Place yourself in a city with palm trees and freeways, beaches and deserts, mansions and ghettos. Imagine that this city experiences regular police patrols, both by helicopter and by car. Imagine that there are shootings every day. Imagine that there is little chance for black boys to become men without a violent police encounter, or spending time in police detention or prison. Imagine that the police have been sued for torturing those under arrest – raping men with police batons, withholding food, water and necessary medicine.

What would you do to stop this violence? Imagine living in a small artistic community where part of the purpose is to provide a different vision for the future, one different from guns and gangs and drugs and violence. Where the intention of the movement you are creating is to be non-violent, but to also be a confrontation. Is it surprising then that the police raid your small bungalow twice, both times with over a dozen officers in full protective gear and guns pointed at you? Is it surprising that some of the media call you a terrorist? This sounds like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay or Paraguay under the juntas. It sounds like something opposite to the liberal ideal.

This is the experience of Patrisse Khan-Cullors (2018), one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matter. The city is Los Angeles. After watching her father die young as a result of addiction, which is criminalised in an over-eager prison industry, witnessing the effects of police brutality against her mentally ill brother, and growing up in poverty in Los Angeles, she became a community organiser and activist, one committed to non-violence. After the killing of Trayvon Martin, she created, with Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza, the #blacklivesmatter hashtag and organised marches to raise awareness about police brutality, amongst other causes. Only in a system of white supremacy, something in which the police are complicit, can a peace activist be called a terrorist by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, who compared Black Lives Matter to the Ku Klux Klan (Launder 2018). When faced with these labels, Khan-Cullors (Launder 2018) responded: