The Demands of #BlackLivesMatter

so recently the mainstream media has been reporting on a websites called the movement for black lives which is an organization that's made up of 28 regional member black lives matter groups and endorsed by dozens of other activist organizations they say that the movement for black lives policy table is engaged in a year-long process of convening local and national groups to create a united front the results of our collective efforts is this platform in addition to the groups in the United Front we have also engaged our people we have received feedback from hundreds of people through surveys national calls organizational membership engaged dozens of other organizations researchers and individuals for their insights and expertise to begin developing a framework for shared policy priorities it does not include every policy black people should be working on but elevates those for which there is shared energy and action in this political moment the movement for black lives website hosts a list of demands that I think are going to be the closest that we can get from black lives matter to an official list of demands it seems to be widely endorsed in the product of many hands and it is written in a reasonably credible sounding way most of the demands don't make an appeal to pathos but actually give a logical and fact-based reason for why the demand is being made however there are times when the arguments are weakest and less clinical and more emotive languages used to make the points they say that their hope is that this is both an articulation of our collective aspirations as well as a document that provides tangible resources of the groups and individuals doing the work we recognize that some of the demands in this document will not happen today but we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation I find the term liberation very interesting here as if they are talking from a position of bondage and of course this attitude pervades the entire document and I wouldn't normally point this out except this will become an important thing to remember when dealing with some of the demands because some of them go directly against this principle so they describe the website as a platform and they describe it like this black humanity and dignity requires black political will and power despite constant exploitation and perpetual oppression black people have bravely and brilliantly been the driving force pushing the u.s. towards the ideals it articulates but has never achieved in recent years we have taken to the streets launched massive campaigns and impacted elections but our elected leaders have failed to address the legitimate demands of our movement we can no longer wait the capitalization on black denotes the reference to the social construction of blackness dichotomous with whiteness is that these concepts are social constructs that allows a black president to become the face of a white supremacy and guilt-ridden White's to supports black lives matter the conflict is not racial in nature it's entirely ideological and the sides are old enemies under new names blackness and whiteness essentially mean communism and liberalism at their most fundamental this is a conflict of principles that has been racialized by academics and filtered down to black communities through various social justice courses in community colleges and universities they say in response to the sustained and increasingly visible violence against black communities in the US and globally a collective of more than 50 organizations representing thousands of black people from across the country have come together with renewed energy and purpose to articulate a common vision and agenda we are a collective that centers and is rooted in black communities but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people collective liberation will be a product of all our work and this of course is the root of the schism between the two ideologies one is individualist and the other is collectivist and of course this is fully intersectional they say we believe in elevating the experiences and leadership of the most marginalized black people including but not limited to those four women queer trans Femmes gender non-conforming Muslim formally and currently incarcerated cash poor and working-class differently-abled undocumented and immigrant we are intentional about amplifying the particular experience of state and gendered violence that black queer trans gender non-conforming women and intersex people face there can be no liberation for all black people if we do not Center and fight for those who have been marginalized it is our hope that working together to create an amplifier shared agenda we can continue to move towards a world in which the full humanity and dignity of all people is recognized this paragraph is very carefully constructed and there's actually a tour de force in how to ensure there is very little to no blowback from what you're saying from your fellow progressives who carefully police it out the speech looking for evidence of marginalization of themselves with which to attack the speaker it's very difficult to use their rules to attack the people who have written this paragraph they continue to say we have created this platform to articulate and support the ambitions and work of black people note the capitalization we also seek to intervene in the current political climate and assert a clear vision particularly for those who claim to be our allies of the world we want them to help us create we reject false solutions and believe we can achieve a complete transformation of the current systems so this is an entirely radical movement it seeks to completely overthrow the system and replace it with a new and completely different system and this is justified using rhetoric they say which place profit over people and make it impossible for many of us to breathe this is what I meant when I said emotive language does creep in for much of it it is quite specific and then you get these kind of rhetorical generalities that are meant to make you feel sorry for them they demonstrate my points in the next paragraph together we demand an end to the wars against black people we demand that the government repair the harms that have been done to black communities in the form of reparations and targeted long-term investments we also demand a defunding of the systems and institutions that criminalize and caged us this document articulates our vision of a fundamentally different world however we