They may be thousands of miles apart but that didn’t stop Black Lives Matter protesters around the world marching in solidarity with their U.S. counterparts.
As the America reels from multiple shootings that made international headlines last week, the country’s grassroots movement for racial justice and against police brutality has been met with solidarity around the world.
Denouncing the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, people marched and rallied over the weekend and through Wednesday for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa.
Hundreds of #BlackLivesMatter protesters brought London to a standstill last night with a march along Oxford Street and into Trafalgar Square. Up to 400 people joined a surprise march, chanting “no justice, no peace, no racist police.”
In Berlin, Germany, demonstrators read a list of the names of black men and women killed by police in the U.S., bringing many to tears before they staged a peaceful die-in at Potsdamer Platz, a large intersection in the center of the city.
On Wednesday, members of Black Solidarity Action marched to the US consulate in Cape Town in solidarity with the movement. They were marching to the consulate to hand over a memorandum on the killing of black people in the United States.
There have since been hundreds of demonstrations against Sterling’s and Castile’s deaths in U.S. cities — while most have been peaceful, at least 309 people have been arrested in clashes between police and protesters.
Few major Western nations suffer the epidemic of gun violence that exists in the United States.
But many nations are entrenched with a history of systemic racism. And as events in recent days show, the language and politics of the #BlackLivesMatter movement have tremendous global echoes.
Its this solidarity that is raising global awareness and starting the conversations that needs to be had.
In the words of the great Nelson Mandela “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments or follow GoodThingsGuy on Facebook & Twitter to keep up to date with good news as it happens.
by 