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By Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com 06:03 23 Mar 2023, updated 12:16 23 Mar 2023

The radical president of Los Angeles' teachers union, who once said 'there is no such thing as learning loss' and attended an NBA game in a suite after announcing a solidarity strike, is among those in support of the LA schools' strikes.

Staff atLos Angeles's only public school districtbraved the rain to make good on their threats of a three-day strike Tuesday in hopes of obtaining better wages,shutting down the nation's second-largest school system in the process.

Educators and employees have been slammed on social media for failing families, saying they are using nearly 500,000 young people as 'leverage' in their own battle for better pay and other benefits.

SEIU99 Executive Director Max Arias has led the support staff union into the strike and insisted the strike was the 'workers' last resort', arrived at only after nearly a year of bargaining for better wages.

His union has been supported in a 'solidarity strike' by United Teachers Los Angeles and their union President Cecily Myart-Cruz, someone who has courted controversy in the past for her views on lockdowns and social justice.

Ahead of her election as president, Myart-Cruz spoke at the convention for the left-wing political group Democratic Socialists of America's 2019 convention in Atlanta, in which she stated 'I see teaching as a revolutionary act, just the way I see organizing.'

'It's hard, it's messy and sometimes it can be too much but you can never allow fear to win. We must engage folks to take action in different ways and we must work to make every work site an anti-racist one.'

She's seen elsewhere in the speech criticizing the 'neoliberal' Los Angeles Unified School District which she argues 'starved our schools' and claimed bosses in all walks of life 'prey on fear.'

Her union bio also shows her as a member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, the 2020 rallies of which she used to suggest there is 'no such thing as learning loss' for children who were not in school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

'Our kids didn't lose anything,' she told LA Magazinein 2021. 'It's OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.'

Her other remarks included 'reopening schools without a broader improvement of schools will be unsafe and will deepen racial and class inequalities' and 'You can recall the Governor, you can recall the school board. But how are you going to recall me?'

Myart-Cruz won re-election in 2023 on a platform that included requests for schools to take pieces of a 'Green New Deal' into their district.

Their demands included expansion of outdoor education space, tech education in green energy fields, solar panels on all district buildings, increased electric school buses and extending free public transportation for students.

She also led the union while it planned to voteon joining the 'Boycott, Divest and Sanction' movement against Israel. The vote was eventually shut down after heavy criticism.

Before becoming head of the teacher's union, Myart-Cruz attended Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, then Mount Saint Mary's, a Catholic women's college inBrentwood.She graduated in 1995, and on to Pepperdine to gain her teaching certificate - where fees now stand at $80,000-a-year.

She began her teaching career in Compton, then went to an elementary school Westwood where kids first thought she was too strict but ended up 'loving her', according to a teacher who taught next door.

She is divorced from her husband of 16 years and the pair share a ten-year-old son.

She is now datingVanCedric Williams, an elected member of the Oakland Unified School Board, according to the Los Angeles Magazine article.

The pair attended an NBA game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors with Assemblyman Matt Haney in a box suite just after declaring the solidarity strike.

She then went to teach at Mesa Elementary in Crenwshaw, where students and their families were less affluent - but didn't last there long, according to former colleagues.

In 2020, the former head of the union - Alex Caputo Pearl - reached his term limit and endorsed her to take over.

She stopped teaching 2014 to devote herself to the union full time and was part of the leadership team when dues were increased from $689-a-year to $917 in 2016.

She took over in February 2020 - a month before the pandemic closed schools all over America and the world.

There are 33,000 teachers in the union but only 5,000 voted in the election where she became president with 69 percent of the vote - about 3,500 votes.

Earlier this year, she blamed 'white wealthy parents' for wanting to get kids back into classrooms, claiming: 'Unfortunately, the plan reverts to deeply flawed ideas in Gavin Newsom's proposal in December to offer school districts more money if they open faster.

'If you condition funding on the reopening of schools, that money will only go to white and wealthier schools that do not have the transmission rates that low income black and brown communities do.'

