Visibility & Solidarity in Vancouver

On April 17th, 2016, a group Vancouverites gathered in Robson Square to raise their voices and joined in the international cry ‘Black Lives Matter’. The Black Lives Matter movement has been described by some as a sort of decentralized, neo civil rights struggle, a rebirth of a pivotal movement in the age of social media. This is particularly interesting considering it has been posited that the civil rights era might have progressed differently had their been more images of black agency shared in the mass media.

I have no doubt that images forcefully depicting black agency in the mainstream press could have chipped away at the long-standing orthodoxy that confined people of color to marginal roles in the American drama and ensured that they went unheard when they sought to reject their assigned parts

- Martin Berger

It is exciting that the Black Lives Matter movement has arisen in an age of the proliferation of what Hito Steyerl calls the poor image. We have new opportunities, as social media has made us all members of the mainstream press, to produce, re-produce and share images and messages that depict and declare that Black Lives Matter.

We have the opportunity to assert that Blackness is Pride and Power. Blackness is Beautiful Resistance. Blackness is Not For Sale. Blackness is More Complex than your Labels. Blackness is __________________.

We have an opportunity to remind each other of the importance of claiming and holding that Black space.

We have the opportunity to stand in solidarity with other groups and collectively reject colonial hierarchies and seek to re-colonize.

We have an opportunity to write, play and sing that We shall overcome. We’ll walk hand in hand. We are not afraid & We shall live in peace, one day.

And finally, we have an opportunity to continue the momentum and constantly declare, in solidarity with black lives that seem not to matter across the globe, that Black Lives do in fact Matter.