[quote="Squeely"]It's a legitimate movement for sure. Just a focused one. I personally see nothing wrong with focusing on issues a certain group faces, especially marginalized groups. Far too many innocent black lives have been taken, unjustifiably. I really hate the attitude that a black person "wasn't compliant" or "had a record" and therefore deserved to get shot, as though any infraction makes their death okay. Because it doesn't. It really, really doesn't. If someone is resistant or has a record, then calling for backup is the proper action to take. Tasering is an option, to incapacitate, not kill. Pepper spray is an option. What about those clubs cops are stereotypically depicted with? Those are an option. Again, to incapacitate. I think we need to re-evaluate and re-train our police forces, to be better at handling intense situations without guns, and to only use guns as a last resort.
Sadly, with America's violence problem, I don't think taking guns away from cops is a good idea. But I think we need to restructure their training, with better emphasis on guns being last-resort-only. Quite frankly, as an American citizen, cops killing people over misdemeanors scares the hell out of me.[/quote]
I'm not sure the movement really is all that focused though, both their tactics and their international nature.
Vancouver, BC, Canada has a BLM branch that tried ( without success thankfully ) to get the VPD police out of the Vancouver Gay Pride parade. The province-wide average for police involved shootings in BC is about half of what it is in the US and the Metro Vancouver area has around 1% people of 'African origins', less then the Danish population. The narrative pushed by BLM just doesn't fit with the reality and continuing with the same confrontational tactics and attitudes only serves to alienate people from the cause. If BLM can't treat entire police departments as individual from others a country and thousands of kilometers away then what hope is there of getting their desired outcome of treating Black men/women as individuals instead of making assumptions.
This strikes me as a movement that's really quite confused about where the problem is and who's causing it and instead is lashing out in all directions at anyone they view as having the power and influence to help. The VPD can't do anything to improve the lot of black lives beyond the 23 545 that live in the Vancouver Metro area ( less actually due to patchwork jurisdictions ). A brief look though the Vancouver chapter of BLM 's facebook feed shows a lot about what they're doing ( friction with local police ) and what they're protesting against, deaths in the US and one in Ottawa. There was also
this posted. For a variety of reasons this doesn't work in Canada particularly well and works even worse in Vancouver, but in an effort to stick to the 'message' I guess they kept it exactly the same. Either that or they simply didn't put any thought into what they actually want to see change.
I support the premise of black lives matter, I think the organization and movement will have to die before progress is made as currently it's an engine for division and discord instead of any unifying force for change.