The Role of Social Media in the Black Lives Matter Movement

AUDIO CONTENT WARNING: description of extreme racist violence

In 1993, Black British teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack that sparked a long fight for justice and led the UK to ask questions of itself and its institutions. Three decades on – with The Runnymede Trust’s Shabna Begum, and Suresh Grover of The Monitoring Group – Karis Campion of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre hosts this special episode to ask: who are we now? What happened to anti-racist solidarity and how can it progress?

Karis and guests reflect on the fragmentation of “political blackness”, “monitoring” as a radical act inspired by The Black Panther Party, and the importance of showing systemic racism while doing justice to individual lives. Plus: what does social media offer to anti-racism when the internet provides fertile ground for prejudice? And what are the costs of fighting for change in an unjust world?

A collaboration between the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre and The Sociological Review.

Guests: Suresh Grover, Shabna Begum
Host: Karis Campion
Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker

Find more about Uncommon Sense at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

From Karis, Shabna and Suresh

• Karis’ work at The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre
• Shabna’s book “From Sylhet to Spitalfields”
• Suresh in conversation with Paul Gilroy

Further reading

• “Abolition Geography” – Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• “Another Day in the Death of America” – Gary Younge
• “Here to Stay, Here to Fight” – Paul Field, et al. (eds)
• “I Write What I Like” – Steve Biko
• “Policing the Crisis” – Stuart Hall, et al.
• “Race and Resistance” – Ambalavaner Sivanandan
• “The Uses of Anger” – Audre Lorde

Online

• Over-policed and under-protected: the road to Safer Schools – The Runnymede Trust
• The Baroness Casey Review (this episode was recorded prior to this publication)
• The Black Panther Party – US National Archives
• The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – Sir William Macpherson
• The Monitoring Group
• The Runnymede Trust
• The Stephen Lawrence Centre Archive

Find out more about Quddus Ali and the cases of Michael Menson, Ricky Reel, Rolan Adams and Rohit Duggal, as well as the activist Claudia Jon

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