The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has also heavily backed and worked with the unions. Myart-Cruz spoke at its convention in 2019.

The left-wing group has already held a 'Tacos for Teachers' event on Tuesday, and several days of phone banking efforts to campaign for the unions.

Their social media feeds have been full of DSA-LA members marching the picket lines with the union members.

Meanwhile, SEIU99 Executive Director Max Arias, promoted a march to Defund the Police and re-invest in schools in 2020.

At a rally on Monday, Arias led picketers in a chant of 'no justice, no peace' and said their campaign was about justice.

'It's about 65,000 education workers telling the district what it needs to do to improve the conditions of schools to ensure that every student can succeed and do what they wish in life. Listen to the voices of the people that do the work.'

He finished by saying the only thing that could stop their work was 'justice' before leading the chant.

The native of El Salvador notably has a plaque in his office stating 'it's on, motherf**kers!' according to the LA Times.

He proudly boasted of his membership: 'Once you learn you have power, its not easy to take it away. Theyve shut the district down!'

Now, more than 1,000 public schools are closed, and processions consisting ofsome30,000 non-teaching support workers and 35,000 teachers are sprouting up across the city.

The campaign for increased pay in the wake of rampant inflationand soaring housing costs saw thousands traversing the dark, rainy morning as early as 5:00 am Tuesday to march rain ponchos and jackets.

Union members behind the strike argue that the school support staffers - such as janitors, bus drivers, and lunch workers - on average, earn just $25,000 per year, forced to live in poverty in high-priced LA. The average annual rate of pay for a cashier at Burger King, for reference, is roughly $27,000, according to Glassdoor.

Taking to the streets Monday, workers affixed signs to their umbrellas while others offered pro-union chants in the storm of protests, which had been anticipated for weeks - and come as a somewhat unfavorable outcome for the district, as well as roughly a million parents, with more than 500,000 students now set to miss school.

Members of Service Employees International Union Local 99 were among those marching in the cold rain Tuesday, toting signs with messages that decried the district for not adhering to their demands - which include a 30 percent pay raise.

'We've had enough of empty promises,' Arias told the outlet, flanked by school staffers and supporters of their demands. 'If LAUSD truly values and is serious about reaching an agreement, they must show workers the respect they deserve.'

While citizens are fed up, public school workers in the embattled state - which is currently mulling over a proposal that would see roughly 1.8million black Californians gifted $360,000 in 'reparations' - are equally tired with the local government, leading to the planned walkouts that were announced last week.

'Workers are fed-up with living on poverty wages and having their jobs threatened for demanding equitable pay,'Arais said in a statement last week criticizing district for not bowing to their demands of an immediate wage increase.

'Workers are fed-up with the short staffing at LAUSD - and being harassed for speaking up.'

On Wednesday, Superintendent Carvahlo decried the possibility of a strike after prolonged campus closures interrupted students' learning during the pandemic.

'What are the consequences?' Carvalho said of the possible repercussions of yet another week of closures.'The consequences are once again learning loss, deprivation of safety and security that schools provide to our kids, deprivation of food and nutrition that many of our kids depend on.'

He added: 'I know that we focus our attention on the needs of the workforce. I need to focus my attention also primarily on the needs of our kids.'

Parents have expressed similar concerns. Local mother Yesenia Benites complained the closures will not only affect her young daughter, but her as well, as she divides her time between parenting and taking online classes at an undergrad university.

'Since I do go to college and take online classes, having to have a daughter that's here... it's gonna take my study time to do homework and all that.'

That said, the mom said she was most concerned about her daughter.

'She's going to miss being with her friends and learning,' she lamented.

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The Los Angeles union chiefs holding education of 500,000 Californian schoolkids to ransom - Daily Mail

A community organisation is taking over the running of Leicester's African Caribbean centre from the city council - with a cash boost to revamp the building too. The African Heritage Alliance will now run the popular venue in Maidstone Road, Highfields, which is currently owned and ran by the council.

