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by ismail-s 3223 days ago
BLM entered the social conscience of plenty of people, and managed to influence discussions in the media, even in some countries outside the US. That in itself is a pretty strong form of power.
3 comments

I can't find the transcript or quote, but Jon Stewart said that all the work he does and all the voice he has doesn't have real power; it's the politicians that have the power. He likened his crusade to get the NYC first responders health coverage to the movie Ghost where Patrick Swazye spent a ton of energy and effort to the point of draining him for hours to just move a penny a few feet.

With their constant crying wolf and manufactured outrage, the US media has all but neutered themselves.

Awareness and media attention has potential for power, but unless one is able to follow through and use this to gain something tangible it is not worth much.

There is also a huge difference between media being willing to cover the conflict, and media willingly amplifying your message. In the former the power stays in the hands of the media (and the people it usually serves), only in the latter I would say that one has something that can be an effective power.

More a general comment, I don't know how BLM does wrt to media coverage.

Black Lives Matter gets little media coverage, with a lot of what they do get being demonization from right wing outfits.

I saw a comment here not long ago that managed to peel off the vehicle murderer in Charlottesville from the white supremacist organizers that praised him and at the same time directly blamed BLM for police killings that many leaders in the movement have condemned. I imagine media coverage contributes to such mental acrobatics.

In Toronto BLM hijacked the gay pride parade and prevented police participation in the parade. The founder of BLM in Toronto has called whites subhuman.. but BLM still has apologetic articles written in its defense by the left wing media. Defending such a useless harmful and racist organization is a far worse mental acrobatic
It's hardly only BLM who doesn't want police in pride parades. The phenomenon of gay-pride marches started on June 28, 1970, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of an NYPD raid on a gay bar in New York, and the movement has as a result been very anti-cop since the beginning. It's only in recent years, as corporate Democrats and other politicians of that kind have found it fashionable to join the movement, that anyone would dream of inviting cops to a pride parade in the first place. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board with the change.
That should be the decision of the organization hosting the parade, not a separate group with it's own agenda.
Hey look a leftist rag published a column calling for her to resign:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/james-di-fiore/black-lives-matt...

Quite the apologia.

> respectfully, it is time for her to resign.

> maybe if this was her only controversial statement all could be forgiven

A rare thing for someone to get so toxic even HuffPo calls her out, but flip it around and they would have no problem calling someone white with similar views a white-supremacist, and condemning them - without the "respect" or second chances.

In fact, they pretty much spell it out:

> many media outlets faced scrutiny for focusing on that tweet instead of the issues black communities are facing

Yusra is now causing more harm than good, so she has to go. Otherwise, they'd tolerate her.

Yes, newspapers often publish the writings of public figures, it doesn't imply an endorsement.

Do you think they made a mistake by publishing her op-ed?

I agree the logical standard is either the extreme mentally ill elements of a group are a groups responsibility or they are not. It simply can't be both.
However BLM was less about injustice and more about a minority group trying to capture and exert power over people they perceived has wronged them. The entire BLM movement is about power. Once people started realizing that it totally lost its momentum.
I'm more than a bit confused by your argument.

First of all, it strikes me that pretty much any movement concerning a minority is fundamentally about power.

Second, surely 'perceived [have] wronged them' is an odd statement in the context of a minority group that has seriously been wronged in the distant and recent past, and not to mention is still suffering from being wronged on a regular basis.

Now I don't know the fine details of BLM as a movement so I'm honestly open to hear where my thinking is faulty. Could you elaborate a bit?