“No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you — being black in America is tough”. Cleveland, and the state of Ohio in general, is also “Ground Zero” for acts of police violence against African-Americans, Professor Ronnie Dunn of the Department of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University, told the The Hindu. The killings of Rice and several other African-Americans triggered the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which began as a hashtag on social media, before developing legs as a social movement. Protests and unrest in Cleveland finally forced the State of Ohio to come up with an institutional response. Here’s where the role of movements such as the BLM that seek to channel anger against police violence into changing the political culture has become prominent.

Source: The Hindu July 01, 2017 13:52 UTC