“BLM Riots” are being co opted by white people

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ASPartOfMe
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26 Jul 2020, 9:34 am

’White as hell': Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?

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Teal Lindseth surveyed the sea of mothers she was about to lead into the firing line.

“I look at this crowd and I don’t see many black people,” lamented the 21-year-old African American activist. “Oregon is white as hell. Whitewashed.”

Lindseth has been a stalwart of the Black Lives Matter protests that have continued for nearly 60 days without interruption in a city that was derided as “Little Beirut” over the intensity of its demonstrations against a visit by George HW Bush four decades ago.

Portland has cemented that reputation in the Trump era, as the protests evolved into nightly showdowns with federal paramilitaries sent by the president to end what he described as anarchy.

But Portland has another reputation alongside its radical image. That of the whitest large city in America in a state with a constitution that once barred African Americans from living there. An 1850s law required black people to be “lashed” once a year to encourage them to leave Oregon, and members of the Ku Klux Klan largely controlled Portland city council between the world wars. Housing was effectively segregated in large parts of the city.

Many of today’s protesters say their support for racial justice in a city where the police department has a history of disproportionately killing African Americans is driven at least in part by an attempt to atone for Oregon’s racist past. But as Portland’s battles play out on the national stage, and Donald Trump stokes unrest for political advantage, some black leaders are asking whose interests the televised nightly confrontations really serve – and whether they are a continuation of white domination at the expense of black interests.

The president of the Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), ED Mondainé, warned that the Black Lives Matter movement in the city is being coopted by “privileged white people” with other agendas. He said the confrontations with the federal officers sent by the president are little more than a “spectacle and a distraction that do nothing for the cause of black equality”.

Mondainé accused groups of young white people at the forefront of confronting federal officers of rising to Trump’s bait and using the campaign against racial injustice to provoke a fight in pursuit of other causes, such as anti-capitalism.

“The children of the privileged are dancing on the stages of those that gave their lives for this movement,” he told the Guardian

Mondainé, who led a rally on Thursday evening to “bring back the focus” on to Black Lives Matter, said “empty battles” were serving Trump’s agenda because the president creates political theatre for electoral advantage. He said Trump is baiting protesters in Portland to light the fuse on a racist backlash across the country before the presidential election.

“We have to change that narrative. We cannot let teargas and rubber bullets define the moment that we’re in now. We must seize the moment and assure the world that this time racism will no longer live,” he said.

Mondainé and other black leaders want to shift the focus of protests in Portland back to one of the enduring legacies of Oregon’s racist past – reform of a police department with a long history of violence against the supposedly liberal city’s relatively small black population, and which has seen a sharp rise in the killing of African American men since Trump came to power.

African Americans make up just 6% of Portland’s 650,000 residents but accounted for 30% of shootings by police over the past three years. Black people were also several times more times likely to be arrested or stopped. The police department has proved so trigger happy that the Obama administration placed it under federal court oversight, although it sidestepped the issue of race in doing so.

But African Americans in Portland remain sceptical that the city or the police department are committed to change, particularly when officers are accused of siding with far-right groups such as the Proud Boys who regularly use the city as a platform for protests knowing it will create a backlash.


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Fnord
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26 Jul 2020, 10:25 am

That's a problem I've experienced with many causes in which I've become involved -- the causes were organized to "call out" various groups of which I happened to be a part by accident of birth (e.g., "Us").  They would march, they would chant, they would sing, and they would engage in civil unrest.  They would also accuse "us" of working against them and blocking their efforts.

Then a bunch of "us" would show up and attempt to join their activities to actually provide the support they were demanding.  In return, they insulted "us", cursed "us", and threatened "us" with violence for trying to co-opt and dilute their causes.

They did not want "us" to be involved.  They wanted "us" to be the targets of their anger and frustration.

I do not join other peoples' causes any more.


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26 Jul 2020, 10:59 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Quote:
The president of the Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), ED Mondainé, warned that the Black Lives Matter movement in the city is being coopted by “privileged white people” with other agendas. He said the confrontations with the federal officers sent by the president are little more than a “spectacle and a distraction that do nothing for the cause of black equality”.

