SDLP: All council buildings should bear the message ‘Black Lives Matter’ – at a bare minimum

Black Lives Matter refers to a specific US-based group, set up by three women in the USA in 2013 in response to what the organisation calls “the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer” (a reference to a Latino-German man who was cleared of both murder and manslaughter after shooting an unarmed black 17-year-old).

As part of its “herstory” section on its website (in place of a “history” section) it reads: “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.

“As organizers who work with everyday people, BLM members see and understand significant gaps in movement spaces and leadership.

“Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men — leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition.

“As a network, we have always recognized the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people.”

It says its mission is to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes”.

Mr Eastwood said he was “outraged by the scenes of oppression and police brutality against the black community and peaceful demonstrators in the US”, and called on people to “dismantle the structures of racist hate that have permeated our societies”.

He said he has written to the heads of all 11 councils “to request that they take action to show solidarity with our black and minority ethnic community... “That can begin, as a first step, by lighting our civic buildings with the Black Lives Matter message.

“But it cannot end there. Our commitment to tackling racism must go further.

“We must listen to the lived experiences of black and minority ethnic communities, we have to amplify their voices and we have to take action to address the systemic discrimination that they endure everyday.

“This is more than a few days of protest. We cannot go back to how things were. I’m committed to doing all I can to deliver change. And it must begin with a show of solidarity.”

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