No, I understood and agree with you about it being red meat for the blue lives matter crowd. And you’re right, many of the Civil Rights Era nonviolent actions won’t work. Those were easy to target. Prohibitions were open and obvious. Repression now doesn’t come with a hand lettered sign. So it’s going to require different actions.
Breaking stuff has gotten attention, but not necessarily good attention. But damn right you should throw stuff like tear gas right back. Things have already gone sideways. That’s not escalation. That’s self defense.
But I think there are opportunities to make progress in other ways. Me, I try to change minds one at a time. And I run into what people see in the news, so I’m sensitive (maybe overly) to how it can be perceived. Thus my prickliness about violence during protests.
If you’ll be patient with me for a moment, BLM took me a bit of time to understand in a way I can explain to others. Not the goal, but slogan. It really is a natural response to think, hey, don’t all lives matter? I’m beginning to wonder if this is where an opportunity was missed. It was opening for dialog. People who understood didn’t have the patience to explain. But this the (abbreviated) way I explain it:
“Yes, all lives matter. But saying Black lives matter is meant to highlight that we are not honoring that.”
But I also try to connect it to them. That police we can trust to treat Black men fairly are police we can trust to treat everyone fairly.
That seems to resonate. That this isn’t a zero sum thing. That they aren’t being asked to give anything up. They are getting by giving.
Personally, I think the protests have been rather peaceful by historical standards. That’s made talking about root causes easier. I’d like to keep it that way.
Geez, sorry for the long posts. And sorry if I’ve offended.
