Resources

This toolkit was created to collate, condense and share the lessons we have learned in ensuring that our direct actions are centered on healing justice. This toolkit is a beta version; it will develop in real time as we continue to uncover the implications for healing justice in our organizing. We extend our gratitude to the BLM Healing Justice Working Group and all the chapter members who shared your insights, your innovations and your struggles to support our shared knowledge.

In the work that we do, there are many times where conflict can arise. It is our duty to ensure that we are mindful of how we handle conflict as it is inevitable. It presents an opportunity to grow and realign oneself.  This toolkit was create to give guidelines to conflict resolution within chapters.

For the last few years, large numbers of our people have been out in the streets, engaging in powerful and necessary direct action, and fighting for the lives of our people. The political period we are now entering promises to require a redoubling of our efforts to organize against increasing oppression. We will need to match this fortifying energy with elevated and innovative ways of caring and showing up for each other. We will need to raise aloft a declared vision for Black freedom that is unprecedented in its scope. Healers committed to our liberation have stepped up and created spaces in our communities. They have built healing into our direct actions. Their presence and work will continue to be essential to how we sustain ourselves and how we create new ways of being along the way.

View more about healing justice.

The Toolkit for Black Lives Matter Healing Justice & Direct Action was created to collate, condense, and share the lessons we have learned in ensuring that our direct actions are centered on healing justice. This toolkit is a beta version; it will develop in real time as we continue to uncover the implications for healing justice in our organizing. We extend our gratitude to the BLM Healing Justice Working Group and all the chapter members who shared your insights, your innovations and your struggles to support our shared knowledge.

The #TrayvonTaughtMe digital campaign highlights the beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement, and how Trayvon’s extrajudicial murder and his family’s commitment to ending gun violence and strengthening communities catalyzed a generation of organizers and activists to take action for Black lives. Five years later, the same conditions that led to Trayvon’s death have been exacerbated under the Trump administration. Anti-Blackness is pervasive and implicit, and Black children and adults continue to be put on trial for our own murders. The perceptions of Black people and Blackness in America, and globally, have resulted in the refusal to acknowledge the unique cultural contributions of Black people. Moreover, they perpetuate prejudice, deadly policing, racist legislation, and interpersonal violence. Trayvon Martin’s death sparked a movement. #TrayvonTaughtMe allows us to capture how he and the movement changed all of our lives.

Five years ago, a teenage boy went out for a snack but never made it home to his loving family. A grown man took it upon himself to patrol his neighborhood and to shoot dead an unarmed, unassuming boy. Not only did a mother have to bury her young son, but she now watches his killer walk the streets free— free to brag about killing Trayvon, and free to commit more acts of violence. We need to #TalkAboutTrayvon because, five years later, there are still no consequences when adults wave their guns around at Black and Brown kids. Police continue to mistreat, terrorize, and even murder boys and girls of color, and then walk free. We need to #TalkAboutTrayvon, share pictures of his sweet face, and remind each other what we continue to lose when we uphold a system that won’t punish people who kill Black children and adults. We are not only losing wonderful people—we are losing our humanity. White communities are used to consciously and unconsciously maintaining the racist policies and practices that led to Trayvon’s death—and, as white people, we must speak out against those policies and practices. When we remain silent and on the sidelines, we are complicit in maintaining these unjust systems. Our work is to get more white people who support us to take action toward racial justice—and to change the hearts and minds of those white people who are not yet with us. When we #TalkAboutTrayvon, we tell grieving parents that we see them and acknowledge their pain. When we #TalkAboutTrayvon, we tell Black children that we are not afraid of them—we are only afraid they won’t get the bright future they deserve.

La campaña digital de #TrayvonMeEnseñó explica el comienzo del movimiento Black Lives Matter (Vidas Negra Importan) y cómo el asesinato extrajudicial de Trayvon y el compromiso de su familia de poner fin a la violencia armada y fortalecer las comunidades motivó a una generación de organizadores y activistas a tomar acción por las vidas de la comunidad negra. Cinco años más tarde, las mismas condiciones que resultaron en la muerte de Trayvon se han exacerbado bajo la administración de Trump. La anti-negritud es omnipresente e implícita, y los niños y adultos negros siguen siendo sometidos a juicio por nuestros propios asesinatos. Las percepciones de los negros y la negritud en América, y en el mundo, han resultado en una ausencia de reconocimiento de las contribuciones culturales únicas de los negros. Además, perpetúan los prejuicios, la policía letal, la legislación racista y la violencia interpersonal. La muerte de Trayvon Martin provocó un movimiento. #TrayvonMeEnseñó nos permite captar cómo él y el movimiento cambio todas nuestras vidas.

Four years ago, what is now known as the Black Lives Matter Global Network began to organize. It started out as a Black-centered political will and movement building project turned chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene when violence is inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.