What is your attitude towards the Black Lives Matter movement?

>The tea party called for a reduction of the U.S. national debt and federal budget deficit by reducing government spending, and for lower taxes. They aren’t saying we need to save workers, nor are they saying white hearts matter.

First of all, so what? They're just as unrelated of issues. Frankly, these are actually MORE closely related. OSHA's inability to enforce worker safety and the anti-regulation fervor of that wing of the Republicans DIRECTLY impacts heart disease and worker safety. They are ACTIVELY taking away from the ability of the society to stop workplace-related injuries and heart disease.

The point is that saying that you can't complain about X as long as there's a worse Y is something absolutely no one believes.

Second of all, you're flat-out misrepresenting the Tea Party. They came about as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and they weren't talking about the deficits: they were saying they wanted small government, period.

Finally: The Tea Party straight up doesn't talk about military waste or corporate subsidies. So it's an ideal example of direct hypocrisy. So if the Tea Party were honest the way BLM is and said, "Look, we really think that the ACA is uniquely bad; yes, corporate subsidies are bad, but we'll get to that, this isn't what the movement is about", would you support that? The difference, of course, is that this unmasks their hypocrisy, while BLM is making the case that police brutality is a barrier to resolving black-on-black crime. And since BLM supporters like Jackson and Sharpton ARE against black-on-black crime, AND since again the difference is that the Tea Party controls their advocacy but black folks don't control criminals (practically by definition), it's FAR more fair to hold the Tea Party to my standard than to hold BLM to yours!

> The black lives demands include swift and transparent legal investigation of all police shootings of BLACK people; official governmental tracking of the number of citizens killed by police, disaggregated by race; the demilitarization of local police forces; and community accountability mechanisms for rogue police officers.

Quote me anyone who says that. BLM has never publicly said that transparency should only be there for black folks. They've pushed for reforms to make the police less violent generally. The Young Turks reports on white suspects who get shot all the time.

>First the statement is racist, wouldn’t it be better to say police should be investigated whenever there is a shooting? No matter what color the person happened to be, or don’t Latino lives matter, or Native live matter?

No, because the issue isn't just police brutality, and the fact that you don't seem to comprehend that is exactly why the movement exists.

People of color, by and large, don't view their mistreatment by police as being somehow separate from the way they are polluted on, or the media reports on them as criminals and monsters, or the way employers treat them.

Black Lives Matter is precisely about getting a society that they perceive, rightly, as not being able to recognize black lives as being something worth defending, protecting and standing up for to do so. It's not just about the cops: when it comes to that, BLM supporters say that cops should stop hurting people in general. It's about how black lives, specifically, face collective denigration.

The fact that people are uncomfortable about that message is exactly why the movement exists. The fact that people struggle so much to say "Black lives matter", full stop, without appending "too" or "but", is exactly why the movement exists.

>The guardian claims 1146 people were killed by the police, if you go by the population that would mean you’d expect 140 black to be killed by the police and 721 whites. The numbers they report are 306 blacks, and 581 white, when you look at the percentage from the crime stats, you come up with 324 black and 789 whites for ALL crimes. When you look at violent crime, again from the FBI, black are responsible for 53.3% and whites 44.8% so wouldn’t you expect you’d see more black deaths then white?

You'd expect that if you didn't know that cops shoot black suspects who weren't in the process of committing a crime. Since they do, the percentage of blacks in the criminal population is irrelevant.

Meanwhile, if you take the proper metrics and compare unarmed suspects or washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/aren...rm=.a4032980ff48 . Young unarmed black men are MORE likely to die at the hand of cops than young unarmed white men.

And we don't have to look at aggregate stats either. We're not just inferring bias from statistics: the social psychology literature unambiguously confirms that stereotypes impact the way cops do their job.

>You missed the point Rev. Maupin was JUSTIFIED in “shooting” an unarmed person, just because he’s unarmed doesn’t mean he’s not a threat.