The group has been granted a five-year lease with a peppercorn rent to run the centre under the city council's community asset transfer policy, after presenting a detailed business plan during an open bidding process. A range of organisations were invited to express interest in running the centre by the city council in June last year.

In the winning business plan, the alliance set out proposals such as new social activities and childcare services, to help meet the needs of the community. The group also intend to offer education, support and welfare services.

READ MORE: Leicestershire NHS boss outlines major recruitment drive to tackle staffing crisis

A grant of 60,000 will be given to the group by the city council from the council's Black Lives Matter funds to help with running costs during the first year of its lease. It will now take responsibility for repairs, maintenance and day-to-day running costs for the building and will also pay the council a token rent of 1 a year.

City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said: Local facilities are often best run by the people who use them and, over the years, a number of centres have already successfully transferred to community groups through our Transforming Neighbourhood Services programme. The African Heritage Alliance have produced a business plan that demonstrates they have the capacity, experience and resources to take on the running of the African Caribbean Centre.

"I look forward to the implementation of this plan, which will bring benefits to the community while making a significant contribution to the social and economic wellbeing of the area.

The news comes after the council launched a public consultation in October 2021, where community members were asked how they would like the centre to be run. The consultation received 352 responses and over half of the respondents said that they would prefer community organisations to be given the opportunity to take on the lease and running of the centre.

One respondent said in the consultation: Having lived in Leicester for all of my life, the African Caribbean Centre has been a part of my Caribbean heritage living in Leicester. It is the one place we can call our own and know that the African Caribbean community who have been instrumental in managing the centre have African Caribbean communities best interests at heart. It needs to remain that way.

The handover of the Maidstone Road centre is now taking place. The African Heritage Alliance is expected to take over the lease in the next six to nine months.

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Leicester's African Caribbean Centre handed to local community group for 1 a year rent - Leicestershire Live

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Freedom fighters around the globe commemorate July 13 as the day that three Black women helped give birth to a movement. In the five short years since #Black LivesMatter arrived on the scene thanks to the creative genius of Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometti the push for Black liberation from state-inflicted violence has evolved into one of the most influential social movements of the post-civil rights era.

Black Lives Matter has always been more of a human rights movement rather than a civil rights movement. BLMs focus has been less about changing specific laws and more about fighting for a fundamental reordering of society wherein Black lives are free from systematic dehumanization. Still, the movements measurable impact on the political and legal landscape is undeniable.

What gets referred to as the Black Lives Matter movement is, in actuality, the collective labor of a wide range of Black liberation organizations, each which their own distinct histories. These organizations include groups like the Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, Assatas Daughters, the St. Louis Action council, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle, to name just a few.

Collectively, since 2013, these organizers have effected significant change locally and nationally, including the ousting of high-profile corrupt prosecutors. In Chicago, the labor of groups such as BYP100 and Assatas Daughters, among others, led Anita Alvarez who had inexplicably failed to charge police officers who shot at least 68 people to death to lose her re-election bid for Cook County prosecutor. And in Florida, groups like The Dream Defenders and others helped end Angela Coreys reign as a state attorney. Corey remains infamous for failing to convict Trayvon Martins killer George Zimmerman while prosecuting Marissa Alexander, a Black woman who didnt hurt anyone when firing a warning shot at her abusive ex-husband.

Podcast: Hear Patrisse Cullors on the Evolution of Black Lives Matter

The BLM movements work certainly doesnt stop there. Students on the ground in Missouri, as part of the #ConcernedStudent1950 movement, helped lead to the resignation of the University of Missouri president over his failure to deal with racism on campus. BLM compelled Democrats to restructure their national platform to include issues such as criminal justice reform, and the movement contributed to the election of Black leftist organizers to public office, such as activist Chokwe Lumumba to mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.

The BLM movements unrelenting work on the issue of police corruption, helped incite the release of four unprecedented U.S. Department of Justice reports that confirm the widespread presence of police corruption in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland. Moreover, the Movement for Black Lives publication of a watershed multi-agenda policy platform authored by over 50 black-centered organizations laid bare the expansive policy goals of the movement. The fact that these accomplishments have happened so quickly is an extraordinary achievement in and of itself.

