Did you know BLM Day is on July 13th, John?

July 13th, 2025, marks the 12th anniversary of Black Lives Matter, and it's been an incredible journey filled with resilience, learning, and powerful community action. This year, we're celebrating by embracing our core values of healing, truth-telling, and Black joy.

As we've grown into a global movement dedicated to Black liberation and freedom, our commitment remains steadfast. Our work continues to evolve, sharpening our strategies to meet the urgency of this moment.

The vision of abolition, a world where we divest from policing and prisons and invest deeply in our communities, remains at the heart of our mission, inspired by our ancestors and driven by the needs of future generations.

This past year was especially significant as we built off the refresh of our organization's identity. Our new logo and website proudly reflect our journey, honoring our past, empowering our present, and inspiring our collective future.

We know: Everything is possible when we are in community.

To celebrate BLM Day, we're spotlighting key pillars of our work, starting with Healing Justice. This pillar is vital to ensuring our communities not only survive but thrive, addressing trauma through collective care, holistic healing, and transformative practices.

Keep reading to learn about our impactful work around Healing Justice and how it propels us toward true liberation.

If you’re in a place to support our continued healing justice work, please, donate $5 or more today. We’ve set a goal to raise $12,000 in honor of BLM’s 12-year anniversary.

“Rise and Rest” Retreat

Black Lives Matter hosted the “Rise for Rest” retreat for Mother’s Day this year! We gathered ten Impacted Mothers whose children's lives were stolen due to police brutality. So often these Mothers are invited to share their stories at rallies, on panels, and in meetings with elected officials, forced to relive these nightmares, however; BLM understands the importance of healing and focuses on the well-being of our vulnerable.

Over the course of the weekend, we encompassed emotional, physical, psychological, and social dimensions, to reflect holistic care for this gathering. We broke bread and practiced breathwork as a collective. We moved through Tai Chi and group therapy and held each other through sound bowl healing, an extremely powerful experience.

Nothing will erase grief, but with the right tools and support there are practices we can carry forward as we continue the everflowing healing journey. It was a reminder that healing is not linear, and that rest is radical.

Creating safe spaces like this are key to building pathways for healing. Every day, we are building healing spaces and nurturing ecosystems that support Black communities impacted by oppressive structures and injustice. These mothers will never see true justice in a system that was never built for them. But they remind us that healing is its own kind of justice. The kind we fight for together.

Juneteenth on the Santa Monica Pier

Ebony Beach Club was founded in 1957 by Silas White in Los Angeles. It was set to open as an exclusive Black social club that created space for leisure and escape during the Jim Crow era.

The city of Santa Monica blocked the Ebony Beach Club from ever opening, but its spirit never died; it evolved.

The Santa Monica Pier which was once a site of exclusion for Black beachgoers is now the place for reclamation as we dance, surf, swim, and celebrate.

That’s why we hosted a Juneteenth celebration at Santa Monica Pier in partnership with Ebony Beach Club. That’s right, we shut down Santa Monica Pier to celebrate Black joy, culture, and freedom this Juneteenth!

BLM’s Africa Trip

In June, Black Lives Matter traveled to Ghana, reconnecting with our global community and deepening our commitment to Black flourishing across the globe.

For the Black Lives Matter team members who were able to attend this trip, it was a deeply impactful and guiding experience.

When we say we ain’t free until we’re all free, we mean every Black person in every country across the world. This is bigger than language, country, or culture.

That’s why this trip to the motherland was so powerful. This trip was a reminder of just how much work we have to do.

In partnership with AfriKicks and the Afro-Arab Group, we delivered over 5,000 pairs of shoes, 40,000 toys, and $150,000 worth of clothing.

We visited villages to drop off food for children who desperately needed it.

We built water wells in communities in dry regions where they offer hope of a future where daily survival is not a battle against scarcity.

Blackness is global, fam. We know this seems like common sense, but too many times it’s easy to forget this and get caught up in our own bubbles.

Black people across the globe are striving for Black liberation every day and this month we’ve honored the stories, leaders, and moments that have spread throughout the Black diaspora.

Healing justice is a central pillar of our vision of an abolitionist future, John.

We demand a comprehensive reimagining of public safety. We must completely change how we think about true safety in this country. Our leaders cannot continue to depend and support systems born out of white supremacy.

We have to build a world beyond punishment. We must center healing justice, care, accountability, and Black joy especially in the face of rising police violence and fascism.

We will continue fighting until white supremacy and all of its vestiges are nothing more than a distant memory.

Help support our fight by donating $5 or anything you can to support our healing justice work and help us meet our $12,000 goal for 12 years of BLM.

Onwards,

Team Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter imagines a world where Black people across the diaspora thrive, experience joy, and are not defined by their struggles. In pursuing liberation, we envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms and which invests in justice, joy, and culture. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with our supporters. But we know there's a lot going on. If you’d like to receive fewer emails, you can do so by clicking here.

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