No he wasn't. That was a failure on the test, and on the third time, he didn't make that mistake. Indeed, your misunderstanding of that test and that dynamic is a microcosm of the entire issue: if the cops were more trained, they wouldn't be misidentifying dangers as often, which means that it is, by definition, incompetent cops that are to blame, not suspects or communities. We're not demanding superhuman capability from cops: we're demanding enough training that a Reverend can go through it! When cops fight that and fail to implement that, that's their fault, and the level of crime in communities is irrelevant buck-passing.

>It’s the difference between violent and non-violent crime, see FBI stats. That more than accounts for the difference, white collar crime is generally non-violent so the police response doesn’t need to be violent.

That's flat-out false. It is simply not the case that suspects are only killed in suspicion of violent crime. Henry Davis was MISIDENTIFIED as someone else and got his head smashed in. Routine traffic stops end in shootings; so do someone being stopped for selling loose cigarettes. So when it comes to non-violent black criminals, they get killed, and yet non-violent white criminals committing objectively far worse crimes do.

Moreover, it's not just that white collar crime and white drug use and DUIs don't lead to whites getting shot. It's that they don't lead to ANYTHING. White collar criminals get away with their crimes to overwhelming degrees. Whites and blacks use drugs at roughly the same rates and yet blacks are far overrepresented in prison and jail. You can't separate that out from the brutality issue, because the whole point is the comprehensive discrimination in the criminal justice system that treats blacks like they're second-class citizens, like they don't matter and can be killed and locked up for non-violent crimes.

>I never made a statement where I said BLM were causing crime; you stated the police overreach is.

Yet you hold BLM accountable for black-on-black crime. That's literally the only way that the idea that black-on-black crime is relevant is remarkably coherent.

More importantly, the key point is that the cops don't have to outright cause crime to make the problem worse. No one in their right mind would say that mortgage companies that discriminate armed criminals, and yet they contribute to the problem too by worsening community status and harming neighborhood social structure. If there's a collective community responsibility for crime, then the police, legislators, businesspeople, and others who created an environment where crime would thrive are guilty too. If they're not guilty, then BLM has zero responsibility to do ANYTHING about black-on-black crime: it's not their fault, so they get to protest all they want.

>If BLM really wanted to make a difference then they WOULD organize community watches, turn in drug dealers, report crimes, work WITH the police, but that takes time and effort, and like many movements their “protests” never address the problem, they want the airtime, money, etc, but almost never want to do the work to solve the problem.

First of all; Flat out false. BLM and associated movements have done countless police outreach and community building initiatives. They build safe spaces for communities to speak.

Second of all: How about they put pressure on the cops to stop killing people, politicians and civilian leaders to stop failing, etc.? You're presupposing a tactic for a movement to try, and since you don't seem to be part of that movement or that community, you're speaking from a fundamental place of ignorance, acting as if you know their experiences better than they do so you know what they should do better than they do. What they do objectively takes hard work. It objectively takes time to do outreach, to raise consciousness, and to protest. And anyone who knows the history of this country knows that it takes those things to change the system.

Finally: People tried that. For decades. Authorities didn't care. White communities didn't care. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Now it's an issue that's being discussed and acknowledged. That's a gigantic win.

>Look at the Guardian Angels, even though that group had some problems, the BLM could easily start a group to look after THEIR neighbors, friends. Film everything, the good the bad the ugly, team up with ministers, civic groups, to help people improve their lives. Cut back the NEED for the police by cleaning up the neighborhood.

"Some problems" like being bigoted thugs? Yeah, see, the reason why the Guardian Angels could do what they did is that they were doing something the authorities and the public liked. It's not a coincidence that Silva ended up being a bigoted thug and having the cops like him, see. But even as crime went down, cops kept brutalizing black communities. So at what point do people like you admit that the cops need to stop what they're doing? At what point is cooperating with the cops cooperating with your tormentors?

Again, Chicago alone had 40 resources to do all the things you've discussed, and BLM members are part of all those movements.

>I have read the BLM said and agree there should be more police over site, there should be an independent body whose only job it is to prosecute bad cops. To investigate EVERY shooting, and every use of force complaint, against ALL people not just blacks, a bad cop is a bad cop no matter who they happen to be going after. And the police should be required to wear camera, as they do in my town, and turning them off should result in immediate termination.

And the only reason most people are even having this conversation is because BLM raised it in the first place.