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A group of artists unveiled a Black Lives Matter public art project at the University of Louisiana-Monroes campus earlier this week after they failed to gain public support to paint the social justice movements slogan on a city street in Monroe.

At an unveiling ceremony on Monday, ULM officials welcomed the installation of 16 four-by-eight-foot letters spelling Black Lives Matter on the campus to much fanfare. The public art project stands in Bayou Park, across University Drive from the ULM Library.

We are here today because black lives matter, said ULM President Ron Berry. We also are here today because of art that will remind us the past is unacceptable.

Each letter in the installation was painted to represent different aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement, as envisioned by 16 different artists. For example, the letter B contains the messages, End White Silence and Be the Change. The use of large wooden letters in the art installation resembles the display of painted Greek letters by ULMs fraternities and sororities during Rush Week.

Miss University of Louisiana-Monroe 2020 Allison Newton said black lives should have mattered a long time ago.

All lives cannot matter until black lives matter, said Newton, to applause.

ULM Assistant Professor of Art Brooke Foy thanked Berry, who was named the universitys president last September, for voicing support of the Black Lives Matter art project.

Dr. Berry stood in front of us today, Foy said. Thats inspirational.

ULM officials and students heralded the Black Lives Matter installation as a moment of social justice victory.

I hope that people of color, Foy began, amid tears, I hope you never have to apologize. Or ever compromise how you feel.

Speaking of the art installation, Foy said, It means that change is here. It means that we are ready.

Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, three women who have described themselves as Marxists. In a 2015 video interview with the Real News Network, Cullors defended her commitment to social justice by saying she and her BLM co-founders were trained organizers.

We are trained Marxists, Cullors said during the interview.

Later, when asked in an April 2018 interview with Dazed magazine how someone could learn to spearhead a movement like Black Lives Matter, Cullors said she studied Karl Marx, Soviet premier Vladimir Lenin and Chairman Mao Zedong during her year-long involvement in a program at the National School for Strategic Organizing led by the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California.

The Labor/Community Strategy Center is a self-described communist organization. In a 2014 column published in the Boston Review, the Labor/Community Strategy Centers director, Eric Mann, wrote, Our work focuses on training a new generation of black and Latino activists in the traditions of black revolutionary, Third World and communist organizing.

In a foreword to the 2018 book, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, Garza wrote that she was loosely trained in the Marxist-Leninist tradition.

In late 2015, Tometi and other black activists welcomed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to Harlem, months before she penned a letter commending the socialist government in Venezuela.

The U.S. has since declared Maduro a dictator, forbade him entry into the country and indicted him for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Garza, Tometi and Cullors social justice movement gained traction on social media as a hashtag in 2013 following a Florida jurys decision to acquit neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman of murdering Trayvon Martin, a black teenager.

Black Lives Matter organizers went to Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after a police officers fatal shooting of Michael Brown, another black youth. The death of George Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis became another flash point for Black Lives Matter activists.

Though the new art installation at ULM promoted the slogan of an organization with Marxist ties, the social justice concerns voiced by Foy and others appeared closer to home.

When asked, Foy said discussions about pursuing a BLM art project stemmed from public outcry over racist remarks by ULM faculty that were uncovered by the universitys students. In one instance, a ULM instructor defended the use of a racial epithet while another professor described President Obama as a monkey.

I think the discussions that happened over the summer, when some racist remarks were posted on social media, and the university responded to that because the students responded to it, Foy said. That really sparked the discussions about the need for change.

When asked what change was sought, Foy said, Oh gosh, equity for all, inclusion for all.

Berry disputed whether a single event provoked a need for the social justice movement to establish itself at ULM.

I wouldnt say this is because of a certain event or anything like that, Berry said.

Its to create awareness and continue discussion. Its about our ongoing evolution as a university.

Foy was one of four artists in the area who spearheaded the project. Her colleagues included Rodrecas Drek Davis, Vitus Shell, and KShana Davis of the Black Creatives Circle of North Louisiana. Foy and her colleagues first asked the Monroe City Council last July to allow them to paint the Black Lives Matter slogan on a city roadway, but public support for that endeavor fizzled out.

We just couldnt move forward on the street, and honestly, were happier to have it here, Foy said.

Foy said she and her colleagues planned for the art installation to be a traveling exhibit.

When asked where it would travel to next, Foy said, We dont have that planned yet.

We dont have a home for it to go next, Foy said.

After her request to the City Council for a roadway mural sparked controversy, Foy and her partners launched a GoFundMe fundraising campaign in early 2020, seeking $10,000 but had only secured $2,600, as of earlier this week.

