Black Lives Matter

When any conversation about BLM protests during my morning zoom standup meeting revolves around looting and how downtown is boarded up, continually focusing on property damage rather than the loss of life and systemic racism which has brought us to this point.

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This weekend, my sister went to a Juneteenth rally in Utah with her kids. Her husband is black, and my adorable little niece has apparently gotten a few negative remarks about her curly black hair (also, what kind of a jerk makes negative comments to a CHILD about their hair?!). Utah is the kind of place where, for example, black and indigenous students have gotten in trouble with high school and university dress codes because their "extreme" hairdos (which were really normal or traditional hairdos) didn't follow the rules that were obviously thought of with conservative white hairstyles in mind. (For example, at Brigham Young University, "extreme hair colors" are against the rules, and while there are literally hundreds and hundreds of white girls on campus with their hair dyed blonde, a black student got in trouble for having blonde hair because it wasn't "natural" for her.) So this weekend they went to the rally, which gave my nieces and nephews a chance to see more people that look like them, and to see that they can be proud of who they are and how they look.

My daughter heard us talking about this, and she got really sad that anyone would say something mean about her cousin's hair, so she spent a while drawing this for us to send to her cousins:

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LeSamourai said:
This weekend, my sister went to a Juneteenth rally in Utah with her kids. Her husband is black, and my adorable little niece has apparently gotten a few negative remarks about her curly black hair (also, what kind of a jerk makes negative comments to a CHILD about their hair?!). Utah is the kind of place where, for example, black and indigenous students have gotten in trouble with high school and university dress codes because their "extreme" hairdos (which were really normal or traditional hairdos) didn't follow the rules that were obviously thought of with conservative white hairstyles in mind. (For example, at Brigham Young University, "extreme hair colors" are against the rules, and while there are literally hundreds and hundreds of white girls on campus with their hair dyed blonde, a black student got in trouble for having blonde hair because it wasn't "natural" for her.) So this weekend they went to the rally, which gave my nieces and nephews a chance to see more people that look like them, and to see that they can be proud of who they are and how they look.

My daughter heard us talking about this, and she got really sad that anyone would say something mean about her cousin's hair, so she spent a while drawing this for us to send to her cousins:

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That hits pretty close to home, my daughters hair can get extremely wild, she’s 6 and says it’s her signature style. She loves her curly hair but it can get pretty crazy especially if we go to the water park .On special occasions her grandma would take her to the Dominican hair salon and she’ll get it straightened for class pictures. Since grandma passed I’m going to be on hair salon duty now once ( if ) they reopen.

Not sure how I’ll deal with someone making an ignorant comment like that at her. I’ve been trying to control my temper especially around her but That could send me into a fit.
 
My mother in law recently passed and I have been slowly trying to get everything out of her house before her lease is up. She was a very respected and educated woman. When she worked she had a lot of very nice and classy work suits. I was going to take them to the flea market or have a garage sale, but her sister convinced me that since she was a plus sized woman it’s harder for women in need to find clothes that could help them find the confidence to go on job interviews. With covid we were unable to have a pick up so we washed them all, bagged them and drove them to the closest donation box near her house.

She was also big on reading, she lived modestly and most of her money went towards books. Mostly Black empowerment , Angelou, Oprah, classics, text books, books on poetry and enlightenment. She was highly educated and was constantly pushing all her relatives to get an education. So we put the books in tubs and drove them to the book donation box.

The boxes were both blown up. I drive by everyday on the way to her house and see all her clothes laying on the ground charred. She was completely against violence and she vas very charitable I know that she would have been proud that we donated it.

Of course she was horrified at the atrocity that led to this but she hated violence or destruction of any sort she was a very high level social worker and only ever wanted to help get people on their feet.and heal not hurt.
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Her life definitely mattered she’s been a mother to me for over 30 years now and the beat grandmother my little girl could have had. I wish they got to spend more time together
I know she would hope that we are all out of the violence stage and moving towards healing.
 
(threads)

Advocating for non-violence and peaceful protest is admirable. Other protests have been an important part of the progression of Black rights at the same time, and as we've seen recently – will continue to be. Recent peaceful protests have marched for years without making a tenth of the progress and impact we've seen the past month, and white moderates have long-since leapt to dictate how people should express their anger passively and without disruption. That has often led to the stagnant upkeep of the status quo.

Understanding how and why violence, disruption or looting have played an important role in the history of civil rights is important alongside a desire to see protests resolve peacefully. Which, in and of itself, is by and large up to those whom the demands are being made of and them taking those peaceful acts of protest seriously.

The threads below are incredibly informative in appreciating this context.



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jaycee said:
I think this is a useful critique of the people, ideas, and industry currently being turned to by institutions to tell them how to behave.

nymag.com

Is the Anti-Racism Training Industry Just Peddling White Supremacy?

