Land of the (Un)Free the Black Lives Matter Movement’S Objectives and Achievements

Bachelor-thesis Land of the (Un)Free The Black Lives Matter Movement’s Objectives and Achievements Author: Nicole Bertilsson Supervisor: Manuela Nilsson Examiner: Chris High Semester: HT20 Subject: Peace & Development Level: Bachelor Course code: 2FU33E Abstract This thesis studies the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and what achievements it has been able to accomplish related to its objectives, in order to create a better understanding of how new social movements work and what they can accomplish. The objectives and achievements were divided into different categories: cultural recognition, physical security, socio-economic, and other. The findings show that most of the objectives were of the physical security and socio-economic category while most of the achievements were outside of the objectives the BLM movement set and are mostly related to the cultural recognition category. The study argues that this is due to the characteristics of the BLM movement as a new social movement as well as the BLM not being specific enough in its objectives. With this knowledge there is an understanding that new social movements are very good at engaging people but could improve in their achievements. Keywords: BLM Movement, New Social Movement Theory, Goal Setting Theory, Post Materialism 2 Table of contents Introduction 4 Social Movements 4 Research Problem and Relevance 6 Objective and Research Questions 7 Structure 7 Literature Review 8 Theory 11 New social movement theory 12 Goal-Setting Theory 16 Galtung’s three dimensions of violence 19 Methodology 20 Design 21 Operationalization 22 Sources 22 Delimitations and limitations 24 Ethical Considerations 25 Findings 25 The Creation of Black Lives Matter 25 Black Lives Matter in 2020 26 Objectives 28 Physical Security 29 Socio-economic development 29 Cultural Recognition 30 Chapters 31 Achievements 32 Physical Security 33 Chapters 34 Cultural Recognition 35 Other achievements 36 Summary 36 Analysis 37 Johan Galtung’s three dimensions of violence 37 New social movement theory 39 Horizontal structure 39 Symbolic action as a major arena for collective action 41 Post-materialism and global awareness 41 Unconventional tactics of collective action 42 Goal-setting theory 44 Specificity of objectives 44 Effort and persistence 45 Commitment 46 Satisfaction through achievements 46 Conclusion 47 List of References 50 3 List of Abbreviations: BLM - Black Lives Matter M4BL - Movement for Black Lives NSM - New Social Movement BPRC - Black Philadelphian Radical Collective Introduction Social Movements Social movements are reactions to unsolved fundamental problems or developments in society (Schmitt-Beck 1992, p. 361), as such they are generally born out of grievances and are linked to the possibility to improve the oppressed groups’ status. The United States has always had a rich history of social movements with examples of the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, and more recently the Occupy Wall Street movement. The women's movement for instance started as early as 1848 with the first wave. The first wave was more focused on attaining women’s suffrage, but also in trying to secure women's freedom in property, marriage, wages, and children (Jeydel 2004, p. 28-29). The second wave that occurred between 1890-1928 was when the movement abandoned all other issues than women's suffrage because they were viewed as too controversial (Jeydel 2004, p. 84- 85). The third wave, which took place during 1960-1985, worked towards the legislation of abortion, equal opportunities in the workplace and in education, equal pay for equal work, and getting the equal rights amendment ratified (Jeydel 2004, p. 144). Another movement is the civil rights movement, the predecessor to the Black Lives Matter movement. It came about in the 1960s and was advocating for the freedom of black people against Jim Crow laws in the South, white supremacy, and for black people’s right to vote, and critique of the legal system (Clayton 2018 p. 451, Colley 2012 p. 7). With the help of black 4 churches, the civil rights movement was able to organize but also provide the civil rights movement with structures of support and network (Kirk 2013, p. 20, Clayton 2018) and as a matter of fact, Martin Luther King Jr. went on to become its leader through his previous engagements as a pastor (Kirk 2013, p. 7). The movement used nonviolence and negotiation and was able to pass the civil rights act in 1964 and the voting act in 1965 (Kirk 2013, p. 184). The more recent movement, Occupy Wall Street, was created as a critique of the American financial system. People gathered in a park nearby Wall Street, the symbolic heart of the system (Hammond 2013, p. 499). While the movement have not made any tangible change, they have been able to bring the subject to light and start a discussion about the financial system and its