Black Lives Matter, the second civil rights movement, was born seven years ago in the wake of the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. It has now come of age. After numerous waves of protest, the 2020 surge marked the largest protest movement in the history of the country. In June, I co-founded Warriors in the Garden, one of New York’s leading protest collectives, and spent nearly every day for months in the streets. This mass mobilization sprang to life following the killings of two more Black Americans, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, at the hands of the police. But the catalyst was not the fuel. Slavery came to our shores in 1619, and has for 400 years defined both the Black experience and the United States. The nation is a powder keg; 2020 lit the fuse.The ensuing explosion has been bright and chaotic, like the final burst of fireworks on the Fourth of July. But powerful explosions, when coalesced, organized and pointed in the same direction, go by another name: a rocket. The protests are not the end but the engine. We are asked where we go from here. We answer that the sky is not the limit, but the direction.There exists a call in the movement to dismantle and deconstruct. Not just racism, but our strongest institutions as well. If for hundreds of years these institutions have served the powerful in quests of oppression, it is argued, then they must be replaced. I choose a more strategic approach, rooted in pride and optimism.The protests are working. Societal opinions of Black Lives Matter have flipped to majority-positive for the first time. As this is still a democracy, we must convert our popularity into political power.Black people built this country. For 400 years, our contributions to its foundations and fabric have been invaluable. Our free labor provided its original riches; our culture brightened its soul; our hard-earned successes gave it a fighting chance to look in the mirror and feel a sense of honest pride.Black people built this country. For 400 years, our contributions to its foundations and fabric have been invaluableWhile the language of the American promise is bold, optimistic, and worth fighting for, our history is more complicated. Our story is one of struggle and perseverance, by progressives against reactionaries, to make true Martin Luther King Jr’s belief that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Changing technology and demographics, combined with society’s long-sought agreement to confront its past, offer this era a glimpse of an end to this fight. At once, the horizon becomes within reach.Over seven years, the Black Lives Matter movement has touched individuals and cities from coast to coast to reshape society. It has illuminated to millions of Americans the suffering of millions of others happening just under their noses. It sparked a re-evaluation of our history and heroes. It shone a spotlight on a swath of artists and leaders who had labored unrecognized for too long.Through this movement, many people – of good intentions but often under-informed – were made aware of their complacency and complicity in grave injustices, and committed to alleviating them. Black Lives Matter has awakened America.There is a belief in this country that a “silent majority” of Americans are conservatives, opposed to progress and loyal to a mythical past. While in Richard Nixon’s era this may have been true, it is no longer. There is no silent majority opposed to progressive change. The majority is with us and it is loud.The next step is to convert these voices to votes. It is from the platform of this philosophy that I launched my own bid to serve as a Gen Z member of the New York city council, and call on a young, multiracial coalition of progressives across the country to step forward as well. Monumental change will come with this coalition at the helm of America’s institutions, including its businesses, schools and the government itself. No longer must we rely primarily on making requests and demands of those in power, nor should we insist the seats of power be dismantled. We will claim those seats.We have invested far too much in this country, both willingly and unwillingly, to not finish the job. We built this ship. It is our right to sail it, and our duty to point it in the right direction.Then our democratic dream can be realized.The political ideology espoused in the streets this summer is not new. But our clear path to enact it might be. With popular support behind us, we stand at the threshold of political revolution. The key lies in merging the utility of democratic government with the tidal force of mass mobilization. If government is the machine, the movement must be its fuel.As Black Americans and our coalition fulfill our role as what Nikole Hannah-Jones calls in the 1619 Project “the perfecters of this democracy”, this second civil rights movement will be the last. The partnership between government and movement is the remedy to heal our historical scars and open wounds, and carry this democracy toward perfection. More