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Black Lives Matter art installation finds home at ULM - The Franklin Sun

The death of George Floyd last May and the summer of protests that followed in its wake led members of Congress to try to mandate basic changes in police practices nationwide. But partisan and presidential-election politics prevented any bill from being enacted. That failure can be remedied by swift adoption of the reforms set forth in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate along with related bills introduced by senators from both parties.

Written by the House Congressional Black Caucus under the leadership of Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), with an identical version introduced in the Senate by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the Floyd bill addressed decades of racial inequity in policing, but its basic reforms should be demanded by all Americans for their own protection. Supporters of the proposal are expected to reintroduce it this term.

The bill would, for example, prohibit no-knock warrants judicial orders permitting police to burst into peoples homes without warning. Police bearing a no-knock warrant last March killed Breonna Taylor in her own Louisville, Ky., apartment, an incident that has become part of the litany of police outrages against Black Americans. But all Americans are endangered and their freedom diminished by such practices.

Likewise, the measure would prohibit chokeholds of the type that led to the death of Floyd in Minneapolis last year, Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014, and countless others. The once barely hidden racism in chokehold use has been an open subject at least since 1982, when Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates attempted to explain why it kills so many Black people. We may be finding that in some blacks when it is applied, the veins and arteries do not open as fast as they do in normal people, he famously said.

But again, purported racial disparities aside, police officers should not be cutting off blood and oxygen flow to any American, even those suspected of committing crimes.

Other provisions include the establishment of a federal registry of police misconduct complaints and disciplinary actions, so that officers who are fired or resign after investigations in one department dont simply move to another.

Critics correctly note that Congress has limited power to order states, counties and cities to change their police practices. The no-knock warrant and chokehold bans, for example, would directly apply only to federal law enforcement officers. Federal grants can encourage, but cannot compel, states and local jurisdictions to comply with similar bans.

But such criticism fails to recognize the crucial role of federal leadership in setting acceptable standards for law enforcement. And some provisions the national police registry, for example can indeed have direct impact. A California bill to stop bad cops from jumping from department to department failed last year under pressure from police unions, and even if it is more successful in the current session, its scope is limited to this one state.

Furthermore, the Floyd Act would expressly authorize the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division to issue subpoenas to police departments to determine patterns and practices of misconduct. The department used to conduct such investigations, leading to improved police practices in Los Angeles and a number of other cities, but they were ended under the Trump administration.

Former President Trump offered his own brand of police reforms with an executive order that attempted to address issues like chokeholds, but it was modest in its reach and lacked the force of a bill signed into law. Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina pushed his own bill with some of the same provisions as the House proposal, but it, too, was a victim of last years political jockeying over control of the police reform message.

The real question, Scott asked last year after his bill failed to get a hearing, is this: Do we matter? Meaning, of course, do Black lives matter in the United States?

Congress has a moral obligation to demonstrate that they do, and it can begin with sending police reforms to President Biden, who described Floyds death as a turning point in the nations reckoning with systemic racism Tuesday.

But beyond that obligation, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act or any bill that includes its provisions confronts Congress with an equally urgent set of questions. Does Congress matter? After a period in which the legitimacy of American institutions has been attacked, can it restore faith and respect by demonstrating the will to adopt modest laws that extend basic protections to all Americans? If it cant do that now, we may be in even more trouble than we thought.

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George Floyd bill will tell if Black lives matter to Congress - Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Police Commission announced Friday that the National Police Foundation will assess the LAPD's response to a series of large demonstrations that were held in the city following the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked protests nationwide.

The NPF will hold two virtual listening sessions at noon and 5 p.m. next Thursday to get input from members of the public, business owners and community leaders on interactions they had with officers during demonstrations held between May 27 and June 7.

According to the NPF, the input will be used to identify successes and challenges, and assist it in developing strategies for the LAPD to consider adopting for responding to demonstrations in the future, enhancing police-community relations and identifying how the LAPD and community can move forward.

The NPF bills itself as an independent, nonpartisan research foundation that conducts research into police behavior, policy and procedure.

According to its website, its mission is to advance policing through innovation and science.

The first NPF session can be joined by calling 312-626-6779, meeting ID 923-6097-7810; and the second by calling 312-626-6779, meeting ID 990-8337-3720.

More information is available by visiting policefoundation.org/lapdreview, by emailing PFinfo@policefoundation.org, or by calling 202-721-9779.

In the wake of the protests, Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles lost a bid to get a federal judge to order an immediate halt to the LAPD's use of projectiles, including rubber bullets, to disperse or otherwise control crowds, baton strikes, and the tactic of kettling, in which protesters either leave through an exit controlled by the police or are contained, prevented from leaving, and arrested.

In its response to the BLM-LA filing, plaintiffs' attorneys wrote that the city and LAPD support the constitutional right to engage in peaceful political protests and were assessing the actions police took on six historical, wrenching nights from May 29 to June 3.

