Activists began protesting Wednesday in the U.S. state of South Carolina in response to a video showing a local white police officer shooting Walter Scott, an unarmed 50-year-old Black man, eight times as the victim was running away from the officer.

North Charleston, SC, Police Officer Michel Slager has been charged with murder after the video of the killing was released. Slager had said before the emergence of the video that Scott had tried to grab his taser Saturday, and thus he had feared for his life.

Many in the media have praised the North Charleston police department for arresting officer Slager.

“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” North Charleston Mayor R. Keith Summey said at a news conference. “If you make a bad decision, (I) don’t care if you’re behind the shield … you have to live with that decision.”

That is a very different response than the police departments of Staten Island, New York, and Ferguson, Missouri.  According to Raw Story on Wednesday, more Black Americans were killed by police in 2014 than Black people killed in the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001.

For more than half a year, thousands of people, mainly Black youth, have filled streets and community spaces across the U.S., even in the dead of winter, to protest and organize against the state sanctioned murder of Black people by the police in the U.S. They have organized themselves using nearly every means available, from civil disobedience and protests, to social media, street art, and music. They have been continually innovative and outspoken, with both spontaneous articulations and well organized strategies. They have done all of this with the goal of making sure that state sanctioned murder against Black people ends, because Black lives matter.

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They have done this extraordinary work in the face of being criticized by their elders, the media, the government, and the police, who claim that there is no leadership to the movement, no clear goals, no discipline, no clear organizing principles. They have organized while being told that Black youths’ tactics are not effective, because they weren't following the right scripts, nor saying the right words. And yet the protests and organizing have persisted, keeping in the forefront of the national and international conversation that Black lives matter.

Read more: Black Lives Matter

So, when a North Charleston police department kind of does its job and charges a police officer who was caught on video gunning down a Black man as he was running away from the police officer, let us not praise the police department for being honorable and following the law. Let us praise those who have day after day, week after week, put their lives on the line, in the face of police dressed in riot gear and carrying military-grade weapons, to remind all of us that Black lives matter. Let us remember that we are witnessing the fruit of thousands of Black youth organizing for months against state-sanctioned murder. Let us be grateful to witness the power and results of the tactics and strategies of Black youth-led organizing.

The North Charleston police department has been accused before of targeting poor, Black communities with aggressive tactics.

Would this police department have been so quick to bend toward justice, if there had not been over six months of national conversations at all levels of society about what is the relationship between Black communities and the police? Would this police department have charged this police officer with murder if they were not afraid of what would be ramification if their police department received the same level of criticism and negative attention that the Ferguson Police Department and the New York Police Department have received in the past months? For centuries, Black people have been abused and gunned down by the police, and rarely is the police officer charged, even when there were witnesses and even video evidence.

What does it say about the U.S., when people are expressing gratitude that this North Charleston police department is following the law after clear video evidence is presented that a man was shot eight times in broad daylight in the back by a police officer?

Protesters in South Carolina decry fatal shooting of unarmed man as he ran away from police http://t.co/Ts24vZpklY pic.twitter.com/RbpfUI6OGk

— BBC News US (@BBCNewsUS) April 8, 2015