Monthly Archives: March 2021

In the summer of 2020, protests erupted across the globe to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matters demonstrations in the U.S., calling for racial justice for Black people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade being killed at the hands of police officers.

Months later, while people were still showing up to support this Black social justice movement, the nation grieved the death of three beloved leaders of the last generations Black justice movement.

The late Rep. John Lewis, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, and the legendary baseball player Hank Aaron were a few of the remaining civil rights pioneers of their time. But what set them apart from the protesters in the streets, was what was at the center of their movement decades ago: the Black church. Thats where ideas for certain acts of protest, like the sit-ins of 1963, the Childrens March the same year, and the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, came to fruition.

In the book, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, author and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. cites the idea of the Black church as a freedom church, as a vehicle for the civil rights struggle and a way of looking at the world.

Some young activists today, are trying to keep that connection between social justice movements and the church. Alexus Cumbie, who attended church service every Sunday pre-pandemic, said she believes the Black church and the Black Lives Matter Movement share some of the same goals of truth seeking and transparency, repentance and reconciliation.

Christian churches, as a whole in the U.S., have been experiencing a decline in attendance. A new Gallup study found the number of Americans who are members of a place of worship has dropped to fewer than 50 percent for the first time since their data collection began in 1940. The Black church has also seen a decline. The study also showed 31 percent of millennials and 33 percent of Generation Z have no religious affiliation.

The desire for institutions to address racial justice and other progressive policies may be the principle reason millennials are currently moving away from the church as an institution, said Bishop Yvette Flunder, senior pastor of City of Refuge, United Church of Christ, and the presiding Prelate of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.

Theyre trying to find like-minded millennials who are very interested in doing the work of policy, doing the work of justice, and organizing, Flunder said. And theyre feeling that the church, as it is called monolithically, is not really on board.

These policy issues include justice work, like LGBTQ rights, that Christian churches, as a whole, have historically opposed.

Community members from Brave Space Alliance, Broadway Youth Center, and Renaissance Social Services speak during the Pride Without Prejudice march on June 28, 2020 in Chicago. Photo by Natasha Moustache/Getty Images

Dr. Rev. Gardner, the senior pastor at Plum Grove Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, said that even while young people move away from the church, it remains an epicenter to Black life.

While young Black people are no longer waiting on the permission of the church to go out and take action, those in political power still look to the Black church for direction in the Black community, said Gardner, who also teaches African American history courses on the Black Church and Black protest at the University of Alabama.

Whenever there is an issue in his Tuscaloosa community, he added, whether its over tornado devastation or COVID-19 concerns, the mayor and the police chief do look to the church to help.

So in that regard, when we think about the word epicenter, we think about entities that do more than just one thing, Gardner said. In this way, the church is the prophetic voice of the Black community.

Garnder said faith is what sustained the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and its what the church has to offer in todays movement.

Flunder said she agrees. We [the Black community] are deeply faith-oriented, hope-oriented, she said.

While the Black church as an institution has not always received openly queer folxs, Black queer folxs have always fought right alongside it, Flunder, who identifies as a lesbian woman, added.

Flunder believes that the faces of the fight for Black social justice look more intersectional now than they did a few decades ago.

I have never seen anything quite like the Black Lives Matter movement, she said. The thing that makes it so incredibly unique to me is not just that there are a wonderful group of Black and brown young people out there fighting alongside white people.

Flunder added while she is learning from young people, she hopes they can also learn from the adversities she faced when she was their age.

I am also encouraging the movement not to forget the wisdom trail, the wisdom path, she said. Take a look at our scars, because we still have them.

A Black Lives Matter flag flies near a church on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. Photo by Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Cumbie, who is a Black queer voice in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, said she understands the importance of the church.

I think that the Black church is pivotal for Black liberation movements, which is why white supremacists target these gathering spaces, she said. And Ive seen it in my home city of Birmingham, Alabama, where four little black girls were killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

On her college campus, she leads a Bible study, and said that many students who attend are queer.

I think that a lot of young Black, queer college students find themselves in these more intimate Bible studies because theyre able to have a more individualized and personalized experience with God and their spirituality when theyre able to ask those tough questions without judgment.

Cumbie said thats one of the critiques of the Black church and all churches not being a space that seeks to answer these tough questions on the minds of young queer people.

Wynston Cornelius is the program director of Gender Bender, an LGBTQ support and advocacy group based out of South Carolina. As a Black trans man, he experienced a lack of transparency in the church.

