Black Lives Matter may as well be ISIS – according to more than 119,000 people who have signed an online White House petition calling for the federal government to deem the group a “terrorist organization”.
Advertisement
That protest, and others across the United States, Britain and Canada, were held in response to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police officers last week.
Here’s a better question: How, we wonder, will the country ever get beyond its stunted discourse about racialized violence when people like Mr. Giuliani continue to try to change the subject? The Black Lives Matter protesters crossed the street and joined forces with the counter-protesters. Two black men – one in Louisiana and Minnesota – were killed during police stops, and five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper who allegedly was seeking revenge on police.
A DEMONSTRATION IN solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. is to take place tonight in Dublin.
In his view, the problem is black gangs, murderous black children, the refusal of black protesters to look in the mirror at their “racist” selves, and black parents’ failure to teach their children to respect the police.
“It’s going to be very important for us to go ahead and acknowledge how angry, how painful and how confused this situation is”, the church’s leader, the Rev. Freddie Haynes, told the mostly black crowd gathered in the pews.
“My solution to the tension between the police and the people – which I recognize as my own inner tension – is to seek unity, not find division”, he wrote, adding that community education and police reforms are also needed. Would my life have mattered?
Advertisement
Neither side should stereotype the other, said Gregory Thomas, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “He is attempting to distract us from addressing the serious issues of police violence and this country’s legacy of racism against black people”.