Moreover, the broader cultural impact of BLM as a movement has been immeasurably expansive. BLM will forever be remembered as the movement responsible for popularizing what has now become an indispensable tool in 21st-century organizing efforts: the phenomenon that scholars refer to as mediated mobilization. By using the tools of social media, BLM was the first U.S. social movement in history to successfully use the internet as a mass mobilization device. The recent successes of movements, such as #MeToo, #NeverAgain, and #TimesUp, would be inconceivable had it not been for the groundwork that #BlackLivesMatter laid.

Many have suggested, erroneously, that the BLM movement has quieted down in the age of Trump. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything the opposite is true: BLM is stronger, larger, and more global now than ever before. The success of initiatives such as Alicia Garzas Black Census Project the largest national survey focusing on U.S. black lives in over 150 years and Patrisse Cullors launch of the grassroots effort Dignity and Power Now in support of incarcerated people, both exemplify the BLM movements continued impact, particularly in local communities.

The idea that BLM is in a decline stage is false. Instead, what is true is that American mainstream media has been much less willing to actually cover the concerns of the BLM in part because it has been consumed by the daily catastrophes of the Trump presidency. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that BLM is dwindling away simply because the cameras are no longer present. The revolution is still happening it is just not being televised. All throughout the country, BLM organizers are at work in their local communities feverishly fighting for change and relentlessly speaking truth to power. For instance, The Dream Defenders in Florida just released their visionary project The Freedom Papers, and BYP100 just celebrated its five-year anniversary.

Ironically, many of the debates that have come to define the age of Trump, such as the immigration debate, are arguably indirectly influenced by BLM. A notable example: Recently, some congressional Democrats have called for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been violating the rights of undocumented immigrants. What has been missing in much of the mainstream coverage of the ICE debate is an acknowledgment of how the democratic lefts radicalization would not have been possible without the efforts of Black radical grassroots social movements, such as BLM.

Indeed, long before congressional Democrats dared to call for the abolition of ICE, #blacklivesmatter activists pioneered the call for an end of modern policing in America. The language of abolition comes directly from the work of grassroots activists, such as those in the Black Lives Matter Global Network. Their work helped to revive a long black radical tradition of engaging the rhetoric of abolitionism.

We literally would not even be using the word abolition let alone embracing it as a framework had it not been for the labor of BLM activists. The fact that Democrats are gradually calling for the abolition of ICE is a testimony to the continued impact of BLM as a social movement.

As we reflect on five years of BLM, we would do well to consider the myriad ways that #blacklivesmatter has influenced our contemporary moment and given us a framework for imagining what democracy in action really looks like. Whether it be transforming how we talk about police violence or transforming how we talk about abolitionism, the BLM movement has succeeded in transforming how Americans talk about, think about, and organize for freedom.

Frank Leon Roberts is the founder of the Black Lives Matter Syllabus and teaches at New York University.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: An earlier version of this essay inadvertently conflated two important distinctions: Black Lives Matter, the organization, vs. Black Lives Matter, the movement. Black Lives Matter, the organization, is a global decentralized network with over 30 chapters across the world. Black Lives Matter, the movement, is a broad conceptual umbrella that refers to the important work of a wide range of Black liberation organizations. Sometimes referred to as the Movement for Black Lives, the achievements of the Black Lives Matter movement would not be possible had it not been for the collective efforts of groups such as Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, Assatas Daughters, the St. Louis Action council, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle, to name just a few. This essay is an attempt to celebrate the movement without attributing the movements achievements solely to Black Lives Matter, the organization.

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How Black Lives Matter Changed the Way Americans Fight for Freedom ...

Many see the slogan Black Lives Matter as a plea to secure the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans, especially historically wronged African Americans. They add the BLM hashtag to their social-media profiles, carry BLM signs at protests, and make financial donations.