The bizarre worldview of Robin DiAngelo.
nymag.com nymag.com
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I'm surprised to see that there are people who deny the achievement/quality of education gap. It is very apparent where I live and in the schools my wife has worked in. The schools here are quite segregrated and have become considerably more so in my lifetime.
 
dhodo said:
I'm surprised to see that there are people who deny the achievement/quality of education gap. It is very apparent where I live and in the schools my wife has worked in. The schools here are quite segregrated and have become considerably more so in my lifetime.
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I think that's the case pretty much everywhere. Different states have different ways of promoting inequity in schools and school districts. If local tax dollars are the only means by which the school is funded, the promotion of charter schools, the ability to avoid paying a percentage of local or school taxes if you are privileged enough to send your child to a private institution... even when funds are distributed among some conglomerate of municipalities or at the state level the inequity persists. Certainly federal policy has been a driver. No child left behind has been an absolute tragedy... I know there are some teachers here who know a lot more and have a personal experience / opinion about it that is far more educated than my own.
 
So my union is taking a pretty clear BLM stance in its messaging. We recently just voted in a black woman as president. This years leadership conference is has a lot of BLM speakers. What do you guys know about any of these people?

Patrisse Cullors
Dr. Melina Abdulla
Kendric Sampson
Sarah Djato
Dr. Bettina Love
 
My first day in the union leadership conference was pretty inspiring. There was two student participants that introduces the first woman of color as our president.
 
Living in Rochester right now is wild.

If it's happening in every kind of city in every part of the country, they can't deny there is a systematic issue. Either the "bad seeds" are allowed to grow and thrive everywhere, or police training actively trains them to kill defenseless people.
 
Two Louisville police officers were shot last night during protests after a grand jury didn't indict the 3 officers involved with homicide charges.

www.cnn.com

Police declare unlawful assembly after windows shattered during Breonna Taylor protests

After windows were broken Thursday night, Louisville police declared gatherings downtown were an unlawful assembly and told people protesting the grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case to disperse.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

I'm expecting this will create a new wave of black lives matter protests across the country. As one protester interviewed on the news said this morning, the lack of charges makes them feel like black lives do not matter.

I have served on a grand jury in the past so I'm familiar with how this process goes. And I can guarantee you the lack of the indictment was decided because, legally, under the law, the officers did nothing wrong. Kentucky legally allows for no knock warrants. And we have the officers saying they announce themselves as police. But whether they did or didn't isn't really relevant. Because legally, the officers were within their right carrying out the warrant as specified under Kentucky law. Police acted within self defense as well as they didn't fire first. That means there was no wrong doing legally by the police and under the law, this is nothing more than a tragic accident.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Two Louisville police officers were shot last night during protests after a grand jury didn't indict the 3 officers involved with homicide charges.

www.cnn.com

Police declare unlawful assembly after windows shattered during Breonna Taylor protests

After windows were broken Thursday night, Louisville police declared gatherings downtown were an unlawful assembly and told people protesting the grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case to disperse.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

I'm expecting this will create a new wave of black lives matter protests across the country. As one protester interviewed on the news said this morning, the lack of charges makes them feel like black lives do not matter.

I have served on a grand jury in the past so I'm familiar with how this process goes. And I can guarantee you the lack of the indictment was decided because, legally, under the law, the officers did nothing wrong. Kentucky legally allows for no knock warrants. And we have the officers saying they announce themselves as police. But whether they did or didn't isn't really relevant. Because legally, the officers were within their right carrying out the warrant as specified under Kentucky law. Police acted within self defense as well as they didn't fire first. That means there was no wrong doing legally by the police and under the law, this is nothing more than a tragic accident.
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I understand this line of reasoning and it is logical. The part I think they should be attacking is the Use of no know warrant. What are the standards to determine if this is necessary. It seems like it is equally dangerous for both police and people on the warrant.
 
Dtknuckles said:
I understand this line of reasoning and it is logical. The part I think they should be attacking is the Use of no know warrant. What are the standards to determine if this is necessary. It seems like it is equally dangerous for both police and people on the warrant.
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No search warrants are issued for a variety of reasons. The two largest reasons include:
  • A drug related search warrant. They want the element of surprise so the suspect does not have time to flush the drugs before police enter.
  • The element of surprise. If they feel like there is a chance they will be ambushed when entering they want the element of surprise.

In this case, the fault very much lies with who issued the warrant and why they decided to conduct it at night. Breonna Taylor's Ex was known not to be in the home at the time the warrant was being carried out. And no drugs were found. The police did know Breonna Taylor's Ex was not present. Thus the decision was made to announce themselves. Police said they announced themselves several times. And 1 witness who was outside returning home from work heard the police announce themselves. However, servalage footage (not from the police) shows that the police arrived, rushed to the door. May have knocked once and yelled police before breaking the door in. It all happened really fast. And given that it was in the middle of the night, and both Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend were likely asleep. It is very likely they heard nothing when the police announced themselves. The only logical conclusion for someone storming your house in the middle of the night is it's a home invasion.

Also, the office who was fired and charged with reckless endangerment, it wasn't because he was involved in the murder of Breonna Taylor, but rather his bullets entered a neighboring apartment through the walls. A white person's apartment. Even with the self defense perspective, Breonna Taylor was still a innocent bystander caught in the line of fire.
 
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