On Black Lives Matter anniversary, 23 reasons celebrities say black people have been killed

Failing to signal a lane change, riding in your girlfriend’s car with a child in the back, running to the bathroom in your own apartment.

On the third anniversary of Black Lives Matter, Mic published a video of celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Rihanna, Chris Rock, Pharrell Williams, Pink, Adam Levine and others read off reasons black people have killed by police officers.

“23 ways you could be killed if you are black in America,” the video reads in the beginning, before each celebrity reads off an action, followed by the name and picture of a black person who was doing that action when they were killed.

“Making eye contact,” Chance the Rapper says, then a picture of Freddie Gray.

“Selling CDs, outside of a supermarket,” actress Taraji P. Henson says, then a picture of Alton Sterling.

“Wearing a hoodie,” Pharrell Williams says, then a picture of Trayvon Martin.

The video was published on Facebook by Mic on Wednesday, the third anniversary of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the guard who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin when Trayvon was walking unarmed near his home in a hoodie. July 13, 2013 is also known as the birthdate of the Black Lives Matter movement, which didn’t gain widespread traction until the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson about a year later.

Zimmerman earlier this year sold the gun that killed Trayvon for $138,900 in an auction. He said in the auction description that the money would be used to fight the Black Lives Matter movement, which his actions helped spark.

Three women started the Black Lives Matter hashtag on Twitter after Zimmerman’s acquittal, but it didn’t grow into a full-fledged movement until Brown was killed in Ferguson. A media research study found that during the Ferguson protests in August 2014, the amount of tweets mentioning Black Lives Matter shot up to nearly 2 million per day. Thestudy analyzed a total of 21.6 million tweets about Ferguson, 9.4 million that mentioned Brown and 4.3 million about Black Lives Matter.

“Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise,” founder Alicia Garza writes on movement’s website. “It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”

Three years later, the group has regained the national spotlight after the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and five Dallas officers. Protests, both peaceful and not, have broken out across the country yet again. And it doesn’t appear the number of fatal police shootings are slowing down — the Washington Post reported that number actually increased in the first half of 2016. Black people continue to be 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than white people, based on the Post’s data.

Also on Wednesday, new hashtag #AllLivesDidntMatter surfaced to combat those who say All Lives Matter. The saying All Lives Matter rose as a response to Black Lives Matter, and advocates of the latter have said All Lives Matter misses the point, because the point is to support black lives until they gain equal societal importance with white lives.

The All Lives Didn’t Matter hashtag sought to explain that issue.

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 12:45 PM with the headline "On Black Lives Matter anniversary, 23 reasons celebrities say black people have been killed."