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The BLM organization and the movement are two different things. You’d be lucky to randomly be able to find a single black person who knows any of the founders

The BLM organization and the movement are two different things. You’d be lucky to randomly be able to find a single black person who knows any of the founders of the org or any of their principles except to reduce police brutality.

arp242 6y ago
Yes, and people keep saying this, and people keep being confused by this. I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no? I don't care much for BLM not because I don't care about their goals, but because I don't think it's very effective for a number of reasons. Yet every time I raise this it's either dismissed like your comment does, or met with a surprising amount of hostility. Aren't conversations on how to best affect these kind of changes super-duper important? It appears not, and it seems BLM has become the goal, rather than the vehicle to get at the goal.
- ryanbrunner 5y ago
  Popular movements almost never are the ones to actually institute policy, only influence it, so there's not really much advantage to finding compromise at the level of activism. It's not BLM or the Defund movements job to write legislation that actually achieves their goals, and there's almost no chance what they argue for won't be watered down anyway. It's best to think of any popular movement as directional - for sure there are individual people in the Defund movement calling for 100% abolition, and others calling for demilitarization, or redirecting of some funding - as of right now, they want the same thing as far as first steps go. If they're successful in redirecting some funding away from police, the non-abolish crowd will move away from the movement and they'll become increasingly irrelevant when it's 10 anarchists arguing for no police instead of massive protests.
- kenjackson 5y ago
  > I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no? Again, you're confusing an organization with the movement. The organization has only minor impact on the actual movement. It's like saying that a group named "Democracy for America" reflected what people in the US believed about Democracy. > Aren't conversations on how to best affect these kind of changes super-duper important? It appears not, and it seems BLM has become the goal, rather than the vehicle to get at the goal. I support BLM, but I'm not sure I support the goals of the BLM org. Mostly because I barely know them (I realize I could just go to their webpage and read them). I do know what most people I associate believe BLM means though. Now this does mean there is a problem in that different people have different interpretations of it. But honestly this is always the case for any type of social movement. There's a base for the support, and then a bunch of splinter ideologies.

arp242 6y ago

Yes, and people keep saying this, and people keep being confused by this. I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no? I don't care much for BLM not because I don't care about their goals, but because I don't think it's very effective for a number of reasons. Yet every time I raise this it's either dismissed like your comment does, or met with a surprising amount of hostility. Aren't conversations on how to best affect these kind of changes super-duper important? It appears not, and it seems BLM has become the goal, rather than the vehicle to get at the goal.

ryanbrunner 5y ago
Popular movements almost never are the ones to actually institute policy, only influence it, so there's not really much advantage to finding compromise at the level of activism. It's not BLM or the Defund movements job to write legislation that actually achieves their goals, and there's almost no chance what they argue for won't be watered down anyway. It's best to think of any popular movement as directional - for sure there are individual people in the Defund movement calling for 100% abolition, and others calling for demilitarization, or redirecting of some funding - as of right now, they want the same thing as far as first steps go. If they're successful in redirecting some funding away from police, the non-abolish crowd will move away from the movement and they'll become increasingly irrelevant when it's 10 anarchists arguing for no police instead of massive protests.
kenjackson 5y ago
> I don't understand why people are so resistant, or even outright hostile, in making the social justice movement (including the sentiments BLM expresses) more effective. If you truly care about social justice then being as effective as possible should be the #1 priority, no? Again, you're confusing an organization with the movement. The organization has only minor impact on the actual movement. It's like saying that a group named "Democracy for America" reflected what people in the US believed about Democracy. > Aren't conversations on how to best affect these kind of changes super-duper important? It appears not, and it seems BLM has become the goal, rather than the vehicle to get at the goal. I support BLM, but I'm not sure I support the goals of the BLM org. Mostly because I barely know them (I realize I could just go to their webpage and read them). I do know what most people I associate believe BLM means though. Now this does mean there is a problem in that different people have different interpretations of it. But honestly this is always the case for any type of social movement. There's a base for the support, and then a bunch of splinter ideologies.