For most of my life, I heard all are welcomed, and Im welcomed conditionally, Cornelius said, as long as I wear a dress, or as long as my hair is a certain way, as long as Im not questioning whats being preached about, even in Sunday school.

Cornelius said in his own experience, it was not a matter of him struggling with who he is, but the church struggling with who he is.

For most of my life, I heard all are welcomed, and Im welcomed conditionally.

He said that if the church continues not to be accepting of the queer community, it may lead to what he called a devolution, what he described as the continuation of even more churchgoers leaving the institution because of its refusal to meet the needs of all the intersections of Black people.

Flunder said she believes the Black church has work to do on its fragile patriarchy to be relevant to the social justice movements. She explained that Black men have been wrongly diminished and emasculated in various ways in America slavery, Jim Crow, and peonage in sharecropping, and todays industrial prison complex.

One of the few places where our men did have power coming along was in the institution that we created, the Black church, Flunder said.

Within the structures of church walls, women and men are very concerned about making sure that the roles of women essentially dont diminish the roles of men, Flunder explained.

Those strict roles erase the Black LGBTQ community, who are also doing the work for the prosperity of Black people, she added.

The Black churchs role of serving as a gathering site will always exist, and the conversations with that institution will evolve, Cumbie said.

We have to move towards a more radical pursuit of loving, of loving our neighbors, she said.

READ MORE: Black women were vital to the Black church. Here are 2 stories

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Where does the Black church fit in today's Black Lives Matter movement? - PBS NewsHour

In 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the charge of murdering Trayvon Martin, a black teenager. This was the spark that lit the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). Three self-described radical black organizers responded: Alicia Garza coined the phrase in a love letter to black people, Patrisse Cullors turned the phrase into a hashtag, and Opal Tometi started organizing followers online and building BlackLivesMatter.com.

Tometi, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, was raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She attended the University of Arizona, where she earned her bachelors in history and her masters in communication and advocacy. Before BLM, she served for eight years as executive director at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

According to her BlackLivesMatter.com biography, Tometi is a student of liberation theology and her practice is in the tradition of Ella Baker, informed by Stuart Hall, bell hooks and Black Feminist thinkers. Furthermore, as a transnational feminist, Tometi supports and helps shape the strategic work of Pan African Network in Defense of Migrant Rights, and the Black Immigration Network.

Patrisse Cullors is now the executive director of the Black Lives Movement Global Network Foundation. This foundation's financial support initially flowed through a nonprofit co-chaired by Susan Rosenberg, a co-founder of the May 19th Communist Organization, a domestic terrorist group active in the 1980s. In a 2011 memoir, An American Radical, Rosenberg stated: I pursued a path that seemed to me a logical step beyond legal protest: the use of political violence. Did that make me a terrorist? In my mind, then and now, the answer is no.

Cullors wrote a 2017 memoir that expresses similar sentiments. She titled it When They Call You a Terrorist. For its epigraph she chose lines penned by Assata Shakur, another domestic terrorist, that echo Marxs Communist Manifesto: It is our duty to fight for our freedom. / It is our duty to win. / We must love each other and support each other. / We have nothing to lose but our chains.

According to When They Call You a Terrorist, Cullors was born in Van Nuys, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. Her mother became pregnant at 15 and was thrown out of the house by her family, who were Jehovahs Witnesses. Later, she had several more children, including Patrisse. The father, who worked at a GM plant, was able to support them until the plant closed. When Cullors was six, he ceased to live with the family, though he didnt disappear entirely from our lives. At age 12, Cullors discovered an upsetting truth: Alton is not your father, [mother] says. Hes Pauls and Montes and Jasmines. But in between Monte and Jasmine, we broke up and I fell in love with Gabriel and we had you.

In high school, Cullors entered a magnet program with a humanities curriculum rooted in social justice. In this program, the students studied apartheid and communism in China. We study Emma Goldman and read bell hooks, Audre Lorde. . . . We are encouraged to challenge racism, sexism, classism and heteronormativity. She began to question the Jehovahs Witnesses world I had come up in.

I always knew I wasnt heterosexual, she writes, and describes how she came out in high school. By senior year, she and a friend were completely on our own, couch surfing or sleeping in cars. After graduation, an art teacher let the girls live with her. This experience inspired her ideas about intentional families, she says, as opposed to biological ones.

