ABSTRACT
A Florida-based group, Dream Defenders, sprang up and occupied Governor Rick Scott's office in a peaceful protest lasting 31 days. One of the new groups that would soon capture the attention of the public and mainstream media was Black Lives Matter. Social policies such as redlining and the flight of whites to suburbs have meant that Blacks are concentrated in low-income urban areas where there are few jobs and if there are any, they don't pay much. Kelly Welch, a professor of sociology and criminal justice, has noted that the stereotyping of Blacks as criminals is so pervasive that the term "criminal predator" has become a euphemism for "young Black male". Intimately related to the differential shootings of unarmed African-Americans by the police is the fact that the officers involved in the shootings are usually found blameless. Timing and political opportunity are sometimes treated as the same thing in the literature but there is a meaningful distinction to be made.
