Protests under the banner of "Black Lives Matter" surged in American cities starting in 2013. This study creates a new dataset tracking such protests from 2014-2015 and finds they are significantly more likely to occur where police have killed more Black residents previously.

📊 Data & Methods

Researchers analyzed newly compiled data on BLM protests during this period, examining correlations between protest frequency and historical local homicide rates by police against Black individuals.

🔍 Key Finding

Contrary to intuition, higher numbers of recent, unexplained Black deaths at the hands of police in a locality predict greater subsequent likelihood of BLM-related public demonstrations.

📖 Why It Matters

This discovery underscores how visceral encounters with state violence can catalyze social movements. The findings illuminate dynamics connecting localized carceral realities to national political engagement campaigns.