a very bad light. If someone represents the state through their role, does their actions perhaps also represent a piece of the state itself?!  

And it is equally cynical when People of Colour are given no space in public television or only when they feel forced to do so because of the incidents, but never voluntarily, from the outset. All these flashpoints are addressed by the BlackLivesMatter demand and these must be extinguished and transformed.   

The first and second quarters of this year were characterised by restrictions such as many of us had not previously known. By an invisible enemy whose consequences were all too visible. Consequences that until now have been swallowed by darkness will only become visible later. And now it is racism that has become visible, against which millions of individuals are rising up, in the hope that something will change. They stand side by side full of anger, frustration, rage, fear, sorrow, hope and empathy. They reach out their hands and embrace each other. With dreams of a more just world in which no one is treated with disadvantage, with the goal and the will to change something and the hope that something will change, millions of people therefore stand with anger in their bellies and sorrow in their hearts in this new decade of the BlackLivesMatter movement.  

Anti-Racism Department

[1] Death in Custody https://deathincustody.noblogs.org/. Last accessed on 10.06.2020.