recognize the need to include policies that address the immediate suffering of black people these policies while less transformational are necessary to address the current material conditions of our people and will better equip us to win the world we demand and deserve the demands come in six categories that can be divided into two types social and economic they don't seem to be in any particular order of importance I'm just going to arrange them by group and then address them one at a time so the first is end the war on black people which is of course purely rhetorical they say we demand an end to the war against black people since this country's inception there have been named and unnamed wars on our communities we demand an end to the criminalization incarceration and killing of our people this is another sentence that demonstrates how we know they're talking about an ideological group rather than the people involved because if you were to ask them in person do you agree that murderers should be not free if they are black I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they will say no so that's obviously you don't think a murderer should be let go to murder again however when they say black in this context they are I think using it to mean political prisoner so when they say this includes an immediate end to the criminalization and dehumanization of black youth all across areas of society including but not limited to our nation's justice and education systems social service agencies and the media and pop culture I I can only assume that they're thinking of this in political terms they're clearly not thinking of this in terms of individuals violating laws with which they themselves agree of course I could be wrong and they could mean that literally black people simply shouldn't be punished for their own actions but either way this is going to be the result of this demand there will be people who commit various offenses and the punishment for these offenses will be determined by the color of a person's skin with people who are white being sent to jail as usual presumably and people who are black having the privilege of not they link to an explanation that is loaded with weasel words across the country black children attend under-resourced schools where they are often pushed off of an academic track and onto the tracked prison zero-tolerance policies a combination of exclusionary disciplinary policies and school based arrests are often the first stop along a school to Prison Pipeline and play a key role in pushing students out of the school system and funneling them into jails and prisons which I'm sure is true but it ignores the context of the event they aren't complaining that these students being unjustly arrested therefore it's perfectly reasonable for me to conclude that these people being arrested because they have committed a crime each year more than 3 million students are suspended from school often for vague and subjective infractions such as willful defiance and disrespect but these are actually not vague terms it's all willful defiance is a very specific term and disrespect also speaks to a specific code of conduct that these students were not respecting I would expect that if we look into each individual case where a student has been suspended from school it's been done with good reason and they say this amounts to countless hours of lost instructional time as a result black students are denied an opportunity to learn and punished for routine child and adolescent behaviors that their white peers are all too often not disciplined for at all again nothing but weasel words and no specifics for black youth the impact of exclusionary school discipline is far-reaching disengaging them from academic and developmental opportunities increasing the likelihood that they will be incarcerated later on in life yes this is true these things will be the case but who is responsible for ensuring these students not only go to school but act respectfully in the school the answer is of course the parents and with over half of black families not having a father in the house the answer is increasingly the mother they say tens of thousands of youth under the age of 21 are currently incarcerated for offenses ranging from truancy to more serious charges every crime bill passed by Congress out in the 1980s and 1990s included new federal laws against juvenile crimes and increased penalties against children similar trends can be seen throughout state legislation I think there was probably a very good reason for this and it looks like these laws may have been working broadly speaking in 1980 onwards the rates of black marriage began to fall large numbers of them never marrying at all however this doesn't mean they weren't still having children and about a decade later there's a dramatic spike in violent crimes most notably homicides specifically for black males whereas for black men over 25 who had enjoyed a higher rate of marriage between their parents than white people had the rate at which they murder is on the decline along with the rest of society and I say these laws might be necessary because after the huge increase in the 80s and 90s there was a dramatic drop in black crime in the late 90s early 2000s which may well be the result of these laws I understand that correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation but in this case I think what we are seeing is a causal effect of the breakdown of the nuclear family in black communities I think this is a case of cause and effect because I was a young man once I remember what it was like not having my father around when he went to Iraq to serve for six months or to the Falkland Islands I remember getting out of control and then that behavior instantly correcting itself the moment he returned I think young men need their fathers around to control their behavior and if I'm right then black lives matter themselves agree with me as they say in the next sentence there is mounting research that children under the age of 23 do not have fully developed brains now I don't know whether that's true but I've never considered a 22 year old a child I find it very telling that this isn't an argument that they would go with because if you've seen any of the videos of black lives matter in the amount of college activity that they have there are so many people under the age of 23 supporting this and by making this demand they are willingly infantilizing themselves and if these people are lacking the security of a father figure in their life