Today's Black protest movements face generations of state violence.

They stare at your hands to see if they voluntarily or involuntarily do something that might be interpreted as some step in a process that could lead to them getting hurt somehow, somewhere, sometime. So noncompliance becomes cause for them to at least get kinetic on you , possibly skipping that step and going straight for the gun.

Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford connects police mistreatment of today's Black Lives Matter protestors to a multi-generational effort of the mass incarceration complex to control and repress Black Americans, and explains how the media amplifies fear of imaginary Black violence while implicity encouraging violence committed by the state.

Glen has been writing about #BlackLivesMatter for Black Agenda Report, including the recent pieces “Black Lives Matter” Groups Hoping for a Big Payday and This Ain’t Your Grandfather’s Civil Rights Movement.