The official group rejects the notion that Black Lives Matter is against police.
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Notable activists and celebrities were among the hundreds of voices that rang out on social media, using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.
As we reported, the girlfriend of police shooting victim Philando Castile said he had a licensed firearm in the vehicle when police pulled them over for a broken taillight.
Journalist and CNN contributor Sally Kohn also used the hashtag to share her views. Those include the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both killed by police and five officers killed in Dallas by a lone gunman.
“If you see someone being shot while sitting in a auto with his family, and you don’t have some empathy, you’ve got some work to do”, he said in reference to Castile’s death. The aftermath of the shooting was purportedly livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.
But when those guys did it, it was an individual black atrocity-they kind of thing the MSM has tried to avert its eyes from. The suspect, who was killed by police, had said he was upset by the recent shootings and wanted to kill whites, particularly white officers.
This all comes during a national discussion about the killing of black men and women by police officers after the deaths of Travyon Martin in Florida; Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; and Freddy Gray in Baltimore.
He urged whites to get active in campaigns to improve police practices and promote racial justice.
And at a Saturday news conference after a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Warsaw, Poland, Obama brought up the perpetually fraught issue of gun control, noting that the ubiquity of guns in many American communities contributes to tensions between civilians and police. She told us she arrived at the park around 7 PM, where she saw people holding signs, and flowers- mourning the death of Alton Sterling who was recently killed by an officer in Baton Rouge. A few posed for photos with the demonstrators before the gunfire began.
Some lashed out at the movement that was born of police shootings of blacks and even at President Barack Obama, accusing him of fueling divisions among people of color and whites. “And I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to put them out of business”, he said.
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The first gun-control laws were passed to keep weapons out of the hands of black slaves and freedmen in colonial days, said Nicholas Johnson, a Fordham University law professor and author of Negroes and The Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms. Young black men were nine times more likely to be killed than other Americans. Black people are already suspicious when approached by the police. “Today is a wrenching reminder of the sacrifices they make for us”, Obama said of law enforcement officers. After Mr. Obama’s ascent to the White House, white supremacist organisations have grown dramatically in the country, but ironically, many conservative commentators blame the President for “not doing enough” to bridge the racial divide. Newt Gingrich said it took him many years, and many conversations, to understand that white Americans often fail to understand the fear and discrimination felt by black Americans.
