I think black lives matter. I think police brutality is a bad thing and should be fought where it exists. If you want to report a police officer, you can do it online here. To make a voice complaint, call the Office of Police Complaints at 866-588-0569.
That being said, I also think police lives matter. I think police officers work very hard, usually thanklessly, to do their best to create safe environments. Many officers have been harmed in the line of duty, in some cases before they can even leave their vehicle.
I will say at the outset that this is not meant to be a blanket condemnation of the BLM movement as a whole, but I and many other people have many concerns about the social movement. Most of those concerns stem from the behavior of the adherents of the movement.
As a social movement with no centralizing standards, BLM is judged as a movement from the people who identify with it.
Can’t you say the same about Christianity?
A social movement is different from an organized religion. An organized religion like Christianity has a centralizing text. It has standards of doctrine and morality required to be adhered to and observed by its followers. As a result, if a group of people within an organized religion begin acting in opposition to the tenants of the religion, the followers of the religion can point to their texts or teachings or both, in Christianity's case, the Bible, and say, “These people do not believe what we believe and they are disobeying our morality, therefore they are not part of us.” People on the outside can examine the same sources and say, “Yep, that’s not in line with what this religion teaches.”
BLM has a website, spell out what they stand for, and have a list of responses to supposed “misconceptions.” That being said, they do not have any guidelines of behavior for their rallies and there are no condemnations of specific actions taken by their participants. One obvious example is the killing of five while Dallas officers. The shooter, Micah Johnson, wanted to avenge black people killed by police officers.
Not only is there no specific condemnation of Micah Johnson on their website, but there is no condemnation of him on their twitter feed, their Facebook page, their tumblr profile, or their instagram.
There is no condemnation the rally cry, “What do we want? Dead cops!” during their protest. There is no condemnation for the rally cry, “Pigs in a blanket! Fry ‘em like bacon!” again, calling for dead cops, during their protest.
This issue might be averted if they had a formalized rally cry on their website or social media pages, but they have none.
There is no condemnation of the racism during their protests. If the entire movement is about combating racism, why do they allow it?
There also seems to be silence on the part of Black Lives Matter protesters concerning other black issues beyond police brutality, although their list of misconceptions responses claims that Black Lives Matter is about more than just police brutality. There have not been any marches through south side Chicago to protest gang violence, for example.
There is absolute silence on the part of Black Lives Matter with respect to the issue of black abortion. They have not partnered with organizations like blackgenocide.org.
Once again, this is not a blanket condemnation of Black Lives Matter. Do not, therefore, make a leap of illogic and assume that because I don’t subscribe to or support Black Lives Matter, I must therefore hate black people. There is no way you can justify such an extreme equalization. I’m one of the many millions of Americans who thinks that racism is wrong. I happen to be willing to call it out even if it’s done by a self-proclaimed anti-racism social movement like Black Lives Matter.
