Founder of BLM Utah rushed off campus after death threat

Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter Utah, was escorted to her car by police after her speech at Utah State University on Thursday. 

According to Scott, this was because of a death threat against her.

Scott had also scheduled a protest at the Logan City Courthouse, which had to be cancelled. 

Scott, who attended USU her freshman year, said she loves Logan and Utah State. 

Scott was raised in Salt Lake City and said there weren’t many Black kids around her when she was growing up. Scott added that the Utah population is only 2% Black. This was one of the things that fueled her activism. 

“I wanted to help people who don’t have a voice here,” she said. 

Scott started the United Front Civil Rights organization, which has more than 30,000 members on Facebook. 

Originally, Scott didn’t want to start a Black Lives Matter chapter. She said that she didn’t feel like she could control someone going out, shooting cops and then saying “I’m with Black Lives Matter”. 

After some time, she finally started the Utah BLM chapter. The Black Lives Matter movement originally began in Ferguson, Missouri, but the Utah chapter is not a part of the national organization. 

Much of Scott’s speech was about the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

According to Scott, Brown and a friend had been walking in the middle of a street in Ferguson when Officer Darren Wilson pulled up behind them in his police cruiser. When Wilson tried to open his door, Brown shut it. Wilson reached for his gun and Brown reached into the vehicle to stop Brown from firing; that is when the first shot was fired, she said. The first shot went through Brown’s hand and into the door of the police cruiser. Brown then started running. 

Scott’s recitation of the story describes how Wilson chased Brown down the road while shooting at him. Brown turned around and surrendered, however Wilson continued to shoot at him, she said. Wilson allegedly left the body in the street for four hours. The residents of the street took rose petals and made a memorial. Scott said Wilson never filed a police report. 

She also said that every time a Black person is killed by police, the first thing that the officers do is pull the criminal record of that individual to dehumanize them after they have died. 

Everyone deserves to make it to court, Scott said. 

Similar to the Ferguson Police Department, she would like to have a consent decree in West Valley, Cottonwood Heights, Orem and Ogden. A consent decree is when the police department in a city is considered to be corrupt and the Department of Justice comes in and files a lawsuit against the offending police department. 

Scott protested in Ferguson, Missouri. She described it as “one of the most beautiful experiences” of her life. She said there were three-year-old children and 80-year-old men on the front line in Ferguson.

“It wasn’t people trying to get fame or trying to make money off the movement. It was a beautiful moment where we knew, hey, we are sick of the injustice. We are sick of Black people being murdered at the hands of police and we are standing together against this injustice,” Scott said. 

This is not the first time a USU speaker has been threatened with physical violence. In 2014, feminist media-critic Anita Sarkeesian had to cancel her speech at USU after a threatening email was sent to the university regarding her speech. 

kellie.christensen@aggiemail.usu.edu

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