East Side Black Lives Matter panel challenges comfort zones

RI Future ^ | January 16, 2016 | Steve Ahlquist

[2ndDivisionVet]

A discussion of Black Lives Matter and the importance of this movement in terms of criminal justice reform, prison abolition and the next phase of Civil Rights in our state was held at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. The mostly white, middle and upper middle class church members were interested in what they could do as a congregation to ally with and support this important movement. Much of what was presented was in line with the liberal values of those in attendance, but when speaker Marco McWilliams, director of Black Studies at Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) spoke about prison abolition and the dismantling of capitalism (admittedly long term goals) some in the audience showed visible reservations.

It was a radical message different from the one that Jim Vincent, President of the NAACP Providence Branch gave. Vincent wanted to convey the immediacy of the problem. Police are killing black people "under the most questionable circumstance imaginable," said Vincent, and he then proceeded to relate a long list of stories of police killing unarmed black people, ending only because of time constraints and asserting that he could have easily continued for hours in this way. These stories, coupled with startling statistics about the disproportionate rates of black arrests and black incarceration act as a call to action.

Pilar McCloud, assistant secretary of the NAACP Providence Branch, put the larger structure of systemic racism into a personal context. Despite her college education, as a black woman she is often treated as someone who is uneducated, regarded with suspicion or, as in one story she told, served as almost an after thought at the Starbucks located in the Providence Place Mall. A paying customer, her coffee was delivered long after she ordered, the man behind the counter actually prioritized the coffee of a white woman who ordered after her before preparing Pilar's drink. McCloud asked for her money back and retrieved her tip from the tip jar.

McCloud also talked about the differences in the conditions of the schools in Providence. Nathaniel Greene located in a neighborhood populated mostly by people of color, is falling apart. Nathan Bishop, on the East Side of Providence, is in immaculate condition. It seems that some students, says McCloud, "...don't deserve well lit auditoriums or brand new books, and brand new computers, and well shined floors."

The first speaker of the evening was Susan Leslie, Congregational Advocacy and Witness Director for the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in Boston. She set the tenor of the meeting, stressing the importance of events like these and the involvement of UUA churches in the struggles for civil rights. The UUA, said Leslie, "was slow to respond" to the Black Lives Matter movement, but congregations across the country are beginning to take action. Sixty UUA churches have hung "Black Lives Matter" banners outside their churches. These churches are active as allies (or what McWilliams called "accomplices") in marches, on corrective legislation such as the Providence Community Safety Act and in calling on their leaders to take action on the abuses of the criminal justice system towards people of color.

The members of the First Unitarian Church of Providence are beginning the process of deciding on whether or not to display a "Black Lives Matter" banner in front of their church. About a third of the banners displayed across the country have been vandalized or stolen, said Leslie, but these churches have held "really powerful rededication ceremonies" and "recommitted in the face of that." This provides imporatnat opportunities for community engagement and bridge building.

Below are the full videos of all the speakers and the robust Q&A that concluded the evening.

(VIDEOS-AT-LINK)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[17th Miss Regt]

This type of black ‘leadership’ is exactly what will keep blacks on a plantation forever.

[Mack the knife]

The problem with “Black Lives Matter” is that it is hypocritical and anecdotal, and many of the anecdotes are misrepresented and biased(starting with “hands up don’t shoot”).

For example, we have the black lady who got bad service at Starbucks. She concludes that she is disrespected because she is black, and then generalizes that all black folk are oppressed because of race by the entire “white establishment”. I assure you that Starbucks really really wants her business, and if she had complained to management, she would have gotten an apology and excellent service next time she came in.

I could match her anecdotes ... I went into a fast food place and had to wait for 10 minutes for service while the two black teenagers gossiped with each other. Should I conclude that the black teenagers disrespected me because I am white, and that all black employees would do the same? Or the time that I went to an IRS audit on time, and had to wait for 30 minutes while the female employees continued planning a wedding. Should I conclude all female IRS employees treat taxpayers like cattle to be milked?

On the other hand, there a large number of black lives that don’t appear to matter to the black lives matter crowd. The high abortion rate of black females don’t matter. The 80% teenage boys in the inner cities raised without a father don’t appear to matter. The bright black boys who could do well in school but are bullied by the “you’re acting white” crowd don’t seem to matter. The children shot in the inner cities (Chicago, New York) don’t appear to matter. The black teenagers who drop out of terrible schools into a life of crime don’t appear to matter, because the black lives matter crowd supports the status quo in education. Only the lives of young black men, criminal or not, shot by white cops, seem to matter.

I grieve.

[Illogic Buster]

THE BLM movement is demonstrably just a front for a quite different political motive. Otherwise, as you will when you continue reading this comment, it is quite insane.

Police kill about 400 people a year (mostly criminals & some innocents). Of those about 25% (~100) are black. Most of the rest (~300) are whites & hispanics. NOW in contrast, about 8,000 (EIGHT THOUSAND) blacks are killed by OTHER blacks every year.

In other words, for every 1 (one) black killed by a white cop each year (many of whom were committing a crime while killed) 71 (seventy one) blacks were murdered by other BLACKS. In the past 35 years about 323,000 (yes that’s THOUSANDS) blacks have been murdered by other blacks. Over
9,000 per year on average.

The logical & factual conclusion (rather than insane, hysterical, emotional ranting) is that as a black person, you are FAR safer in the company of a white cop than you are in the company of another black person.

Therefore, if you are going to mobilize MILLIONS of people against the LEO killings and NOT the black on black killings (as the BLM group is doing) at MOST you will save about 50 black lives a year. If you take that energy instead to convince BLACKS, that black lives matter (should
be easier than convincing the so called racist, white police right?) you could save THOUSANDS of black lives per year instead. Which one is a SANE person going to do?

BTW, of the approximately 1 MILLION violent crimes committed in the USA each year, 85% are committed by blacks and only 25% by whites. Even though blacks only make up about 14% of the population.