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Explainer: What does ‘Black Lives Matter’ believe?
Acton Institute ^ | JUNE 18, 2020 | REV. BEN JOHNSON

Posted on 07/27/2020 12:49:41 PM PDT by Vendome

BLM proudly proclaims its belief that all black Americans should receive a guaranteed minimum income and “free” healthcare, schooling, food, real estate, gender reassignment surgery, and abortion; bring an “an end to all jails” as we know them; disrupt the traditional family; demand reparations on behalf of foreign nations; and form a “global liberation movement” that will “overturn US imperialism [and] capitalism.”

Americans could be excused for not knowing that BLM is a political organization with an agenda no less comprehensive than reshaping the entire world. The media have not reported its aims — at least, not in context of the recent riots.

However, they have no inkling that "Black Lives Matter" is not just a maxim or a graphic to be posted online. It is a radical pressure group that embraces a vista of controversial, extremist positions. Those who march under its banner are unwittingly putting themselves in a position to be identified by BLM's activists as endorsing these beliefs.

BLM activists have made no secret of their views. “When we started Black Lives Matter, it wasn’t solely about police brutality and extrajudicial killing,” one of BLM’s three co-founders, Opal Tometi, confessed to The New Yorker. The issue was just “a spark point” to begin “calling for the defunding of police, a moratorium on rent, a moratorium on mortgages and utilities” and issuing “demands” relating to “housing and education and health-care systems.”

“[T]he U.S. is a country that does not support, protect or preserve [b]lack life,” the M4BL original statement says. “And so we seek not reform but transformation.” While the planks often amount to little more than platitudes, replete with grammatical errors, the platform offers a clear demand for socialism under the cover of racial reconciliation. The steps the organizations propose include:

Reparations through racial socialism: The M4BL platform, which BLM endorses, states, “We demand reparations for past and continuing harms,” including both “corporate and government reparations” for a litany of ills that include “food apartheid” and “racialized capitalism.” Government reparations will take “the form” of “a guaranteed minimum livable income for all Black people.” M4BL/BLM’s “universal health care” policy mandates that “wealthy residents pay for a portion of their services while low-income and working class folks receive free services.” The new system will be modeled on France or Germany. Black Americans will also receive government-funded “control of food sources, housing and land.” Robust reparations programs will include “full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education” at any university, community college, or technical education facility, as well as “retroactive forgiveness of student loans.”

“To ensure an intersectional approach,” the group continues, the public school budgeting process must include “representation from specific populations of people,” including “formerly and currently incarcerated” people.

Defunding the police and ending prisons: BLM’s best-known demand is to “defund the police.” M4BL also proposes an “end” to arrests of any black students, and “an end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them.” House arrest would be promoted equally with imprisonment. The government would also expand Pell grant funding to educate inmates and “[a]llow access to gender affirming surgeries” in penitentiaries at taxpayers’ expense.

Dismantling the family: Black Lives Matter endorses two contradictory policies: “We make our spaces family-friendly,” it states. It then looks forward to the destruction of the traditional family:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

Start a “global liberation movement” to overthrow capitalism: “The interlinked systems of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy shape the violence we face,” the M4BL/BLM platform states. “As oppressed people living in the US, the belly of global empire, we are in a critical position to build the necessary connections for a global liberation movement. Until we are able to overturn US imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy, our brothers and sisters around the world will continue to live in chains.”

“America is an empire,” and “American wars are unjust,” the M4BL manifesto states baldly. And “Israel is an apartheid state.” America’s “alliance with Israel” makes the U.S. “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people….it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government.” BLM does not state what punishment it would mete out to civilians complicit in "genocide." However, it demands lawmakers cut “the US military budget by 50%, which will lead to the closure of the over 800 U.S. military bases the U.S. [operates] around the world” and the return of troops deployed overseas — a move many Americans, especially libertarians, support.