She earned her bachelors in religion and philosophy from UCLA and an MFA from USCs Roski School of Art and Design. She and a boyfriend read together: bell hooks continues to be a North Star but Cornel Wests work, as well, takes center stage. They also loved the feminist anarchist Emma Goldman. Cullors especially admired how the Russian migr was the first American to defend homosexuality publicly, and quotes Goldmans disdain for monogamy.In her memoir, written with Asha Bandele, the acknowledgments praise others on the left:

Cullors asked Angela Davis to write the memoirs foreword, in which Davis scoffs at the fact that Assata Shakur was designated by the FBI one of the worlds ten most dangerous terrorists. Davis applauds the way Black Lives Matter has encouraged us to question the capacity of logicWestern logicto undo the forces of history, especially the history of colonialism and slavery. Davis twice ran for vice president on the Communist Party USA ticket during the days when it was controlled by the Soviet Union. Her short book Are Prisons Obsolete?, which predates BLMs founding by over a decade, is praised in Cullorss memoir.

In an article for the Harvard Law Review, Cullors also praises Franz Fanon, the pan-Africanist who famously advocated violence against colonial rule. Few non-lawyers ever receive space in such elite pages. Her memoir similarly reveals her elite status: It was published because a book editor heard her speak at a panel on Marthas Vineyard with Hollywood stars Danny Glover and Issa Rae. Cullors has also received numerous honors, including a Fulbright Scholarship and an honorary doctorate from Clarkson University. She has been Glamours Woman of the Year and was selected as one of the Worlds Greatest Leaders by Fortune.

There is one more major influence on Cullors worth noting, which began at the social justice camp she attended after high school. There, an activist group, Strategy Center, recruited her for a years training where I read, I study, adding Mao, Marx and Lenin to my knowledge of hooks, Lorde and [Alice] Walker. The Centers founder, Eric Mann, takes me under his wing.

You may have heard his name. In the 1960s Mann joined the Weather Underground, whose members included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Arrested for several violent offenses, though often released by authorities, Mann did spend 18 months in prison. His punishment stemmed from a 1969 shooting at a police building, for which he was charged on four counts, including conspiracy to commit murder and assault with intent to commit murder.

Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation reports that Mann remains a radical who calls America the most dictatorial country in the world and describes his work as training young people who want to be revolutionaries. The sort of revolutionaries he means is clear when he praises the university as the place where Mao Zedong was radicalized, where Lenin and Fidel were radicalized, where Che was radicalized.

Alicia Garza may be the most radical of the BLM founders. When Verso Books decided to publish a third edition of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che, they asked Garza to write the foreword. She read the book as a young organizer, she admitted, but couldnt properly grasp it: I hadnt yet studied much of the origins of the Marxist-Leninist tradition that I was loosely trained in.

SFWeekly reports Garza grew up in San Rafael, California. Her parents later moved the family to Tiburon, a tiny and tony Marin County town whose median household income was more than double the states averageone of the whitest places in the Bay Area. Activism began in middle school, when she protested abstinence-only sex education. According to the Weekly, her parents are solid liberals who arent especially political, yet her mother inspired this first activist venture.

Like Cullors, Garza identifies as queer and found her way into a training program for social justice organizers, entitled SOUL (School of Unity and Liberation). There she went well beyond the academic Marxism of todays typical undergraduate leftist into authentic Marxism-Leninism. When I trained in sociology, we would read Marx, and we would read de Tocqueville, and we would read all these economic theorists, but in a void, she says. It never got mentioned in those classes that social movements all over the world have used Marx and Lenin as a foundation to interrupt these systems that are really negatively impacting the majority of people.

Her summer with SOUL in Oakland taught her community organizing and encouraged analysis around capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy and heteronormativity. She held organizing jobs at such places as the UC Student Association and POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), and in 2014 joined the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a union front group underwritten by the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and the Ford, MacArthur, and Open Society foundations. The Alliance sent her to Ferguson after the Michael Brown shooting, which led BLM to the next step in its transformation from a hashtag to an organization by mobilizing 600 black activists from around the country to embark on freedom rides to Ferguson for a weekend of protests, according to the profile in SFWeekly.

She says she wants to ensure that Black Lives Matter doesnt get co-opted by the Democratic Party or by black activists who want to reform policing but balk at more radical action. BLM activists disrupted Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail in 2016 because, Garza explains, he is a social democrat who offers not socialism but only democratic capitalism. In other words, hes too conventional. She wants more voices saying, This is not actually socialism, and socialism is actually possible in our lifetime.