Mondainé accused groups of young white people at the forefront of confronting federal officers of rising to Trump’s bait and using the campaign against racial injustice to provoke a fight in pursuit of other causes, such as anti-capitalism.

Man I am so f*****g sick of this liberal tokenism crap.

Black leadership in this country are sell outs. Black leadership used to care about class politics.



RushKing
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26 Jul 2020, 11:07 am

Image



Fnord
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26 Jul 2020, 11:09 am

Sure, question the capitalist economy.

Then look around.

What other economies offer as many opportunities for success to those who would simply make the effort?


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RushKing
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26 Jul 2020, 11:39 am

Fnord wrote:
What other economies

Capitalism didn't exist anywhere on earth 400 years ago. Is that what you would have said to the peasants questioning feudalism?



magz
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26 Jul 2020, 12:42 pm

Fnord wrote:
Sure, question the capitalist economy.

Then look around.

What other economies offer as many opportunities for success to those who would simply make the effort?

Being poor was not a barrier - neither financial nor social - for me to go to one of the best schools and study at the best university in the country because I was willing to make the effort.

I think capitalism is worth questioning to look for possible systematic improvements.
Improving is a very different thing from discarding.


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26 Jul 2020, 2:27 pm

magz wrote:
I think capitalism is worth questioning to look for possible systematic improvements.
Improving is a very different thing from discarding.
You get it!  Too many other people -- some of whom are members here -- claim they are "questioning" capitalism when it is readily obvious that they actually want to "cancel" capitalism and replace it with a system that will automatically make them successful for doing absolutely nothing.

Such a system, by the way, does not exist.


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magz
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26 Jul 2020, 2:39 pm

Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
I think capitalism is worth questioning to look for possible systematic improvements.
Improving is a very different thing from discarding.
You get it!  Too many other people -- some of whom are members here -- claim they are "questioning" capitalism when it is readily obvious that they actually want to "cancel" capitalism and replace it with a system that will automatically make them successful for doing absolutely nothing.

Such a system, by the way, does not exist.

Definitely, a system that makes everyone automatically successful does not exist.
Various experiments on combining some elments of capitalism and socialism and other systems are being done in many countries, to various results. I think it is worth studying but not without forgetting that cultures also play an important role - something I realised when visiting East Asia.
As a rule of thumb, nothing is perfect but life is all about the good enough and then maybe a bit better, to be ahead of your competitors.


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RushKing
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26 Jul 2020, 3:02 pm

Fnord wrote:
Too many other people -- some of whom are members here -- claim they are "questioning" capitalism when it is readily obvious that they actually want to "cancel" capitalism and replace it with a system that will automatically make them successful for doing absolutely nothing.

Is that the best you got Fnord? I know what my political beliefs are, you don't. I'm not going to waste my time with someone who won't bother to take the time to understand them.



kraftiekortie
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26 Jul 2020, 3:32 pm

Many white people also believe that “black lives matter.” They also believe in the methodology used by BLM in protests.

Wanting radical change transcends race.



magz
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26 Jul 2020, 3:50 pm

I watched George Floyd's memorial live and Rev. Al Sharpton expressed being content with "white" people being the majority in many protests - to him, it meant a real change in how people think and feel. I also learned what a real African American sermon is. Wow. If he told one openly anti-white sentence... but he didn't.

Of course, any movement carries a risk of people trying to surf the wave for their own purposes - but you need allies. That's why clear-cut goals and boundaries are so important.


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26 Jul 2020, 3:58 pm

RushKing wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Too many other people -- some of whom are members here -- claim they are "questioning" capitalism when it is readily obvious that they actually want to "cancel" capitalism and replace it with a system that will automatically make them successful for doing absolutely nothing.
Is that the best you got Fnord? I know what my political beliefs are, you don't. I'm not going to waste my time with someone who won't bother to take the time to understand them.
In other words: "I know something you don't know and I'm not going to tell you what it is!"