unfairness (Langman 2013, p. 521-522). The Occupy Wall Street movement could, like the Black Lives Matter movement, be said to be a new social movement (Langman 2013). This study focuses on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the latest new social movement in the US. While its goals might be more focused on police brutality, its larger goal is to eliminate the racism that black people are affected by. According to Cambridge’s definition of racism, it is “policies, behaviors, rules, among others that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race” (Cambridge dictionary 2020). This is the most basic understanding of racism and today there is a more comprehensive understanding of racism, so-called structural racism. Gee and Ford define racism as “the macro-level systems, social forces, institutions, ideologies, and processes that interact with one another to generate and reinforce inequities among racial and ethnic groups” (2011, p. 116). This is the kind of racism the BLM movement is trying to eliminate. It is this kind of structural racism that maintains the school-to- prison pipeline, which disproportionately affects people of color (Mallett 2015, p. 5), or the prison industrial complex, which too disproportionally 5 affects black people (Brewer & Heitzeg 2008, p.2), or health disparities for that matter (Gee and Ford 2011). Research Problem and Relevance While there have been others who have written about the BLM movement in different aspects, there has not been anything written in terms of what the movement has managed to actually accomplish. For instance, there is an ongoing debate about whether or not the movement should be concerned with specifically black people. There is also another debate about whether or not the BLMs goals are achievable or not but there is nothing written on what it has actually accomplished, compared to the movement’s declared goals, and as such, this paper will try to answer that question. The BLM movement has from its inception in 2014 grown tremendously. After the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the spring of 2020, the support for the movement increased and the turnout for the protests was nationwide (Thomas & Horowitz 2020). As such, it is a movement that, if successful, would have implications for how future democracy will develop in the US (Updegrove, Cooper, Orrick & Piquero 2020, p. 87). This is something which all of the aforementioned movements have in common, where the first two were able to strengthen democracy by making it more inclusive. Besides this, the success of the BLM movement would have a tremendous impact on the lives of black people all over the world. Seeing as the BLM movement has grown in such a way that it is now active in several countries, as well as it being the latest movement in the US, this new social movement serves as an excellent case study to analyze how well it has managed in their said goals, especially with how successful the movement has been. As the BLM movement is a new social movement, this study will contribute to the understanding of how new social movements are structured and what accomplishments they could have. With the knowledge 6 of the BLM movement’s objectives and what they have been able to achieve, it could be applied to other new social movements in order to understand their capacities to accomplish their goals and the challenges they face in that process, as social movements are imperative to channeling societal conflict and bringing about social change and are thus instrumental to the creation of democratic societies around the world. Objective and Research Questions The objective of this research is therefore to study what kind of achievements a social movement such as the Black Lives Matter movement can accomplish, in terms of their goals. In order to reach the objective, this paper will focus on three questions: ● What characterizes BLM as a new social movement? ● What objectives does the BLM movement have and how are they related to perceived grievances? ● What has it achieved so far? In order to answer these questions, a text analysis will be applied as a method to the case-study of the BLM movement. The findings will then be applied through the lenses of new social movement theory and goal-setting theory to understand the objectives and achievements as well as Galtung's three dimensions of violence in order to understand the perceived grievances that are the basis for the objectives. Structure This study first reviews the literature and then the theories mentioned above to continue with a description of the chosen method as well as an explanation of what has been done, what sources have been used, and what limitations and delimitations have been set. Thereafter the findings will be presented. 7 The analysis applies the theoretical framework to the findings which will then be followed by a conclusion of the study.

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