[burnished]

Yeah like that person who lit a cop car in Seattle on fire! Oh, they were white? And from Texas? And didn't appear to believe that black lives mattered at all? The point I'm trying to get here is that you're arguing with what should be an unimpeachable central thesis "black lives matter". Also, you are kidding yourself. The US is still painfully racist. People were gonna get mad no matter what because it was about black people.

[refenestrator]

There's nutpicking and then there's having your movement taken over by nuts.

The public face of BLM at its peak, for better or worse, featured a large number of nuts. Like your bro in Seattle there. Or those CHAZ people, also Seattle, who actually killed 3 black guys in as many weeks as part of their black lives matter protest. In the mainstream, anyone who acknowledged black-on-black crime or said that rioting might be a bad PR look was called a fifth column or concern troll.

Mob mentality is a thing, I'm not perfect either but a lot of people got carried away.

[burnished]

The point I was making is that my "bro" wasn't part of BLM, but was merrily lumped in by media services that were actively lying during the protests in Seattle.

And yeah, the people who said that about protesting were concern trolls. There was a lot of police on protestor violence, and there was an honestly alarming amount of lies spread in news during that time. I'm talking about misreporting of events I was present for, or was actively watching live feeds of.

[refenestrator]

He was at a BLM protest and lit up that cop car. I checked, his quote was "I got carried away".

No comment on CHAZ killing 3 black dudes? Is that a pro or anti 'black lives matter' action?

You can define your personal boundary for who "counts" and not, have it include all the peaceful people and none of the bad/unwise people, and call everyone who disagrees a concern troll.. and hey, you'll be right, according to you.

[burnished]

Nope, no comment because I don't know what you're talking about. I spent some time reflecting on this little interaction and it really reminded me of when it was going on. I got a call from my grandmother to watch out because she had heard about some really ugly things and these Seattle riots, and was I staying safe? And it was bizarre, because the places she was describing were places I had been, and I had zero evidence for anything she described. It was like she was living in a reality where I was under siege while I was going to the protests that she was convinced were violent riots. Because that's how they were being reported.

Which brings me to talking to you. You've got this world view I can't validate but I suspect was informed by broadcasts that at the time I materially disagreed with, due to them being materially incorrect. You're characterizing the activity as a riot and talking about CHAZ like you know what it was like, but you don't. If you did you'd probably mention the fucking stupid garden people put in that immediately stopped being maintained, or the teargas fired at peaceful protesters, or the mayor promising that wouldn't happen anymore and that promise being broken less than twelve hours later, or that a big part of what was going on was that Seattle was trying to remove federal oversight in the form of the consent decree - Seattle has a pretty ugly history with its police, and a consent decree is a no fault agreement to oversight. Oh or the person who tried being a vigilante peace-keeper, how that didn't go over well, and ended in tears and hugs or any of the other bizarre events.

And that person - they weren't involved with BLM, thats the point. They came in from out of state and took advantage of some chaos. They were not ideologically involved. This is not a BLM equivalent of right-wing terror attacks. The rhetoric in the streets was to be on the lookout for agent provocateurs trying to stir this into violence, that anyone being violent or destructive was actively working against any kind of social reform or change.

[refenestrator]

You could just Google 'chaz shooting'.

It sounds like you see this as a tribal issue. Where it's your tribe vs the other tribe and saying something like "it got out of hand at times" would be conceding ground.

Consider the current moment where critical race theory has now been weaponized back against liberals and used to delegitimize legitimate points and problems we have. Maybe this could have been avoided if the movement had told Robin DiAngelo to shut up and stop giving them ammo. Instead they tried to 'cancel' anyone who saw this coming a year out, like Lee Fang or David Shor.

You happy with the results? Was it worth it? Where are the wins?