A Campus Police car parked on the brick outside of Carver Gym Annika Taylor // AS Review
By Annika Taylor
“Black Lives Matter is not just about justice in the name of George Floyd, it is about remembering that systems were designed to complete these outcomes” said Dr. Abdullah.
On Monday, May 3 Professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles and Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Dr. Melina Abdullah delivered a presentation to the Western community entitled Black Lives Matter: A Movement Not A Moment. In the presentation she described the founding of the movement, the meaning of the movement and how institutions should change to become more just and equitable.
The Black Lives Matter movement began in July 2013 when George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted. In the case of State of Florida v. George Zimmerman Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.
“We decided to pour out into the streets, and there is one place where Black people go when we are feeling pain or joy, and that’s Leimert Park,” said Dr. Abdullah.
When it came time to march the decision was made to march north.
“We wanted to disrupt spaces of white affluence. Our outrage would be heard in places that don’t hear it. We marched north into those spaces. We disrupted Hollywood,” siad Dr. Abdullah.
Black Lives Matter aims to create a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. The movement affirms Black contributions to society, their humanity and their silence in the face of deadly oppression. The movement is a political project that takes the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for all Black lives striving for liberation.
From the beginning, Black Lives Matter was intentionally and deliberately built to be a movement not a moment. It was important that the movement defined itself not just as a response, but as a group of people. Black Lives Matter is the fulfillment of a generations long mission.
According to Dr. Abdullah, the response to George Floyd’s killing was due in part to the pandemic.
“People were at home, they couldn’t turn away as they watched Derek Chauvin knee the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds. You could see the history of slave catching in the face of Derek Chauvin. And I think that’s one of the reasons why tens of millions of people globally poured out into the streets and began to chant things that they’d never chanted before,” said Dr. Abdullah.
Dr. Abdullah believes that police killing Black people is not accidental.
“You cannot reform a policing system that comes from slave catching. We must abolish every vestige of it,” said Dr. Abdullah.
There’s a second rallying cry beside Black Lives Matter in the demand to defund city police departments.. Defund Police is not a catchphrase, but a legitimate policy demand.
In most major cities upwards of 50% of the city’s general fund goes to policing. In Los Angeles, 54% of the city’s general funds goes to policing. The Bellingham Police Department accounted for 32% of the City of Bellingham’s general fund expenditure in 2020. The City of Bellingham budget can be viewed here .
“What we mean when we say defund the police and reimagine public safety is that you can’t have public safety without the public, and safety is not the absence of violence,” said Dr. Abdullah.
Defunding the police means taking dollars away from policing units, law enforcement units and prosecutions and investing those dollars into the universal needs of people, infrastructure and transformative approaches to public safety. It means having a budget that directly serves the needs of citizens. It means removal of police from situations where mental health workers and community outreach efforts would be more appropriate. Dr. Abdullah believes lives could be saved if mental health providers managed situations where people are in crisis instead of police.
“The rhetoric about police protecting and serving has never been true for Black communities. No Black person, as far as I know, has ever felt safer when a police cruiser pulls up behind them in traffic,” said Dr. Abdullah.
Dr. Abdullah then turned her attention to universities.
“The world cracked wide open offers us an opportunity to transform the world that we live in, and the spaces that we occupy. Why not have a reimagined view of what a university can be?” said Dr. Abdullah.
She has seen a willingness for institutions to say “Black Lives Matter,” but not to make Black lives matter. She is inspired by the work of young people and their success in defunding school police and removing all police from campuses. She wants more resources to go towards counseling services and ending all contracts with law enforcement.
Last year’s list of demands from the Black Student Organization at Western included the demand to defund campus police and invest the money into recruiting and retaining Black mental health counselors.
Dr. Abdullah wants to remove closed campus status throughout the country as a means to empower students. A closed campus is a campus which excludes some prospective students from attending through an admission process. Most four year universities, including Western would fall into this category. Also in the BSO’s list of demands was a re-evaluation of all major application systems on campus.
“[Open enrollment] builds a better campus by embracing the communities that actually want to join us,” said Dr. Abdullah.
Additionally she would like universities to support Black student housing, to expand the number of counselors and give students the power to vote on the hiring of campus administrators. She is an advocate for ethnic studies and wants colleges of ethnic studies to be autonomous with control over their curriculum.
As a campus community Dr. Abdullah asked that we amplify the cause, and constantly say that Black Lives Matter is not a fad.
“This is not something to be over. This is not a moment. This is a movement that is a part of a Black freedom struggle that has to continue until we get free,” said Dr. Abdullah.