When black MP Dawn Butler was stopped by police as part of Stop and Search measures, it was another reminder of the racism at the heart of such policies, institutionalised within the police, and how entrenched racism is in society.
Dawn expressed the feeling of so many when she said to the police officers who stopped her, “It is really quite irritating. It’s like you cannot drive around and enjoy a Sunday afternoon whilst black, because you’re going to be stopped by police.”
The inspiring and determined Black Lives Matter movement burst through onto the global stage this year in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds while he cried out “I can’t breathe”.
The Black Lives Matter movement, amidst the crisis of the global #Covid19 pandemic and a starkly disproportionate number of deaths in Black and ethnic minority communities, has dramtically seen hundreds of thousands of people all around the world rushing to join and actively support a new movement that is exposing and challenging the deeply institutionalised racism at the heart of this society.
The racism and brutality of the police, racist Stop and Search policies and in Britain in particular Section 60, have been at the centre of demands and campaigns emerging from the movement.
Following an open forum attended by hundreds discussing demands for the movement, We Demand Change: The Police, Institutionalised Racism and the Fight for Justice, at the end of July, Stand Up To Racism has produced this factsheet as a resource for local groups and campaigns to use demanding the scrapping of Section 60 and with useful facts regarding Stop and Search.
