Timely Archives: Black Lives Matter at UCSD
A revisit to a timely archive of UCSD students organizing and participating in a December 2014 protest led by UCSD Black Student Union in light of the Ferguson Uprisings.
Timely Archives: Black Lives Matter at UCSD
By Erina Alejo | June 10, 2020
On a Friday late morning on December 5, 2014, UC San Diego students gathered by our new Black Legacy Mural at our student center. While the mural, painted by local muralist Andrea Rushing on a wall tucked into an obscure corner of our $66M-renovated student center, was still to be officially unveiled months later in February, it was already a symbolic place of gathering. Everyone crammed in that tucked-in corner to listen to lead members of our Black Student Union give detailed instructions on our die-in protest taking place that noon. The demonstration began at our student center, then spread outwards towards Geisel Library, where this iconic photo of our BSU members was taken.
This demonstration took place eight days after UCSD students blocked the northbound rush hour traffic on the I-5 as protest to the November 24 grand jury decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson. Wilson, a white police office of the Ferguson Police Department, fatally shot 18-year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri back in August 9, 2014 (See AP News’s timeline of events). These late 2014 demonstrations were part of the large wave of protests that took place across the country and the globe as part of the second wave of the Ferguson Uprising, which you can read more about on blackpast.org and on Color Lines). This period of uprisings continued to solidify the Black Lives Matter movement, which formed in 2013 after 17-year old Trayvon Martin’s fatal shooting by neighbor George Zimmerman.
There is still so much to process about that period in many of our lives. UCSD BSU and other amazing organizations on campus and beyond continue to do good work down in San Diego, to continue the legacy of student activism at UCSD in contrast to our wealthy perimeter and zip code, and a looming military and ICE blanket.
Six years later, and counting, we still have so much to learn, especially from this period of uprisings, in the wake of the continuing brutal police killings of more Black men, women and trans men and women.
A friend, TEB, once said to me, in our discussion of the lynching of brother Ahmaud Arbery: "We die twice.” I’ve been thinking what TEB said. In reading Audre Lorde’s The Black Unicorns: Poems (1995), I came across her poem, "Sequelae”, where she ends:
on this moment of time / where the space ships land
I have died too many deaths / that were not mine
How much more pain must our Black brothers and sisters endure before getting justice in this world? What can we do as non-Black people and communities to develop empathy and show up in solidarity and struggle, as these brothers and sisters have done for each of our communities throughout history?
In light, I dug up this archive, added captions for accessibility, and tightened the editing. I’m asking more questions; reframing how I see the world; revisiting history. Reaching out. Building. Remembering. Unlearning. It’s a life-long, active process that should not be done in a silo or an ideology bubble.
Movements are built over time. The movement continues with you and me. There are endless ways we can stay involved while caring for ourselves.
Here are some resources I’ve been using:
Black Lives Matter Translated— “A crowdsourced repository of materials in Asian & Pacific Islander diasporic languages we can all use to navigate difficult discussions about Black Lives Matter, anti-blackness, Black history, immigration history, and police/state-sanctioned violence with our families and communities.“ bit.ly/BLMTranslated
Kearny Street Workshops’s Mutual Aid Resources and Links: https://www.kearnystreet.org/blog/justice4georgefloyd/
My funder, Balay Kreative’s Solidarity Statement and list of resources: https://balaykreative.com/stories-content/solidarity-statement
Wake Up: Black Lives Have Mattered
Original Release: 2015 | Re-release: 2020
Camera + Edit: Erina Alejo
Thank you to: UCSD Black Student Union, the UCSD Cross Cultural Center, Jazzalyn, Marcelis, Noble, Brianna, Alexis, Caine, Yonatan, Leslie, Donald, Edward, Jayne, and so many more peers who continue to do good work in this world to uplift so many communities. Thank you to Brian B+ Cross for pushing me to edit this and release then, and for Dr. Bennetta Jules-Rosette for helping me center my voice as someone—paraphrasing Trinh T. Minh Ha—who simply wishes to speak nearby and share these powerful stories. Thanks to Dorothy and Tyler for current edit suggestions.