Black Lives Matter Still a Pressing Issue in America

Black Lives Matter Still a Pressing Issue in America

Jan Castillo, Sports Editor

As we head into the middle of December and look back at the past few months, there have been many pressing issues in America. For instance, one of the main issues I believed was very pressing, and still is, was the death of George Floyd, which developed into the Black Lives Matter movement. However, this protest actually made people realize that cops aren’t really protecting all lives–especially when they’re actually killing innocent black lives.

That’s not the only issue that happened during the Black Lives Matter movement because not only were people angry at the cops for the killings of innocent black people, they were also getting chaotic by looting stores and vandalizing them.

From my point of view, the movement was a great example to make people realize that many cops aren’t the good guys because of the actions they do to innocent black lives. You might be asking yourself right now why this protest was bigger than the previous ones.

As you can see, people have protested about Black Lives Matter before because of police brutality being done to innocent black people. Yet compared to the protest just last June, it was pretty clear that people had had enough of the killing of innocent black people.

They all believed, including me, that if we don’t do anything about this right now, it’s just going to keep on happening and there’s going to be no change in America. So they all decided to go protest Black Lives Matter and this happened for a long period of time to the point where they all believed that it was time to stop protesting. 

A group of people protesting with a sign that includes a drawing of George Floyd’s Face and BLM text.

 During this time, there were a lot of people protesting peacefully, and some violently, all over America. As I mentioned earlier, there were people who weren’t even protesting–they were all just looting and vandalizing stores. In my opinion, this was where people were just taking it too far because when you would look at the news on T.V., it was stated that this protest isn’t about the lives of black people anymore.

In reality, it was actually about innocent black lives, but suddenly there were people who took it too far and started doing unnecessary things, such as looting and vandalizing stores, which was never the main purpose people were protesting for. We were all protesting for the lives of black people.

Although this happened last June, this is an old issue we thought was solved; however, this issue still isn’t solved because just recently a cop shot a man named Jacob Blake. He was shot seven times in the back which made him paralyzed. When this news came out, it made the issue even sadder and more pressing because it showed us that no matter what we do, there’s still going to be horrible officers still shooting unarmed black people.

So as you can see, the Black Lives Matter movement is still an issue in the U.S. and we don’t know when it’ll be resolved and when we won’t have any more unarmed black people dying at the hands of the cops. All lives matter–but not until Black Lives Matter–which is an issue that we all have to solve.