Then there is Black Lives Matter. After spending a lot of time reading and reporting about the movement, I understand its primary end to be stopping unjust killings by police officers; some of its members have broader agendas, like economic redistribution, but reforming police is the movement’s main goal and the one that is universally shared.
And its primary means are twofold: Its members engage in street protests in lots of cities; and its leaders push for 10 specific reforms set forth in Campaign Zero, which calls for an end to “broken windows” policing, more community oversight of police departments, stricter limits on the use of force, independent investigations of police misconduct, community representation in municipal governments, body cameras, better training, an end to “policing for profit,” demilitarization, and union contracts that don’t protect misbehaving police officers from being held accountable.
If you disagree with any of my characterizations about the means and ends of those groups, we are at odds over facts, not values, and I am open to seeing evidence that challenges my assessment of a complicated matter. Bearing that in mind can make hashing out the truth less fraught and more likely to proceed constructively and profitably.
Given my understanding of the facts, where do I stand?
Black Lives Matter
For starters, I don’t think Black Lives Matter belongs in the online conversation about whether Americans should be denouncing violence “on all sides.” The movement’s end of stopping unjust police killings is laudable; and its leaders and the vast majority of its members openly favor nonviolent means. Plus, unlike Nazis, nothing about the future it desires is inseparable from initiating violence. That doesn’t mean it is beyond criticism. It is a large, free-wheeling movement without clear leaders, and individual participants have no doubt acted badly on many occasions, as is true of groups as varied as the Sons of Liberty in 1775, anti-Vietnam War protesters, and the Tea Party. I have criticized Black Lives Matter activists in the past for disrupting a Bernie Sanders event and for the tactic of blocking freeways.
But I draw a distinction between objectionable acts of civil disobedience and engaging in violence. Some Black Lives Matter critics blame the group for the killing of five Dallas police officers. But the gunman acted alone, using tactics that the protest movement never urged or used, and group leaders denounced the killings. The group has the same relationship to the Dallas killer as nonviolent pro-life groups have to the extremist who perpetrated a mass killing at a Planned Parenthood.