:roll:


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26 Jul 2020, 10:03 pm

magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
I think capitalism is worth questioning to look for possible systematic improvements.
Improving is a very different thing from discarding.
You get it!  Too many other people -- some of whom are members here -- claim they are "questioning" capitalism when it is readily obvious that they actually want to "cancel" capitalism and replace it with a system that will automatically make them successful for doing absolutely nothing.

Such a system, by the way, does not exist.

Definitely, a system that makes everyone automatically successful does not exist.
Various experiments on combining some elments of capitalism and socialism and other systems are being done in many countries, to various results. I think it is worth studying but not without forgetting that cultures also play an important role - something I realised when visiting East Asia.
As a rule of thumb, nothing is perfect but life is all about the good enough and then maybe a bit better, to be ahead of your competitors.


The problem is that the majority of the protesters appear to be from an era where "everyone wins a prize" was considered "normal" and so have been brought up in a coddled atmosphere, with an expectation that regardless of effort (or lack thereof), everyone would end up with the same outcome. To them, "equal oppportunity" is equated with "equal outcomes" and so they feel entitled to have whatever they want and that someone else has, regardless of the effort another person may have made to achieve\earn this.

When they find that the real world doesn't work this way, they place the blame on "capitalism" rather than looking at their own choices\actions and how they may have contributed to their not having whatever they want and which someone else has achieved.



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26 Jul 2020, 10:52 pm

People here in Portland are protesting other things too like the virus. It hasn't been violent at all and the on;y ones who have been violent have been the troops. People are protesting peacefully and they are being grabbed off streets by random troops, being tear gassed and Portlanders have been fighting back with leaf blowers by blowing them away. Then those got confiscated so someone brought in a big huge fan to blow away the tear gas.

I live in Portland so I have been listening to the people who have been at these protests and shared all these. It's nothing like what's been reported in the media. They are making us look like we are just being violent and wrecking buildings but that is just the graffiti they are showing on the federal building. It's only 3 blocks that are being used for protests.

So when protesters fight back, of course they are going to be portrayed as that is how they were before the Trump invasion.

The protesting did originally start out with BLM. It's great to see people supporting them when Portland has a bad history of racism and we have racist cops. Our city purposely ripped out homes and black businesses that belonged to black people just to put in the new interstate in the early 1960's, they also ripped them out just to put in the Memorial Coliseum, they also did it to expand the Emanuel Hospital and then funds ran out so there is this big huge vacant land now. Don't get me wrong, racism still exists here. My husband grew up in North Portland so he saw racism because many people in that area were black so he was one of the 6 white kids in his school.


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magz
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27 Jul 2020, 2:44 am

League_Girl wrote:
People here in Portland are protesting other things too like the virus. It hasn't been violent at all and the on;y ones who have been violent have been the troops. People are protesting peacefully and they are being grabbed off streets by random troops, being tear gassed and Portlanders have been fighting back with leaf blowers by blowing them away. Then those got confiscated so someone brought in a big huge fan to blow away the tear gas.

I live in Portland so I have been listening to the people who have been at these protests and shared all these. It's nothing like what's been reported in the media. They are making us look like we are just being violent and wrecking buildings but that is just the graffiti they are showing on the federal building. It's only 3 blocks that are being used for protests.

So when protesters fight back, of course they are going to be portrayed as that is how they were before the Trump invasion.

The protesting did originally start out with BLM. It's great to see people supporting them when Portland has a bad history of racism and we have racist cops. Our city purposely ripped out homes and black businesses that belonged to black people just to put in the new interstate in the early 1960's, they also ripped them out just to put in the Memorial Coliseum, they also did it to expand the Emanuel Hospital and then funds ran out so there is this big huge vacant land now. Don't get me wrong, racism still exists here. My husband grew up in North Portland so he saw racism because many people in that area were black so he was one of the 6 white kids in his school.

Apparently, Portland has a culture of protests as a normal part of contributing to the society.
It's similar in my country and nothing would enrage regular people more than sending heavily armed police against protesters for any cause. Then, it wouldn't be about the original cause any more, it would be about the very right to protest, so people uninterested in the original cause would join.


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