then unfortunately these laws will probably need to remain otherwise we're just surely going to see a return to the problems of the 80s and 90s which is why these laws were brought in in the first place none of this addresses the root of the problem which appears to be the breakdown of the black family I'll leave a link in the description to a video I've done with more information about this and they know this is the problem as well because they say the most humane cheapest and cost effective way to response juvenile crime is not incarceration but programs and investments that strengthen families increase stability and provide access to education and employment opportunities they ignore that these punishments are also clearly a deterrent to others to prevent crime from being committed in the first place but more importantly they want to create dependency through programs and investments honestly I don't think relaxing the laws on juvenile crime and then incentivizing people to not marry is the solution to the problem of violence in the black community especially when as they say violence becomes the source of future poverty when they say it permanently disadvantages them with a criminal record making finding a job difficult the second point is an end to capital punishment which I agree with the third point is an end to money bail mandatory fines fees caught surcharges and defendant funded court proceedings which has poses what one would expect to find in a list of demands from an impoverished crime wracked community honestly I don't know enough about monetary bail to make comments on it but it doesn't surprise me that it's here point number four is an end to the use of past criminal history to determine eligibility for housing education licenses voting loans employment and other services and needs there is an ongoing theme of abdication of responsibility in this document and I think we may have hit a high-water mark quite early this is absurd suggesting that a person's past behavior shouldn't be held against them when attempting to determine future behavior for example in the case of buying gun licenses getting loans or employing someone is just ridiculous and again trying to abdicate from the consequences of one's own actions the five is an end to the war on black immigrants but I don't know anything about this so I'm going to skip past is number six is an end to the war on black trans queer and gender non-conforming people including their addition to anti-discrimination civil rights protections to ensure they have full access to health employment health housing and education I don't see what's wrong with the default liberal position on this issue why doesn't every single individual simply have exactly the same rights so then these people will have the same rights as straight white males number seven is an end to mass surveillance of black communities and the end to the use of technologies that criminalize and I'll get our communities including and this is the interesting bit IMSI catchers drones body cameras and predictive policing software I mean maybe I can understand the rest of them but body cameras on police seems like an awfully beneficial thing to have if you're a member of the black community or anyone really and you're interested in keeping police accountable for their actions personally I think every police officer should have a body camera on him number eight and nine are the demilitarization of law enforcement and the end to the privatization of police prisons jails probation parole food and phone and I agree I think the privatization of these institutions creates a perverse set of incentives as you can see these examples are using reasonably grounded terminology and are at least making an actual argument within a logical framework then we hit number ten until we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people we demand an immediate changing conditions and an end to public jails detention centers youth facilities and prisons as we know them this includes the end of solitary confinement the end of shackling pregnant people access to quality health care effective measures to address the needs of our youth queer gender non-conforming and trans families this demand is couched in a rhetorical emotive and utopian idea that we will end up being able to end public jails at some point and not not even talking about the rest this is simply never going to happen especially not with the rates of criminality we see in the communities where they're asking for it to happen the next and thankfully far shorter subject is community control three demands are direct democratic community control of local state and federal law enforcement agencies ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers determined disciplinary action control budgets and policies and subpoena relevant agency information I agree with more transparency but I don't think direct community control over these institutions is a good idea transparency would create accountability so being able to subpoena relevant information I think is important but being able to control budgets and Paula and then determine disciplinary action it strikes me as mob justice I think I would much prefer a trial by jury or a tribunal that is officially sanctioned with a code of laws and ethics honestly I think this is totally unworkable in reality and you wouldn't end up with a functioning police force number two is an end to the privatization of Education and real community control by parents students and community members of schools including democratic school boards and community control of curriculum hiring and firing and discipline policies again same problem and again the same problem with participatory budgeting at the local state and federal level I I agree with transparency because you can use transparency to hold these institutions to their own standards but I don't agree that Joe public should be one running them we then come to political power now you may think that's an odd thing to demand when you have a black president of head of state but remember we are talking about blackness as an ideology and Obama is not a follower of the ideology of blackness we demand independent black with a capital B political power and a black self-determination in all areas of society we envision a remaking of the current US political system in order to create a real democracy where black people and all marginalized people can effectively exercise full political power I can't say I'm surprised that ideologues would demand power