Read on Twitter
I’ve been active online (mainly twitter) since I was 12 (2012/2013). Understand that I, like many other black kids growing up, have been told the be respectful to the police/white people, you need to look a certain way when you go out, etc. talk
Summer 2013 News about a black teen boy in Florida being shot by someone while walking home. Trayvon Martin rocked everybody’s world. esp every young black person I knew.
I remember how everybody really thought and really believed his family would get justice. Nothing happened.
I remember Michael Brown was k*lled the next year on my 14th birthday.
I remember Sandra Bland was k*lled the summer of 2015. I remember Philando Castile. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray. Aiyana Jones. and countless others.
#BlackLivesMatter 
the hashtag and the movement were established after the murder of Trayvon Martin around 2013/2014. Since then, the hashtag has been used to spread information, bring people together, plan protests and events, and in a way gave us something that was ours.
the hashtag and the movement were established after the murder of Trayvon Martin around 2013/2014. Since then, the hashtag has been used to spread information, bring people together, plan protests and events, and in a way gave us something that was ours.
I’m almost 20 now... I’ve never seen people try to change this hashtag in the 6/7 years since it was first used.
It’s shocking to me that a fairly large amount of you have decided that trending bastardized versions of this hashtag is more important than actually doing something with the platforms you have on here.
I cannot stop you from doing this, but I find it confusing and disrespectful quite honestly. Trending everyday does not matter. What awareness are you spreading when you use these random hashtags?
Because it doesn’t make sense to me that you think YOUR version is somehow doing more to help than the one that was already created.
here’s the link to the pew research article on the BlackLivesMatter hashtag https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/
The hashtag is supposed to be something to unify and puts our resources in one place. Creating variations of an established and widely used hashtag does the opposite.
