Introduction
The mention of Black Liberation Movement (BLM) brings to mind iconic black activists such as Martin Luther King Jr., Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, George Jackson and many others. The influence of these BLM heroes and heroines in America has spread to other movements and ideas about inequality. In the 1960s and 1970s many social activists looked towards prisons for political leadership while considering the prisons to be institutions of oppression and social control (Steinhauer, 2006). Prisoners emerged as icons of state repression and beacons of liberation. In the United States, black prisoners held special sway with their prolific writings which urged the state to end racial oppression and called upon racially undermined groups to rise up and fight for their rights. Since the 1970s, a lot has changed and many societies especially the American one, have overcome racial discrimination and the motivation behind BLM and other activist movements has changed drastically. The influence that the BLM had in America has lately spread to other movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and various women movements around the world to fight dictatorial governments, oppression and equality.
BLM have had many influences on other social movements. One of the influences has been to help some regions deal with external aggression. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which was launched in 2005 has been heavily influenced by the BLM. The BDS was launched with the main purpose being the removal of the Zionist settler project and to help dismantle the Israeli apartheid state after years of setback to the Palestinian Liberation Movement (PLM) (Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, mxgm.org 2013). The BDS has faced several obstacles as it fights the resolutions of the Oslo Accord. In order to stay relevant, the organization has borrowed several tactics and strategies from the BLM.
In its pursuit for liberation, the BLM used mass rebellions, work stoppages, emigration, armed struggle, mass strikes and international diplomacy. The BDS has followed suit and used these tactics very successfully. The organization has managed to engage masses of people from the UK, Canada, South Africa and other parts of the world to support some of its quests to boycott Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory (mxgm.org 2013). Similarly, the BLM was able to gain support from countries outside the US due to its vitality and aggression in fighting for liberation. The BDS has been successful because it has managed to engage masses of people, harnessed their limited individual capacities into powerful social and political weapons.
The use of organized mass protests borrowed from the BLM has enabled the BDS, the Arab uprising movements, the Occupy Wall Street and many other modern social movements to escape individual risks. According to Kazin (2007) some social movements such as the Klu Klux Klan, The Southern Planter Elite and the White Citizens Council were not properly organized. They used tactics that could easily pass for criminal activities and as such their members were often exposed to criminal prosecutions and brutality from the police.
The occupy Wall Street movement in the United States has emerged as one of many movements against austerity measures. The movement is disproportionately white and has many students who are struggling with student debt. The movement has been termed by founder of Columbia University’s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Mr. David Gilbert as a breath of fresh air. He states that the last 30 years of mainstream politics that have been dominated by racial scapegoating where the government has been directing its frustrations against welfare mothers, criminals and immigrants (kersplebedeb.com, 2012). Just as the BLM acted as a loud voice for those vulnerable groups in the 1770s, so is the Occupy Wall Street movement acting in the best interest of the oppressed people in the society. The organizations fight for equality and the provision of equalization funds and schemes for socio-economic support to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has also borrowed from the BLM in terms of expressing its demands to the government. The organizers of the protests do not come out immediately with a set of demands which would potentially narrow the support of their mission. The organization pursues is agendas through teach-ins, demonstrations, occupations and other means that are effective in showing that the current regime is destructive and oppressive (mxgm.org, 2013).
The Arab Uprising emerged due to the neo-liberalism that hit North Africa and the Middle East. According to Lynch (2012) the people are fighting oppressive governments that have been closely associated with American imperialism. Through the eyes of the BLM activities Arabs have come to view their leaders as dictators. In Libya Gaddafi’s unquestionable rule and his overbearing government angered the citizens to a point of revolting and calling for his murder (Lynch, 2012). The ways through which the people in Libya and Tunisia arose against the government in an unrelenting manner mirrors the manner in which the BLM voiced their concerns against racism and black oppression.
Modern socialist movement come alive after one person or a group of few persons does an outrageous thing or is/are arrested. The BLM came alive when Huey Newton was arrested for the murder of a police officer in Oakland (Wu, 2000). Newton claimed that he had been framed and this led to a sustained campaign “free Huey”. During the speeches, there were applauses and people got agitated to fight for their liberation. In Tunisia the uprising was triggered by one man (Mohamed Bouazizi) setting himself on fire allegedly to protest against the government (Lynch, 2012). The response to that incident was massive street protests and in just 28 days, the protesters were able to force an ousting of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The role of literature and the media has reigned supreme in the successful execution of liberation struggles. In the 1970s, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders wrote and delivered great speeches, had them published in the local dailies and as such they were able to reach masses of people (Kazin, 2007). Modern social movements also make extensive use of the media to air out their grievances, call for meetings and generally communicate amongst their members. Lynch (2012) asserts that social media whose current popularity can be compared to that of public speaking in the 1970s was a very crucial tool of communication during the Arab Uprising. Protesters followed and used popular social networking sites; Twitter and facebook to know what was happening on a minute to minute basis.
