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VIDEO – Protesting: From Manchester to Utrecht

  • In the first of 6 articles on our international collaborations series, NQ's Rami Mwamba looks into the rise of protesting, especially that of Black Lives Matter, a recently formed protest movement in the wake of murders of black American citizens by American police. 

Protesting is an integral part of any society, modern day, or old. Protests have been documented, written about, videoed, quashed and proven successful since records began.

Whether it be about police brutality and teacher wages, or Arsenal fans calling for their football managers sacking and thousands of McDonald’s regulars protesting the exclusion of their favourite sandwich from the menu, the people have always exercised their right to protest, or in some cases, risked their lives to do so.

Its been no different in the past few years with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement created to raise awareness about police brutality towards African and Latin American men and women, following a slew of high-profile cases such as Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd and Sandra Bland.

The movement has become a global one, the Ferguson riots that took place in the heat of August 2014 encapsulated the United States, and the world around it, gaining detractors, and supporters from places like the UK itself and even as far as Palestine.

The International Converged Newsroom of Utrecht University and Manchester Metropolitan Students decided to take a look at its impact between the two cities, as well as the subject of protesting as a whole and how it compares and contrasts between the cities.