Tragically, when they do donate, they are likely to bankroll a number of radical organizations,founded by committed Marxists whose goals arent to make the American Dream a reality for everyonebut to transform America completely.

This might be unknown to some of the worlds best-known companies, which have jumped on the BLM bandwagon. Brands like Airbnb and Spanx have promised direct donations.

True, others like Nike and Netflix have shrewdly channeled their donations elsewhere, like the NAACP and other organizations that have led the struggle for civil rights for decades. These companies are likely aware of BLMs extreme agenda and recoil from bankrolling destructive ideas. But it requires sleuthing to learn this.

Companies that dont do this hard work are providing air cover for a destructive movement and compelling their employees, shareowners and customers to endorse the same. Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal TometiIn a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuelas Marxist dictator Nicols Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.

Millions of Venezuelans suffering under Maduros murderous misrule presumably couldnt be reached for comment.

Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan Now We Transform.Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek.

One proclaims: We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another.

A partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.

Another M4BL demand is the retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record expungement of all drug-related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the war on drugs and criminalization of prostitution.

This agenda isnt what most people signed up for when they bought their Spanx or registered for Airbnb. Nor is it what most people understood when they expressed sympathy with the slogan that Black Lives Matter.

Garza first coined the phrase in a July 14, 2013, Facebook post the day George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Her friend Cullors put the hashtag in front and joined the words, so it could travel through social media. Tometi thought of creating an actual digital platform, BlackLivesMatter.com.

The group became a self-styled global network in 2014 and a fiscally sponsored project of a separate progressive nonprofit in 2016, according to Robert Stilson of the Capital Research Center. This evolution has helped embolden an agenda vastly more ambitious than just #DefundthePolice.

The goals of the Black Lives Matter organization go far beyond what most people think. But they are hiding in plain sight, there for the world to see, if only we read beyond the slogans and the innocuous-sounding media accounts of the movement.

The groups radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of societythe familywith the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other. Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed.

Theirs is a blueprint for misery, not justice. It must be rejected.

Continued here:
The Agenda of Black Lives Matter Is Far Different From the Slogan

Black Lives Matter has been called the largest civil movement in U.S. history. Since 2013, local BLM chapters have formed nationwide to demand accountability for the killings of dozens of African Americans by police and others. Since the summer of 2020, when tens of millions in the U.S. and around the world marched under the Black Lives Matter slogan to protest a Minneapolis police officers murder of George Floyd, the movement has risen to a new level of prominence, funding and scrutiny.

BLM has long been seen as a coordinated yet decentralized effort. Lately, the movement and its leading organizations have become more traditional and hierarchical in structure. Public opinion is also changing, as BLM chapters call on the movements leaders to be more accountable to its grassroots groups. We caught up with two scholars of worldwide African communities and cultures Kwasi Konadu and Bright Gyamfi to discuss BLM as both a movement and an organization.

Black Lives Matter started in 2013 as a messaging campaign. In response to the 2012 acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting and killing Black teenager Trayvon Martin, three activists Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors protested the verdict on social media, along with many others. Cullors came up with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which gained widespread use on social media and in street protests.

Over the next several years as Black Lives Matter flags, hashtags and signs became common features of local, national and even international protests in support of Black lives this messaging campaign became a decentralized social movement to demand accountability for police killings and other brutality against Black people.

The movement remained decentralized, although some significant, formal BLM-related organizations emerged during this time. For instance, in 2013 Cullors, Tometi and Garza formed the Black Lives Matter Network to facilitate communication, support and shared resources among the dozens of locally organized and led Black Lives Matter chapters that were springing up around the United States.

In 2014, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, formed as a separate but related coalition of dozens of organizations of Black activist and others, including the Black Lives Matter Network.

In 2017, the Black Lives Matter Network transformed into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, co-founded by Tometi and Cullors, who was the executive director until she stepped down in May 2021. This group describes itself as a global foundation supporting Black led movements.

