Black Lives Matter Releases List of Demands and Solutions

Black Lives Matter has released a list of demands and solutions, including reparations and the demilitarization of the police.

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The Movement for Black Lives, "a collective of more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people from across the country," released a platform on Monday morning consisting of six demands in addition to key solutions all related to the work of the Black Lives Mattercivil rights movement.

According The Movement for Black Lives website, a group of over 2,000 activists met in Cleveland a year ago to "reflect on the state of our movement for liberation and celebrate our people, both those who have fallen and those who have survived. It was there that we began the process of uniting to articulate a shared vision of the world we want to live in." The Movement also describes itself as "[A] collective that centers and is rooted in Black communities, but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people; collective liberation will be a product of all of our work."

The demands of the platform are: an end to the war on black people, reparations, invest-divest (focusing on investing in the "education, health, and safety of Black people instead of investments in the criminalizing, caging, and harming of Black people"), economic justice, community control, and political power. Each demand is accompanied by a thorough explanation of what is required to rectify long-standing injustices against black people, including details of the problem the demand seeks to rectify, and federal and local policy suggestions for achieving the demand. 

Thenjiwe McHarris, a member of The Movement for Black Lives' Policy Table, told Fusion that "The heart of what the movement is, is people and organizations across country coming together and becoming a united front for the purposes of co-creating a vision for black lives." Referring to the fact that the Back Lives Matter movement had previously eschewed a centralized hierarchical structure, McHarris added that Black Lives Matter is "not a leaderless movement, it’s a leaderful movement."

The Movement for Black Lives has also created a pledge related to the demands and the overall work of the Movement. The pledge, which currently has 43,237 signatures, reads:

Guided by love, we continue to stand together for justice, human dignity and our shared goal of ending all forms of state violence against Black people. We organize, occupy, demonstrate, march and chant for a new future: A future we can be proud of. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, who fought for their freedom and ours. Like them, we want a world where our lives matter.

The Movement for Black Lives' Policy Table did not immediately reply to Complex's request for comment. 

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