The federal government should focus on “taxing ‘bads’ not ‘goods.’” BLM would increase the death tax, the capital gains tax, impose new taxes on real estate transfers and financial “speculation,” and create a national wealth tax. Each state would follow suit by imposing a heavily progressive state income tax on individuals and corporations and 50 state wealth taxes. All “tax reform legislation” must be drawn up “in accordance with racial equity goals” to “help build the wealth of households of color.”

Reparations for drug dealers: M4BL/BLM would legalize prostitution and the “possession and sale of all drugs, no matter the quantity.” Prisoners convicted of these crimes would be released and their records retroactively expunged. But that’s not far enough for Black Lives Matter: Any government savings “must be invested into reparations to all people who have been adversely impacted by the drug war and enforcement of prostitution laws.” The government “must also ensure that people criminalized by the ‘war on drugs’ are able to participate in legal drug markets where decriminalization has already taken place.” Many libertarians support decriminalizing some or all drugs (and prostitution), but they typically envision government regulations on the manufacture and sale of narcotics. One of their most resonant selling points is that “repeal of drug prohibition will take the drug business out of the cartels’ hands.” BLM would guarantee the Medellin cartel a piece of the action.

Reparations for foreign nations and terrorist states: The M4BL/BLM's thirst for racialized wealth redistribution doesn't stop at the water's edge. Their manifesto demands reparations for foreign nations, as well. The group insists the U.S. make “reparations to countries and communities devastated by American war­making, such as Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Honduras.”

Let incarcerated prisoners, illegal immigrants, and felons vote: The M4BL’s voting reforms demand universal voter registration, as well as “pre­registration for 16­-year­-olds, enfranchisement of formerly and currently incarcerated people, local and state resident voting for undocumented people, and a ban on all disenfranchisement laws.” Felon disenfranchisement laws date back to ancient Greece. M4BL’s drive to “expand the range of eligible voters” sleights the rule of law while favoring core Democratic Party constituencies, which favor more expensive government welfare policies.

This list of policy proposals is far from comprehensive. If anything, BLM’s “demands” are more expansive and government-expanding yet. However, this gives an accurate flavor of the platform Black Lives Matter would implement if given the opportunity. It is not one that should be shared by people of faith or supporters of limited government, unalienable rights, and equal justice under the law.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blm; criminal; idiots; marxist; proto
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To: Erik Latranyi

That doesn’t sound like me or anyone I know..../S


21 posted on 07/27/2020 3:30:04 PM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: WKUHilltopper

If they weren’t working before Covid, they didn’t want to and no amount of so called investment into minority communities will change anymore than the under appreciated disadvantaged White, Asian, Latino communities...


22 posted on 07/27/2020 3:33:30 PM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: Erik Latranyi

I’d LOVE to see the counterpart chart.


23 posted on 07/27/2020 3:38:43 PM PDT by Lee'sGhost ("Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. Just look at the flowers.")
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To: Erik Latranyi

Look up “The poisonous mushroom” — and compare that antisemitic children’s book from Nazi Germany to this.

And there is a very ugly idea buried in this: is it not sayiing indirectly that black people are the opposite that they are lazy, immoral violent, ungodly and inherent criminals?

That was one of the justifications for segregation back in the day.

Do these people really want to go there?


24 posted on 07/27/2020 4:31:54 PM PDT by Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi ( Gen. 12:3: a warning to all antisemites)
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To: Vendome

I’m black. You’re racist. Gimme some money.


25 posted on 07/27/2020 7:20:01 PM PDT by 1956tbyrd
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To: Vendome

Saving for later complete reading.


26 posted on 07/27/2020 7:58:04 PM PDT by octex
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To: Vendome
I can tell you one thing they do not believe.

They do not believe that black lives matter.

27 posted on 07/27/2020 8:01:02 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (And lead us not into hysteria, but deliver us from the handwashers. Amen!)
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To: antidemoncrat

7500 blacks are killed by other blacks every year. To solve this problem we need to give the black survivors more ammunition.


28 posted on 07/27/2020 8:40:47 PM PDT by oldenuff35
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