Eighteen people were arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland’s Old Port on Friday night. Others have been tweeting with the hashtag #stopkillingthemandem, Jamaican slang for a group of men that has been adopted by Britain’s youths.
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“Black lives should matter, but the way that our justice system, our media and our police have been operating, it suggests they do not”, Ramsey said. An officer confronting an armed person is highly stressed for fear of his life, any moves made by the subject could be deadly to him. “This is ultimately a cry for help”.
One speaker at the rally told the crowd: “People say to me “Get back on the boat”. He added, “We wonder, do black lives matter, or only the very few black lives that are killed by white policemen?”
The “Lives Matter Movement” now wants to take their message across the country to cities like Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. “To be honest, it pisses me off”, West Linn police Chief Terry Timeus told The Oregonian. Blacks are shot at a much lower rate than other races when you compare it to contacts with police and law enforcement will be making contact with more blacks because they commit over half of all violent crime in America.
“I believe that we will win”.
“We look forward to a safe and peaceful march”, says Soto.
On Monday, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with police officers at the White House.
Murray applauded the local police departments and sheriff’s offices and said this rally was not in any way a protest against local law enforcement agencies.
Representatives from the group said police have not come out to their communities to talk about the officer-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota that left two black men dead.
Following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police, as well as the killing of five Dallas police officers last week, entertainers have been weighing in on these tragedies with various takes from all sides of the aisle.
“We don’t hate police officers, we don’t dislike them”.
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It’s not the first time Obama has attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase “Black Lives Matter”.
