Black activist groups plan 5 days of #ReclaimMLK actions, from MLK Day to the inauguration
The Movement for Black Lives, a collective of over 50 black activist groups around the country, announced on Wednesday a week of actions aimed at counteracting the stated agenda of President-elect Donald Trump.
From Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16 to Inauguration Day on Jan, 20, the movement is asking affiliated organizations to launch daily actions meant to challenge Trump's call for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the registration or ban of Muslims in the U.S. and the criminalization of reproductive health care.
"Just four days after MLK Day, we'll witness the inauguration of a president who is the antithesis of everything Dr. King stood for; a demagogue who galvanized millions by spewing hate and promising to harm the most vulnerable in this nation," movement organizers said in a statement for the "Resist and Reclaim MLK" campaign.
"Black people and other people of color are being targeted by vigilantes, our places of worship are being burned, our children are being attacked at school and the promise of more 'law and order' policing leaves us even more vulnerable to police terror," organizers wrote.
Here's a list of themes for the daily actions:
Monday, Jan 16: #ReclaimMLK Day
Participants include seven chapters of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, national spokesperson Shanelle Matthews said in a phone interview Tuesday.
The Reclaim MLK campaign, championed by Black Youth Project 100 and other M4BL groups, is inspired by King's Poor People's Campaign, which the late civil rights icon launched to highlight economic justice as a means for curing racial inequality in the United States. Despite some gains under the Obama administration, African-Americans and Latinos continue to lag behind their white counterparts in poverty rates, income and wealth.
Major demonstration are planned for the weekend of Trump's presidential inauguration — most prominently the Women's March, in which hundreds of thousands of people are expected to rally and take stock of the status of women near the U.S. Capitol. BLM co-founder Alicia Garza is among the announced participants at the Women's March — but she will be speaking on behalf of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.