for their ideology but I don't think it should simply be given to them especially given with what they're saying they're going to do with it they demand an end to the criminalization of black political activity including the immediate release of all political prisoners and the end of repression of political parties imagine if you asked and they give you examples like the arrest of DRA mackensen and the arrest of Jonathan Butler but these people weren't arrested for their political views they were arrested for their actions which they did to gain awareness raise awareness of their political views and honestly it really looks like there's an awful lot of forbearance shown black lives matter by the authorities number two is the public financing of elections and the end of money controlling politics through ending super PACs and unchecked corporate donations now I think that's a fantastic idea I also think it's a insanely pie-in-the-sky idea that's not going to happen anytime soon and I think packaging it with the overthrow of Western liberalism makes it even less likely to happen I really do think this would help but I don't think catching it in this movement is the way to make it happen demand three is election protection electoral expansion and the right to vote for all people including full access guarantees and protections of the right to vote for all people for a universal voter registration automatic voter registration pre-registration for 16 year olds same-day voter registration voting day holidays enfranchisement of formerly and presently incarcerated people local and state resident voting for undocumented people and they ban on any disenfranchisement laws now I do think that all citizens should have the right to vote barring any extraneous circumstances that one would assume are quite stringent and difficult to meet in order to minimize any kind of abuse of these categories but this is awfully authoritarian in my opinion forcing people to register to vote I mean there should be the choice of not having to register to vote if you don't want to and I don't agree that undocumented people should be able to vote in your elections it undermines the very concept of citizenship one which I actually think is a good idea number four is full access to technology including net neutrality and universal access to the internet without discrimination and full representation for all honestly I'm a bit unsure about this I mean I agree with net neutrality but universal access to the Internet isn't something the government ensures it's a private service you purchase from private companies and full representation for all is particularly nebulous and notice that these demands are universal in nature until 0.5 protection and increased funding for black institutions including historically black colleges and universities black media and cultural political and social formations this is creating privilege when you want everyone to have the same except for a few people who get more that is a privileged class we now move to the three economic categories of demands beginning with the demand for communism under economic justice at least according for their opening preamble we demand economic justice for all on the reconstruction of the economy to ensure black communities have collective ownership not merely access now this could be simply a rhetorical flourish and it could be that they don't really understand what they're asking for with this but it sounds as if they are arguing against individual ownership although they don't frame this in explicitly Marxist terms they seem to be advocating for essentially the same thing number one a progressive restructuring of tax codes of the local state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth this I can agree with in the United States the wealthiest are taxed at a lower rate than the poorest which i think is absurd I do agree that those benefiting most from society should pay back more into it and to federal and state to job programs that specifically talent the most economically marginalized black people not just people black people and compensation for those involved with the care economy job programs must provide a living wage insert encourage support for local workers centers unions and black owned businesses which are accountable to the community so it seems that they're asking the government to create jobs for poor black people to provide them with a living wage this is obviously going to create a direct dependency on the government which seems completely out of line with their desire for the liberation not only now can you imagine the [ __ ] jobs the government is going to make up for the poorest black people to do to get this living wage you will find these poor by people doing the worst and lowest paid jobs and being expected to thank the government for the privilege number three a right to restored land clean air clean water and housing and the end to exploitive privatization natural resources including land and water as I said this is where it becomes communistic the end to privatization and the exploit sment of private property by corporations or people is what the very crux of communism is about they say we see democratic control of how resources are preserved using distributed and do so while honoring and respecting the rights for indigenous family but I don't want these people having control over the resources of other people each individual should have control over their own resources and ownership of land and private property is how we do that at least in a liberal society number four is the right for workers to organize in public and private sectors especially an on-demand economy jobs and I agree I think workers should be able to unionize to preserve their rights number five is restore the glass-steagall Act to break up the large banks and call for National Credit Union Administration and the u.s. departments of Treasury to change policies and practices around regulation reporting consolidation to allow for the continuation and creation of black banks small and Community Development credit unions insurance companies and other financial institutions so to create a separate black economy and six and enter the trans-pacific partnership and a renegotiation of old trade agreements to prioritize the interests of workers and communities and again while I think that's actually quite a good idea or probably is at least conceptually I don't think it's ever going to happen in a framework like this number seven through tax incentives loans