The modern liberation movements have also adhered to the principles of the Black Liberation Movement. One of the principles of the BLM was that it was anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-sexist (Steinhauer, 2006). The Arab uprising particularly in Egypt has exemplified these very principles in its quest to liberate Egyptians from dictatorial rule. In the early stages of the protests, the Black Panther party wanted to reclaim black masculinity and therefore women were not given much prominence in the struggles. In 1969 the leadership of the party however recognized women as equals of men and involved them in the fight for liberation. In a similar manner the During the BLM mass protests women were recognized as equals of men (Lynch, 2012). Similarly the Egyptian uprising saw massive involvement of women in the protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. There were cases of rape just as it was during the BLM liberation protests but strong campaign against the harassment of women came up and quelled such violence. In Egypt, dozens of women took to the Taalat Harb Square to protest some rape cases and the protests were done in a similar manner to the BLM protests (Lynch, 2012).
The second principle of the BLM was that black people had to have total control over their destiny. In all the movements, the assertion has always been that people want to control their own destiny. During the Arab Uprising, the people became tired of unquestionable and dictatorial governments. The BDS also wants Israel to stop interfering with Palestine. Wu (2000) affirms that in deed the quest for people to have absolute opportunity to make collective decisions regarding their development has always been a major motivation factor for them to engage in social movements.
The third principle was the use of class struggle and the development of the science to relate to the uniqueness of the national struggle. During the 1960s, sanctions employed by the BLM were meant to exert intense economic and political pressure on the government institutions in order to force them to comply with various demands. One of the institutions targeted by the protesters was the criminal justice system (the judiciary and the prison system) which were said to target black and Latino people (Steinhauer, 2006; Kazin, 2007). Similarly, in modern social movements government institutions have been the focus of the movements. During the Arab Uprising, protesters targeted the executive arm of the government. In Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, the protesters demanded for the resignation of all ministers serving under ousted leaders. They also targeted any other public official affiliated to the toppled regime. Unlike in the 1960s, modern social movements have in the recent past been demanding for the arrest and questioning of family members to ousted leaders.
Conclusion
Liberation movements have come a long way in terms in the fight for human rights. The 1960s and 70s saw the emergence of strong black liberation movements such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Workers Congress, the Revolutionary Act Movements and many others. This Black Liberation Movements (BLM) set the pace for modern liberation movements. Firstly, they influenced the methods of protest used. Modern social movements such as the Arab Uprising revolutionaries, the BDS in Palestine, the Occupy Wall Street in the US as well as a host of women liberation movements have all used the protest methods of the BLM. These methods have included street protests, boycotts, strikes, diplomacy, and occupations among others that were all used by the BLM. These methods have proved successful just as they were during the BLM protests. The modern social movements such as the Occupy Wall Street have become the voice of the oppressed just as the BLM had become. These organizations actively fight for equality and socio-economic support to vulnerable groups. Unlike the BLM which used public speaking and authorship of articles as the main tools to voice out their concerns, modern social movements have taken to the wildly popular social media to sensitize the public and pass all relevant communications. Women have also been a key feature in all the struggles for liberation wirh their rights being upheld by many movements. As such, it is evident that the influence of the Black Liberation Movement has heavily influenced many other movements with ides about equality and liberation.
References
Engdahl, S. (2012). The women's liberation movement. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.
Kazin, M. (2007). Reinventing "The People": The Progressive Movement, The Class Problem, And The Origins Of Modern Liberalism. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas,4(1), 121-123.
Steinhauer, O. (2006). Liberation movements. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur.
Wu, J. (2000). Frederick Douglass and the Black liberation movement: the North Star of American Blacks. New York: Garland.
Lynch, M. (2012). The Arab uprising: the unfinished revolutions of the new Middle East. New York: PublicAffairs.
The Black Liberation Movement and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions: Lessons and Applications for the Palestinian Liberation Movement. (2013). Malcolm X Grassroots Movement RSS. Retrieved November 15, 2013, from http://mxgm.org/the-black-liberation-movement-and-boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-lessons-and-applications-for-the-palestinian-liberation-movement/
Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Mass Incarceration: An Interview on Contemporary Social Movements with David Gilbert. (n.d.). Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Mass Incarceration: An Interview on Contemporary Social Movements with David Gilbert. Retrieved November 15, 2013, from http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profile