This is the formation of the BLM founders. They envision change far more radical than what their many liberal supporters mean by racial justice. Having more African Americans in the professional ranks doesnt satisfy them, nor does sensitivity training for police officers. They want a transformation of society, including liberal institutions. The stakes are clear for Garza, who has tattooed on her chest six lines from June Jordans Poem about My Rights:

Scott Walter is president of the Capital Research Center.

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The Founders of Black Lives Matter | Scott Walter - First Things

I am wondering if we can put a stop to the violence, police brutality, racism, and murder, so we can just be in peace. There is no reason why Blacks should be treated differently from whites. We all are humans who feel the same and do the same things to stay and be alive on this Earth. Black Lives Matter comes to my attention because I am Black and see how Black men and women are being treated because of a different shade of skin than whites. Where there is justice, there is peace with liberty.

We just want civil rights shown and given because we are citizens of the United States of America. Black people like George Floyd are being killed.

There are many solutions that can solve this issue today. A solution can be something that can make Blacks feel like they dont have to worry about police brutality. More solutions would include having a protest celebrate Blacks, more recognition for Blacks and how they do what they do, more talks about Blacks, and about the deaths of Trayvon, George, etc. Police brutality needs to stop; there shouldnt be police killing Blacks because they are frightened by the color of our skin. Without justice, there is no peace and Blacks will continue to act up, which means we must put a stop to this and put all of our differences to the side and let them be.

This should start happening now and continue on and on for as long as time. There shouldnt be something where people dont know how to feel. Blacks shouldnt have to worry about police brutality when they are getting pulled over by a cop or when a cop asks them to put their hands up. We need to march and make sure that this stops, not now, but forever. We need to come together now and not leave anyone out because everyone is human and has feelings, so leaving someone out because of their race or skin color isnt going to solve anything and wont take us anywhere as a community.

We need to do more that involve the statements and movements of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter should be something that is celebrated or acknowledged at least on a weekly basis.

Tayshaun Washington, OPRF High School

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Do more to show that Black lives matter - Wednesday Journal

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) Black Lives Matter 757 held a protest Saturday night regarding the recent officer-involved shooting at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.

The protest began at 19th Street after members of the group attended the Virginia Beach Police press conference.

The march was held to protest the officer-involved shooting and death of Donovon Lynch, who was shot and killed Friday night.

Members of the group chanted Lynchs name at their protest as well as Black Lives Matter. BLM 757 told 10 On Your Side they wanted the officer involved in the shooting to be arrested like the others who were arrested for the shootings that took place Friday evening.

The group also raised concerns about police conducting an internal investigation and want Virginia State Police to take over.

I dont understand how this officer didnt have their body cameras on just conveniently during the time of firing on this young Black king. But we need to make sure that all officers have body cameras functioning at all times, said Japharii Jones, with Black Lives Matter 757.

Jones also said that investigators should also be required to wear body cameras and brought up Virginia Beachs City Councils decision to not allow citizens on their Investigative Review Panel the right to investigate and discipline officers.

The group says they will continue to protest at the Oceanfront most weekends and on major holidays until their is justice.

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BLM protest officer-involved shooting at Virginia Beach Oceanfront - WAVY.com

Not long into the official opening of State v. Derek Chauvin on Monday, the voices of community members who protested police violence in Minneapolis were invoked, starting with those at the scene of what prosecutors call the murder of George Floyd. Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell showed the jury a video still image of those witnesses: the teenagers who recorded Chauvins knee pressed into Floyds neck for eight or nine minutes as Floyd cried out for help, along with the others who were recorded trying to offer Floyd aid, and who chastised the officers for using their bodies to restrain a motionless man.

Chauvins defense, meanwhile, doesnt have to provide an alternative theory as to what caused George Floyds death. Yet in his opening statement Monday, Chauvins defense attorney Eric Nelson claimed that what killed George Floyd, in part, was an ingestion of drugsallegedly to conceal them from policeand that the people gathered, who watched Chauvin and the other officers move Floyds inert body onto a stretcherdidnt know the full story. In fact, Nelson told the jury, the angry crowd appeared to officers to be a threat. They called officers names, he continued, causing officers to divert their attention from the man they had restrained beneath them.

