“A Colorado man was arrested after a stabbing in which the assailant called out ‘black lives matter’ before stabbing the victim, according to news reports.”
The assailant was black. The victim was white and was stabbed while walking his dog.
“The Marlins and Mets walk off the field in protest and leave a BLM shirt on home plate”; “Seattle sports stars Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe and Russell Wilson each wore a Black Lives Matter T-shirt as they hosted ESPN’s annual awards show” but did any – any – of these sports figures decry the massive destructive rioting and renewed frenzies of violence, often in the name of Black Lives Matter, occurring across the country?
No, they did not.
While they spoke of the need for justice and equality, did they at the same time condemn the horrific devastation that the BLM movement has spawned?
No, they did not.
Activist, writer and supporter of the Black Lives Movement, Shaun King, said this past June 22, as reported in Newsweek, that “the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should come down. They are a form of white supremacy.
“Tear them down. All murals and stained-glass windows of white Jesus and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.”
Rip and tear, smash and demolish, as much says this activist, writer, and supporter of the Black Lives Movement.
The BLM website itself contains not one word of disapproval or censure, castigates not at all such atrocities in its name.
Why not?
Are any means necessary to achieve their ends justified?
Is not the prize tarnished, is there not an asterisk by their avowed purpose that besmirches what it is they are trying to achieve?
All the courts and fields of sports endeavor on which the likes of Bird, Rapinoe, and Wilson, et al perform, have boundaries.
Boundaries, which violated, end the play.
Sure, walk off the baseball diamond Mariners, Marlins and Mets. Refuse to play the game. Leave the BLM t-shirt on the plate.
But remember, you are not only well-paid professionals, you are much-looked-up-to-by-youth sports heroes and thus bear significant responsibility to strongly advocate for justice and – and – at the same time – in the same sentence – stridently denounce the evils perpetuated in the name of that which you support.
The boundaries are there for a reason.
A river without boundaries is a swamp.
Where evil lurks.
Thank you David, those of us who seek news today come across these atrocities in the name of BLM. Then I see neighbors as I go for a walk with BLM signs in there yard and I’m asking myself, do these people not see what’s going on. It obvious to me what BLM
Stands for. Like you said , nobody in msm or sports denounces all these attacks and we’ve seen several of them in the past couple months. Then I heard the founder speak of her organization as being a Marxist founded one. Then it made since, mobs attacking people that say they must repeat after them no justice.
They are what’s wrong in our cities they are the fascists
I’ll take law and order myself.
Thank you David for saying what many of us are thinking and trying to make sense of while waiting for those in high positions of government to speak out and act in their capacity to not tolerate the excess of law breaking and mayhem and finally take action.
As a nation we can do better and be better than we are at this moment in time.
Thank you David! Your statement is something that so very many of us have been thinking. It is unconscionable to so many of us that everyone who is supporting the BLM movement seems to be ignoring the destruction and murder taking place in its name. Even one of the BLM leaders, Ariel Atkins, on national tv, endorsed looting and pillaging as legitimate forms of reparation! I’m wondering…does Russell Wilson, Sue Bird, the Marlins, the Mariners and on and on…agree with this? I think not! Then they need to speak up! I haven’t heard one …not one…denounce any of the destruction and violence that continues to be committed daily it its name. The BLM movement has made its point. If they truly want to make a difference, it’s time now to come together to build…not destroy.
The reality occurring in Seattle, Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, NYC, Baltimore, etc. is an attempt to deconstruct the USA and create chaos in anticipation of the 2020 election. These riots…..that’s what they are……have nothing to do with racism. Such a terror campaign is the stock and trade of leftist “revolutions” throughout history from 1917 in Russia to Venezuela today. A campaign of hate, violence, destruction, deprivation, anarchy are used to manipulate the population with the promise that if only you’d let the leftists in power all this would stop. It won’t! The only way to stop the chaos is to remove those responsible for the chaos. Even BLM has whined that the anarchists (ANTIFA…..a fascist organization itself) and criminal elements have high jacked “their” movement. Too bad BLM gave them cover, saw them as allies, encouraged them and now are overtaken by them……same goes for Democrat Party. That’s what often happens in leftist revolutions: the radicals overcome any moderates in the crown and use them as cover. BLM sowed the seeds to its own destruction. It’s tough to ride a tiger…..once you get on you can’t get off without being devoured.
Matt Driscoll’s column in the Tacoma News Tribune this August 28 is entitled “Why Black Lives Matter protests in Tacoma don’t look anything like Seattle, Portland.”
In his column Driscoll quotes Keith Blocker, Tacoma City Councilman, who was happy the type of destruction and violence seen at other protests across the country hadn’t happened here.
Then Blocker said this: “To worry so much about property and material things and not try to be critical and get at the root of why people are behaving that way, to me is a serious problem,” Blocker said. “People should question why they are using the destruction of property to negate the fact that Black people are being murdered.”
Jaimka Scott, community organizer with the Tacoma Action Collective, also interviewed in Driscoll’s column, agreed.
“When you’re not being heard, you’re going to try something different,” Scott said.
“Something different”?
Advocating the destruction of church likenesses of Jesus is “something different” because “you’re not being heard”?
“Something different”?
The mayhem, looting, chaos, anarchy, destruction of a family business several life-times in the making we’re to discount, not be critical, don’t worry, after all it’s just so much property and material things?
I strongly, stridently beg to differ.
The message has been lost in the morass of misery these miscreants have left behind.
