*Jesse Williams has long supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and now he’s taking his passion to the small screen for the Laurens Grant-directed BET doc “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement. In an interview with The Huffington Post, the activist spoke to the creation of the movement and its influence.
“Black Lives Matter is in many ways, in its adolescence,” he tells The Huffington Post. “It’s an ongoing movement, so we wanted to be sure that as we catalog its origin story and machination, we also wanted to be sure we do not treat it as a fixed, finite, closed circle. We want to look back without being conclusive.”
READ RELATED STORY: Jesse Williams Shoots Down ‘Angry’ Black Man/Woman Stereotype
The 34-year-old activist sums up the movement’s aim, “We’re not asking you to invent new laws for us. We’re asking you to include us in the laws that are already on the books,” he says.
“Trayvon Martin did not invent the hood on a sweatshirt and wear it down the street, he used the hood that already exists that white boys wear as a uniform all over this country,” he said. “All we’re asking for, or demanding in this case, is inclusion in a fully formed, well-oiled machine that already exists.”
The documentary will explore the evolution of the Black Lives Matter from a hashtag to a political movement.
“The Black community has been in a state of emergency and crisis and pervasive traumatic stress disorder since 1619…there hasn’t been a week in the history of this country where innocent, well-meaning human beings haven’t been treated as subhuman by state agents,” Williams told The Huff Post. “We have been conditioned to believe that Black people are subhuman… and are told all of these intrinsically destructive tropes, which are flagrantly dishonest.”
“Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement” airs on BET on May 26 at 9 p.m. ET.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
