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5 years after Ferguson police murdered Mike Brown, so much has changed. The data make clear the movement sparked by this injustice substantially shifted beliefs about race/racism, changed politics and policy, and has begun to reduce police violence in major cities. A thread.(1/x)
First, it’s clear that the protests beginning in 2014 changed the national conversation and convinced as many as 40 million more Americans more aware of racism and supportive of actions to address it. Now, 61% of Americans support action to achieve racial justice. 
In fact, recent research shows the places where communities took to the streets to protest police violence had the largest reductions in white racial resentment - and a 4-6% net increase in voting for more progressive candidates. dataforprogress.org/blog/2019/5/5/…
The protests also shifted public policy. In the years before the protests, few states considered legislation to address police violence. Now, more than 100 new laws have been signed in 41 states to address police violence since 2014. joincampaignzero.org/#action
States passed laws to prevent officers fired for misconduct from being rehired (CT, LA, IL), requiring independent investigations of police shootings (CO, CT, NY, NJ, IL), banning chokeholds (IL, CO), adopting more restrictive deadly force laws (CA, CT, OH, IL, WA) and more.
Many of America’s largest cities also changed policing policies and practices in response to sustained protests and resulting federal intervention. As a result, America’s largest cities have seen a significant reduction in police shootings. For example...
Compared with the number of police shootings in 2014, by 2018 San Francisco and Philadelphia reduced shootings by more than half. NYC, Chicago and Baltimore reduced police shootings by 50% and LA had its second lowest number of shootings since 1989. These are lived saved. But...
There are 18,000 police depts in America. Progress made in major cities is being offset by *increases* in police violence in more rural areas. And the St. Louis area, where the protests began, continues to have the highest police violence rate in the US. mappingpoliceviolence.org
In sum, the movement has achieved huge short- and medium-term wins and created a blueprint to be scaled across the country to end police violence. Millions of lives have been changed as a result. Scaling and sustaining this will be critical to ending police violence nationwide.