While the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation says it is decentralized, over time it has followed a pattern similar to other social movements driven by individuals and organizations. It has become more of a conventional hierarchical organization, centralizing its operations and leadership. Its founders have won awards, book deals and notoriety.

The BLM Global Network Foundation has not developed any publicly known independent source of funding, nor was a decision ever made to rely primarily on grassroots support or small individual donations. As a result, it is dependent on corporate and foundation money to pay for its operations and programs. Amid the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, the BLM Global Network Foundation generated some US$90 million in donations or grants from corporations and foundations.

The Movement for Black Lives, which calls itself decentralized and anti-capitalist, also raised millions in 2020, including $100 million from the Ford Foundation.

All told, corporations pledged close to $2 billion to BLM-related causes in 2020, though less is known about pledges for 2021.

Meanwhile, many frontline Black Lives Matters chapters have struggled to stay afloat. Some key chapters have begun calling for financial transparency and more democratic decison-making from national leaders at the BLM Global Network Foundation, as well as a share of the funds the national groups have raised.

Others have disavowed the Black Lives Matter Network and defected from it, focusing on local community fundraising and organizing to support their work.

Though the phrase Black Lives Matter has become a common sight, the movement is losing public support. According to a new Civiqs survey of 244,622 registered voters, support for BLM fell from two-thirds of voters in June 2020 to 50% in June 2021.

Some of this shift may be due to growing public awareness of the movements internal struggles, such as competing visions and competition over scarce resources, as well as questions about whether some BLM leaders have used donations for personal benefit.

Tensions and conflicts are part of the evolution of all social movements, including BLM.

Movements for peoples of African ancestry also face a distinct challenge: They often have to appeal for both funding and action from the same white power structure and corporate interests that participate in and benefit from the suffering of Black people.

For example, although President Lyndon B. Johnson is remembered for helping pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he routinely referred to the 1957 version of that act as the nigger bill in conversations with his Southern white supremacist colleagues.

Another example involves the McDonalds Corp. In 1968, after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., McDonalds partnered with U.S. civil rights organizations. The company claimed its African American-owned franchises were carrying on Kings civil rights agenda to empower the Black community.

According to historian Marcia Chatelain, however, instead of enabling economic freedom, McDonalds has burdened the Black community with low wages, relatively few franchises and high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. McDonalds has benefited from a devoted African American consumer base, more so because African Americans consume more fast food than any other race, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Money shaping social movements, such as the civil rights movement, is not new. The civil rights movement, including the summer of 1963s March on Washington, was funded by white liberal organizations and foundations. In the summer of 2020, BLM protests also generated millions in similar funding. Indeed, the Ford Foundation and the Borealis Philanthropy recently formed the Black-Led Movement Fund, which raises money for the Movement for Black Lives.

Malcolm X, in his analysis of the 1963 March on Washington, brought attention to the influence white philanthropy and leadership held over black social justice organizations, especially regarding funding that was controlled by the white power structure. Siding with Malcolms analysis, James Baldwin also observed, the March had already been co-opted.

Based on our research on civil rights-Black power organizations and on Black internationalism, BLM would benefit from a starfish organizational structure.

Starfishlike organizations are decentralized networks with no head. Intelligence is spread throughout an open system that easily adapts to circumstances. If a leader is removed, new ones emerge, and the network remains intact.

In the U.S., BLM organizers work through various groups, yet all are tied to centralized hubs, like the Movement for Black Lives coalition. These organizational choices conform to a spider analogy. Compared to the starfish structure, spiderlike organizations operate under the control of a central leader, and information and power are concentrated at the top.

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In the wake of the 2020 mass protests against racism after George Floyds murder, many Republican-led states proposed a new wave of draconian anti-protest laws to stifle dissent. This suggests that BLM might be more resilient if it followed the starfish approach.

In their desire to appeal to a diverse public to end white supremacy, Black Lives Matters leaders fail to consider that pervasive anti-Black violence is the very engine that powers white supremacy and makes broad coalitions ineffective.

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Black Lives Matter: How far has the movement come?