Hey John, my name is Angela, and I’m a Senior Advisor at Black Lives Matter. This past Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Other Black Lives Matter team members and I marched in Selma to honor this historic day.

On March 7, 1965, 600 Black people walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, knowing they might not make it to the other side. They walked anyway. They knew the police would be there, armed with billy clubs and tear gas, ready to crack skulls and crush anyone who dared to demand the right to vote.

That fight never ended. The tactics changed, but the goal stayed the same. White supremacists and authoritarians are still working every angle to silence Black voices, gut our power, and make sure we never get to decide our future.

From closing polling places to throwing out ballots, it’s the same anti-Black violence in a different form. The same system operating on that bridge 60 years ago is the system that over-polices our neighborhoods, builds Cop City, locks up our people, and criminalizes our survival.

That’s why Black Lives Matter showed up in Selma this past Sunday. We marched not only to honor our past but to reaffirm the future that we’re fighting for.

Rain poured as we gathered, but the skies cleared as we assembled at Edmund Pettus Bridge—the ancestors speaking.

I walked alongside both celebrated icons and unnamed freedom fighters who've sustained this movement.

I walked in memory of my father, a delegate to the first National Black Political Convention in 1972, who taught me that Blackness is both beauty and resistance, that our freedom struggle knows no borders.

I left that bridge carrying the spirit of those who've sacrificed before us, committed to the generations behind us. As a Black mother fighting for a world where my children can breathe free, I know this work continues. We will build a world where we don't just matter but we thrive.

We remember Bloody Sunday to honor every Black person who put their body on the line on that bridge, but also to make it clear that the fight for Black liberation is far from over.

We are still here. We are still fighting. And we refuse to stop until we are free. The movement continues.

Onwards,

Black Lives Matter imagines a world where Black people across the diaspora thrive, experience joy, and are not defined by their struggles. In pursuing liberation, we envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms and which invests in justice, joy, and culture. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with our supporters. But we know there's a lot going on. If you’d like to receive fewer emails, you can do so by clicking here.

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