Black Lives Matter nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Black Lives Matter has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian legislator who praised the movement for its “struggle against racism and racially motivated violence.”

It’s a struggle, Norwegian MP Petter Eide noted, that had reverberated around the world, forcing societies other than the U.S. to confront their own racism in the wake of the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by police.

A giant "BLACK LIVES MATTER" sign is painted in orange on Fulton Street, Monday, June 15, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (John Minchillo/)

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Eide said in his nomination papers, according to The Guardian. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

The broad appeal of BLM’s efforts was also a factor in his choice, Eide said.

“It has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors,” he said, according to The Guardian, noting that BLM has mobilized people from all sectors of society.

A protester carrying a U.S. flag leads a chant during a Black Lives Matter march through a residential neighborhood calling for racial justice, Monday, July 13, 2020, in Valley Stream, N.Y. (John Minchillo/)

Co-founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi after the killer of Trayvon Martin was acquitted, it burgeoned in 2014 after the police deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

In 2020, after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were murdered by police, Black Lives Matter became the mantra of a global pushback against racial injustice.

It would not be the first Peace Prize to be awarded on the basis of working toward racial equity. To Eide, a member of the Socialist Left party and a member of parliament (MP) since 2017, BLM builds on a “legacy from both the civil rights movement in America and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa,” he told CNN.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has always recognized a strong connection between racial justice and peace,” Eide said, pointing to the 1964 prize awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the dual prize shared by Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk in 1993 for their work transitioning South Africa out of its formalized racial-segregation system.

“People are waking up to our global call: for racial justice and an end to economic injustice, environmental racism, and white supremacy,” BLM tweeted Friday. “We’re only getting started.”