What Blocker and Scott should be communicating is a clear, unequivocal, unambiguous, marked denunciation of the brick-throwing, looting, and business-demolishing thugs – yes, they are thugs, when they resort to such anarchist tactics.
Well written opinion. Interesting how persons commenting that support David’s opinion are neutral in tone and ask for support and answers to end violence vs. those that criticize and disagree in a more militant tone and in one case using “idiot”.
Everyone needs an equal voice.
Let us hope the sovereign native nation’s of our great country don’t decide they are the only ones that matter or we will all need boats to sail back to where we came from.
As other readers have said, “Thank you David.”
Do I think Black lives matter? Yes, I do. I always have valued Black lives way before BLM came into being. BLM, which purportedly wishes to stand up against predjudice and racism, actually is creating predjudice and reverse racism.
The chanting and signs should communicate, All Lives Matter, which includes all the colors, white, Black, red and brown.
The racially biasted BLM movement now promotes blacks stabbing whites. WLM too. ALL lives matter.
I agree with Mr. Arbeeny. The BLM is now simply a way to destroy our country with the hope that Leftists can take over by giving our sitting president a hard time.
Joseph Boyle
I wonder as I read this article, as well as the comments, if any of you have actually lived the black or brown experience. I find it interesting that many people have so much to say about the recent destruction of property, but were silent for years, decades, a millennium about the destruction of black and brown people in America. I do not condone the destruction if either. I do, however, understand that lives are more important than things, that punishment needs to fit the crime, and that chaos and unrest leads to change. America has seen worse. We are not going to fall apart over the BLM movement. History will show that a catalist was necessary for change to happen.
It’s stunning to find such stilted discussion (preceding) in Lakewood, with apparent disregard of antecedent roots or attention to historical grievance. This cherry-picked incident and counter complaints argument fails generations of “Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees,” or have you forgotten?
And the point of inserting the insidious image of an alligator is? Or have you forgotten too, that yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of Emmett Till’s horrific murder; whose perps jovially celebrated lighting fat cigars upon stepping from the courtroom where an all-white jury with meager deliberation deliberately mistook justice for commendation.
Or when was the last time you drank from “colored only,” the sweet waters of segregation, red-lined denial enforced through white regulation, found yourself turned away, or worse – helpless, humiliated and grateful for your life, kowtowed to the amusement of “law and order” that would just as soon force you into a ditch? .
Of course, your school was separate but equal, and you were grateful that VISTA volunteers finally showed up with books (some spines intact) that you could share with classmates. Hey, and chalk for the cracked blackboard, a ball for recess. But careful where you walk on your way home.
What we all seem to have trouble understanding is that “BLM” means BLACK LIVES MATTER, TOO; not to exclusion of yours or anyone else. “Black Lives Matter” joined the national vernacular before it became an “org” (2013). Its clarity has always required context, without which, by universal subscription, intent and meaning clashed between utterance and object. Observation, advocacy, appeal, protest, demand or riot, its call to attention centers purpose of non-violent civil protest against objective brutality to the full grasp and dignity accorded every American by our ever-striving Constitution.
It should not be so difficult for we privileged to understand. Want law and order? Begin with justice. Let me help you recall the obvious lesson we fail to heed: MLK made it plain in 1966, “Riots are the language of the unheard.” For most, at least since Rodney King, time we listened. Time we cared. A younger generation now insists.
Be part of the solution. Be well.
So you condone the violence?
Just because someone asks that you look at the reasons behind the Black Lives Matter does NOT mean they are condoning violence. No one wants violence. He’s just putting out a more balanced perspective than your incendiary article does.
The whole purpose of my article, of course, is to provide the reader, as if they didn’t know, that there is in fact a terrific imbalance in the portrayal by all, including Warfield, of the avowed purpose of BLM, that imbalance being the glaringly missing admission that the atrocities, anarchy, wanton destruction of property are crimes. and have no, zero, at all place as a means to their ends. Failing that admission shouts as loud of hypocrisy as the shouting on the streets of what amounts to war zones across America. The message of BLM is lost – lost – to me, and apparently to many others gauged by the response here in the morass of misery carried out under their watch.
Really I doubt you ever saw this!!! I was in School in Alabama the year they PAID the parents of the black students to come to our school. ( Knew this for a fact)!!! Even though they had a newer and better school in our small town. Two girls and a boy. The boy and one of the girls rode my school bus and I felt really sorry for them. They didn’t like it and would rather have been at their own school having fun with their friends. I was kind and nice to them and felt sorry for them. God made us all and each different, not better than the other. All this criminal activity has to stop. It is ridiculous. Makes me consider the black race so inferior and below a good intelligence level and respect for all. If you are law abiding and not doing anything wrong why should the police even be involved!!!!! Come on this is just an excuse to loot and steal. I am praying that God will bring all these people to repent and want to do what is right in their lives. May He have mercy on us. I never would have dreamed that it would be scary to walk down a public street in our country!
Now let’s see your message for the White Power Supremacists that you and that worthless excuse for a president in the WH support and encourage.
If Black Lives Matter, why isn’t there the same outrage over the thousands of blacks killed, and injured by blacks throughout the country, Why isn’t there the same outrage over the thousands and thousands of abortions of black babies. It appears that only some black lives matter. Those that are taken by police.
Your an idiot. I am a black man and even I can see that.
All the black people killed by Police recently were breaking the law, and resisting arrest PERIOD!!!!!! I do not condone the killings. If they did not resist they, would all be alive.