Nelsons characterization of the crowd was a revealing moment for the defense, one meant perhaps to appeal to some of the jurors who, when asked their views on Black Lives Matter, had responded, All lives matter. The same officers who perceived Floyds already prone body as an ongoing threat had also perceived the witnesses recording them as a threat. To follow the defenses logic, if Floyd was somehow culpable in his own death, so were the bystanders. To the extent that Black Lives Matter is on trial in this case, it will concern the conduct of the people who stood witness to Floyds death.

Excerpt from:

Derek Chauvin Trial Opening Statements: Defense Puts Blame on Witnesses - The New Republic

by: via Nexstar Media Wire, The Associated Press

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) Atlantic City says it will redo a Black Lives Matter tribute on a street because the original painting of those words across the entire road confused motorists who didnt know where to drive on it.

Instead, the words Black Lives Matter will be painted onto the repaved road in a manner that does not obscure lane divider markings, Mayor Marty Small said Thursday.

The City Council voted Wednesday night to spend $36,000 to repave the road, which police said had become so confusing to motorists that the city blocked it off at either end with barriers to prevent anyone from driving on it.

It was an oversight on our part, and when we realized it, we fixed it, Mayor Marty Small said. The words Black Lives Matter will still be on the street.

The road needs to be repaved because the type of paint used in the display cannot be painted over, officials said.

Last September, the city held an event in which volunteers donated paint, materials and labor to write Black Lives Matter in huge capital letters stretching from curb to curb on a section of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the citys downtown.

But the giant yellow letters obscured the yellow dividing line of the four-lane roadway, as well as the broken white lines on either side marking travel lanes.

Acting Police Chief James Sarkos told the council Wednesday night that the mural violated state Department of Transportation regulations. He also said motorists had become confused while driving on it, to the point that police had to close the road to traffic to prevent accidents.

The road painting was a compromise that averted a potential confrontation between activists who wanted to paint the words Black Lives Matter on the famous Boardwalk, and city officials who would not allow it.

City Council member LaToya Dunston accused the city of wasting taxpayer dollars by painting the road without knowing the rules governing it.

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Atlantic City to redo Black Lives Matter road paint that confused drivers - CBS17.com

Vandal covers BLM, anti-Asian hate messages with paint in Shorewood

Trying to mute a message against hate, a vandal was caught on camera throwing paint on the window of a Shorewood restaurant in an attempt to cover the signs in the windows supporting Black Lives Matter and stopping Asian hate.

SHOREWOOD, Wis. - Trying to mute a message against hate, avandal was caught on camera throwing paint on the window of a Shorewood restaurant in an attemptto cover the signs in the windows supporting Black Lives Matter and stopping Asian hate.

Police are looking for the man seen on surveillance putting paint on the outside of the restaurant over signs against racism.

At Cloud Red on Oakland Avenue in Shorewood, messages line the windows of the restaurant, supporting Black and Asian lives -- standing against racism -- but Sunday night, March 28, someone attempted to cover them up.

"Freedom of speech and people have the right to express themselves, and it crosses the line when it hits vandalism," said James Forster.

Shorewood police released the surveillance showing a man walking up to the window around 9:30 p.m., putting paint over the signs.

"I mean, its just troublesome," said Rob Spiering. "Iknow that people are just looking for trouble these days."

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The restaurant owners declined to talk on camera, but released a statement to FOX6 News:

"We were disappointed to find the vandalism to our windows this morning. This wasnt an attack on Cloud Red, but more so an attack against the BLM movement itself and that should be at the forefront. Unfortunately, its a sad reminder that hate continues and there is still work to be done. We stand behind the messages in our windows - Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate. We encourage all to stand together and participate in peaceful efforts to end racial injustice and inequality. Anyone with useful information regarding this incident please contact the Shorewood Police Dept directly."

A day later the paint was cleaned up but the criminal act left its mark.

"This wasn't an attack on Cloud Red, but more so an attack against the BLM movement," said Forster. "Unfortunately, it's a reminder that hate continues. You definitely dont like to see destruction of property where you live, close to home and its a shame."

Police are asking anyone with information to give them a call.

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Vandal covers BLM, anti-Asian hate messages with paint in Shorewood - FOX 6 Milwaukee

EXCLUSIVE:The US Navys "extremism" training says its okay to advocate for Black Lives Matter (BLM) while at work but sailors are not allowed to discuss "politically partisan" issues, according to training slides obtained by Fox News.

