"How Black Lives Matter forced campaigns to toss their strategies on black voters" [View all]

[Jamaal510]

More: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-campaign-black-lives-20150731-story.html#page=1

The Black Lives Matter campaign is seeing to it that the rules they relied on for courting the vote no longer apply.

The potent social media-driven movement, sparked in the aftermath of Florida teen Trayvon Martin’s 2012 shooting death and reignited in the racial unrest in response to the deaths of other unarmed African Americans at the hands of police over the last year, has 2016 contenders scrambling to adjust their strategies. The protesters involved are proving masterful at refocusing the spotlight.

Candidates who might otherwise have been complacent, given their high marks on legislative report cards from the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and endorsements from an older generation of black leaders, have had to more directly confront uncomfortable questions of racial inequality and the mistreatment of blacks by the criminal justice system.

“We want to ensure that these candidates will actually deal with the issues that black people face,” said Patrisse Cullors, a movement cofounder from Los Angeles. “The reality is that it’s still not legal to be black in this country.”