Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – The Black National Convention

Introduction To This Series:

This post is one installment in an ongoing news series: a “living history” of the current national and international uprising for justice.

Today’s movement descends directly from the many earlier civil rights struggles against repeated injustices and race-based violence, including the killing of unarmed Black people. The posts in this series serve as a timeline of the uprising that began on May 26, 2020, the day after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck. The viral video of Floyd’s torturous suffocation brought unprecedented national awareness to the ongoing demand to truly make Black Lives Matter in this country.

The posts in this series focus on stories of the particular killings that have spurred the current uprising and on the protests taking place around the USA and across the globe. Sadly, thousands of people have lost their lives to systemic racial, gender, sexuality, judicial, and economic injustice. The few whose names are listed here represent the countless others lost before and since. Likewise, we can report but a few of the countless demonstrations for justice now taking place in our major cities, small towns, and suburbs.

What is the Black National Convention?

The multi-hour broadcast will be filled with energy, celebration, education, electoral justice, and a vision for Black Lives before the biggest election of our time, and long after.

August 22, 2020

On August 28, 2020, at 7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and Electoral Justice Project will host the 2020 Black National Convention (BNC) live broadcast. Together, we will ratify a Black political agenda days after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and ahead of November, when Black voters will play a pivotal role in determining whether we have four more years of domination or a new set of challenges to overcome.

Program, Friday, August 28th

• BNC Red Carpet: 6:00pm – 7:00pm ET, 3:00pm – 4:00pm PT
• Black National Convention: 7:00pm – 10:00pm ET, 4:00pm – 7:00pm PT

In honor of the first National Black Convention held in Gary, Indiana in 1972, M4BL will meet this historic moment with a national convention to shape a Black agenda ahead of the 2020 elections, where the Black community will play a pivotal role.

The Black National Convention will be live broadcast and feature a series of conversations, performances, and other activations geared toward engaging, informing, and mobilizing Black communities. At the convention, voters will ratify a Black national agenda ahead of the November elections guided by the Vision for Black Lives (V4BL) — a comprehensive and visionary policy agenda endorsed by over 50 Black-led organizations in the Movement for Black Lives ecosystem, along with hundreds of allied organizations and individuals…

The 2020 BNC is being orchestrated by the Electoral Justice Project (EJP), a project of M4BL that seeks to continue a long legacy of social movements fighting for the advancement of the rights of Black people through electoral strategy. It will be preceded by the “People’s Convention” on August 6-7, which will convene hundreds of delegates made up of activists and organizers from across the U.S. to connect M4BL’s policy platform to specific policies, programs, and investments in their cities and communities.

“The uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and countless other murders from police and vigilante violence along with the alarming Black death rate due to COVID-19 have exposed what we can no longer hide – America does not value Black lives. But we also know that rising up and taking action is how Black communities have secured our rights and dignity throughout this nation’s divided history,” said M4BL organizer and political strategist Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project (EJP).

The Black National Convention will organize and build Black political power in defense of Black lives. We are engaging Black people to uphold our right to vote and hold elected officials and institutions accountable to our visionary demands. “We are moving with power, pride, and love to create spaces and opportunities for Black people to get involved as agents of change who ensure we not only survive, but thrive,” said Byrd.

This year’s BNC is inspired and guided by the historic 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. It was there that four thousand Black people and leaders like Congresswoman and U.S. Presidential Candidate Shirley Chisolm, Black Panther co founder Bobby Seale, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Poet and Activist Amiri Baraka, Artists James Brown and Harry Belafonte, and others convened to propose a National Black Agenda that would hold any candidates seeking the support of Black voters accountable to the needs, interests, and aspirations of Black people.

Building off of this legacy, the 2020 BNC aims to reach and engage four million Black voters across the U.S., build infrastructure of Black political engagement that transcends the 2020 election season, and create and ratify a policy platform for the first 100 days of the next administration.

Read the full story here.