A question posed in a "scenarios for discussion" slide asked if BLM was "political stuff" that superiors in the Navy are "not supposed to be talking about at work," according to the slides, which Fox obtained from aU.S. military official who took part in the training at the Pentagon.

BLM PAC RAISING $500K TO BACK OSSOFF, WARNOCK IN GEORGIA

The answer given by the Navy called BLM a "public policy issue" and gave the green light for advocating for the organization "as long as the behavior is otherwise lawful and the advocacy is not politically partisan in nature."

"Advocating for or against a public policy issue (as here) is authorized as long as the behavior is otherwise lawful and the advocacy is not politically partisan in nature (e.g. it doesn't specifically address a political party)," the slide reads. "If the discussions make you uncomfortable, discuss the matter with your boss or another supervisor."

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was askedat Monday's press briefing whethertalking about BLM in the workplace is "considered partisan."

BLM ACTIVIST ARRESTED AFTER LINCOLN STATUE DEFACED

Kirby responded that he was "not able to answer that question" and that the discussion as to why could "go down a rabbit hole on a million different things."

"What we're trying to get after here is the kind of ideology that inspires conduct and behavior. And it's not about one side or the other on the aisle," said Kirby. "It's not about what God you worship or choose not to worship. It's about ideology that inspires you or can inspire others to bring harm inside the force."

"And that's what we're trying to get after," Kirby added.

BLM PRESSURES DEMOCRATS TO EMBRACE BILL DESCRIBED AS ROADMAP FOR PRISON ABOLITION

Kirby said the Pentagon was taking their push to combat extremism in their ranks "seriously" and recognized that the issue was "a hard problem to get our arms around."

"But we cant just put our head in the sand and pretend it doesnt exist. We cant just say, well, its not a problem. It is a problem," continued Kirby. "The other problem is, we dont know how big it is. And so thats what were trying to learn. And I think youre gonna see this unfold over time."

"I'm not going to be able to come to the podium this week, next week or the week after with a plan and say, 'This is it. This is how this is how it's defined," the press secretary continued.

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"And this is exactly how deep the problem is. This is going to be something and Secretary Austin has made very clear he's going to work on every day that he's the Secretary of Defense."

"Its not something that you can take your foot off the pedal on," he added.

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Navy's 'extremism' training says it's OK to advocate for BLM at work but not 'politically partisan' issues - Fox News

More than a dozen cities have reviewed the police response to Black Lives Matter protests and the reports show poorly trained, over-militarized, and stunningly unprepared police forces across the country.

According to the New York Times, the missteps transcended staffing levels and financial resources meaning police departments from New Yorkto Indianapoliswere unprepared to deal with the protests. That includes everyone from top commanders to beat officers were not only unprepared and untrained to deal with the protests, but many of their actions did the exact opposite of what was intended.

The Times analyzed reports across the country by watchdog organizations and outside investigators in nine major cities and post-action examinations by police in five other large cities. One of the conclusions drawn from almost every report was that officers need more training when dealing with large, organized protests.

They also offered a range of proposals to improve and lessen the number of incidents between protestors and police. Those include entire departments working with community organizers and consulting with civil rights attorneys on protest-management solutions. Police leaders developing more restrictive guidelines for tear gas, rubber bullets, and other crowd-controlling weapons. The suggestions also include officers receiving more training to control their emotions and aggression in the moment.

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement began last summer after the death of George Floyd. More than 100 cities across the nation began marching and protesting against police brutality and called to defund police budgets and put more money into social services such as drug addiction and prevention, mental health services, and youth education and sports.

The overwhelming majority of those protests were peaceful, especially during the day. However, many were escalated by police actions. In New York, one officer shoved a woman violently to the ground. In Florida, a White cop shoved a Black woman kneeling in front of him and had to be removed from the area by a Black female officer.

In some incidents, the police themselves were under attack and forced to respond to buildings being burned stores being looted, and police being ambushed by protestors including one incident where a woman threw a Molotov cocktail at a police vehicle.

Amnesty International has logged more than 120 incidents of violence by police in 40 different states during the summer of protests.

In the aftermath, more than a dozen cities cut their police budgets, redistributing their funds to various social services and introducing programs where social service officers will respond to non-emergency calls including mental health calls.

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Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests In Multiple Cities, Study Shows What We Already Know - Black Enterprise