Abstract
Since February of 2012 a social movement clamoring for racial justice took the country by storm. Black Lives Matter (BLM) evolved into a movement and a diffuse network of social justice activists who have worked tirelessly to both reform the inherently discriminatory and abusive police practices endemic to the American justice system and sought to build alternative forms of community that would immediately improve the lives of black people in America. Members of the conservative establishment have called out Black Lives matter as being "anarchist" in nature. Indeed, these conservative critics are right in more ways than one. BLM approaches social justice from the parallel concerns of building community and influencing policy. This twin approach seeks to capture, at least parts of, the state in order to combat corporate power and abuses of the state security apparatus all the while building parallel and alternative forms of community independent from these same structures. In doing so, BLM endeavors to both maintain intellectual and political independence and transcend the state centric horizon of legibility and legitimacy inherent in our politics as well as echoes the rich tradition of anarchism.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Pedroso, Joaquin A.
(2016)
"Black Lives Matter or, How to Think Like an Anarchist,"
Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 4:
Iss.
2, Article 4.
DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.4.2.001668
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol4/iss2/4