After being asked to remove his 'Black Lives Matter' mask at work, a Best Buy employee is taking a stand. Gordon Tokumatzu reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on July 6, 2020.

The city's attorneys maintained that the immediate wholesale elimination of several LAPD policies, without a more searching examination, is simply not warranted at this time. They also noted that although the mass demonstrations were largely peaceful, there were also criminal acts of arson and looting which threatened public safety, and the LAPD must be able to respond to such situations.

In a federal lawsuit filed in June by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, BLM-LA and Los Angeles Community Action Network, the plaintiffs maintain there were more than 3,000 people arrested over the course of several days of demonstrations and many were seriously injured by police.

The complaint included graphic photos of alleged protester injuries from rubber bullets and police batons, as well as descriptions of protesters who were held in buses in cramped conditions without access to restrooms, and injuries from too-tight handcuffs.

Dozens of other lawsuits have been filed by individuals who said they were injured by police at the demonstrations, the largest of which were held in downtown Los Angeles, the Fairfax District and Hollywood.

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National Police Foundation to Review LAPD's Response Tactics to BLM Protests - NBC Southern California

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Fort Wayne's NBC) - An online artist exhibit, put on by Purdue Fort Wayne students, pays tribute to the "Black Lives Matter" movement.

This online-only juried exhibition features artwork by Purdue undergraduate students reflecting on the Black Lives Matter social justice movement.

The art exhibit is titled "A Call For Justice".

Some of the students put together photo collages, videos, music and more.

Fort Wayne's NBC News talked with Christian Stout on how it felt to have his work featured in the online exhibit.

Stout submitted some of his photography from the protests back in the Summer of 2020.

"This was taken on day 2 of the Fort Wayne protests. After walking 5 blocks around the outside of the city we ended up meeting a line of police officers in front of the Hoppy Gnome on Clinton and Berry Street. This next hour tested me mentally seeing the anguish and resilience from many of the protestors as when this picture was shot we had been subjected to tear gas and rubber bullets on two separate occasions beforehand. Everytime we would collect ourselves and push forward. Holding a 20ft gap between us and them. Letting them know that we're here to stay. That we had a purpose. That we were a community of people supporting a cause and each other."

Want to check out the online exhibit? Click here.

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PFW artist exhibit reflects on the Black Lives Matter movement - Fort Wayne's NBC

England cricketers will be undergoing racism education from this year onwards in wake of a series of recent revelations pertaining to racism in English Cricket. The decision to implement the anti-racism course also comes in the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement that sent shockwaves across the world last year. Quite recently, a survey was conducted which revealed that more than one-third of black, Asian and minority ethnic players have been subjected to racism at some point during their playing careers.

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England-based Professional Cricketers Association (PCA) conducted a survey where respondents claimed that they have endured racism in the sport. While 45 per cent from more than 600 respondents stated that they have faced racism from another player, around 10 per cent admitted to suffering the same from their coaches. Moreover, 30 per cent of the respondents claimed that they have experienced racism either online or from spectators.

Considering the results of the survey, the PCA decided to develop an education programme where all male and female players from Englands domestic as well as international squads will be made aware about cultural differences and unconscious bias. The PCA has already partnered up with EW Group to develop the programme, which is slated to begin from March onwards.

PCA CEO Rob Lynch said that they are delighted to deliver their player education programme as they look to take a zero-tolerance approach to racial discrimination in cricket. Lynch added that any kind of racism in the game is unacceptable and the game needs to take action against it. The PCA official revealed that they will be working alongside the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and other stakeholders to deliver further in this area.

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In September 2020, cricketer Azeem Rafiq claimed that he experienced racism while playing for Yorkshire. While speaking with ESPNCricinfo, the 29-year-old said that he was close to committing suicide during his time at the club despite living his familys dream of being a professional cricketer. Rafiq also revealed that his complaints of inappropriate dressing room behaviour were initially ignored by the club.

Indian speedster Mohammed Siraj also made allegations of experiencing racist taunts from the crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) earlier in January. The cricketer notified his captain Ajinkya Rahane, who in turn alerted the match officials, thus bringing the Test match to a halt for a few minutes. Several members of the SCG crowd were then evicted from the stadium and Cricket Australia launched an investigation regarding the Mohammed Siraj racial abuse incident.

Former West Indies cricketer and commentator Michael Holding gave a hard-hitting take on racial profiling in the sport. During West Indies tour of England in July 2020, Holding led an emotional discussion alongside fellow commentator Nasser Hussain and talked about the importance of educating society on racism. Here is a look at Holdings moving take on the controversial subject.

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Black Lives Matter impact: England cricket to introduce Racism Education for all players - Republic World