and other government directed resources support the development of cooperative or social economy networks to help facilitate trade across and in black communities globally all aid in the form of grants loans or contracts to help facilitate this must go to black LED or black supported networks and organizations as defined by the communities and the number-8 financial support of black alternative institutions including policy that subsidizes and offers low-interest interest-free or federally guaranteed low-interest loans to promote the development of cooperatives food residential etc land Trust's and culturally responsive health infrastructures that serve the collective needs of our communities so no big deal they're just asking the government to give black communities an unspecified amount of money in the form of grants low interest or interest-free loans and subsidies they haven't got any listed barriers to entry for this other than be black the next section is invest we demand investments in the education health and safety of black people instead of investments in the criminalizing caging and harming of black people sounds like they're repeating themselves here some what we want investments in black communities determined by black communities and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons fossil fuels police surveillance and exploitative corporations honestly it sounds like they're trying to set up their own independent sovereign nation and have it funded by the United States one reallocation of funds at the federal state and local level from policing and incarceration to long-term safety strategies such as education local restorative justice services and employment programs which is amazing this is reach the point where they're not even going to address the incidence of crime as they are happening I mean how exactly is any kind of justice it's supposed to be delivered without the state having an enforcement arm to do it who's going to stop the gang members shooting each other all the people holding a school hostage or whatever the whatever the situation is who's going to defuse that to bring the people perpetrating it to justice number two is the retroactive decriminalization and immediate release and record expungement of all drug related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the war on drugs and criminalization of prostitution including a reinvestment of the resulting savings and revenue into restorative services mental health services job programs and other programs supporting those impacted by the sex and drug trade I agree that prohibition doesn't work and the decriminalization of drugs and the release of offenders with drug related offenses is something that probably should be done and I agree that having a number of services available to help reduce recidivism is indeed a very vital thing in these communities however I just can't see how removing the police from the equation is going to help this issue I don't see how you're going to get from criminal to restorative justice without a law enforcement mechanism number three real meaningful and equitable versal healthcare the guarantees proximity to never I've comprehensive health centers culturally competent services for all people specific services for queer gender non-conforming and trans people full bodily autonomy full reproductive services mental health services paid parental leave and comprehensive quality child and elder care well I agree that there should be universal health care and I don't really object to the rest but I'm not sure what they mean by paid parental leave do they mean maternity leave because this is again one thing the United States is lacking that almost every other Western nation has number four is a constitutional right at the state and federal level to a fully funded education which includes a clear articulation of the rights to a free education for all special protections for queer and trans students wraparound services social workers free health services a curriculum that acknowledges and addresses students material and cultural needs physical activity and recreation high-quality food free daycare and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure or arrest I am of course in opposition to special protections for queer and trans students while they enjoy the same rights as everyone else but the only thing I really find objection about all this is not that it's in some way a liberal or is going to cause problems down the road or anything like that it's more how mollycoddling it is how condescending and parental this sounds and I suppose if you've defined our child as anyone under the age of 23 then he would number five a divestment from industrial multinational use of fossil fuels and investment in community-based sustainable energy solutions yet good luck with that a cut in military expenditures and a reallocation of those funds to invest in domestic infrastructure and community well-being again good luck the sixth and final category of demands is reparations so my view on the subject of reparations can be summed up as this if you have been enslaved or mistreated or someway oppressed by someone else then yes there's every chance that they do owe you some kind of financial compensation if this has not happened directly to you as an individual you were entitled to nothing especially if your quote unquote oppression was self inflicted by you for example committing a crime so they're saying we demand reparations for past and continuing harms the government responsible corporations and other institutions who have profited off the harm they've inflicted on black people from colonialism through to slavery through food and housing redlining mass incarceration and surveillance must repair the harm done there are obviously no black people alive today who suffered from colonialism or slavery so frankly in my opinion those are off the table mass incarceration and surveillance well what damage has surveillance done and mass incarceration honestly I think is something black people are doing to themselves so number one reparations for the systemic denial of access to high-quality educational opportunities in the form of full and free access for all black people including undocumented and currently informally incarcerated people and of course wealthy well-educated black people to lifetime education including free access and open admissions to public community colleges and universities technical education educational support programs retroactive forgiveness of student loans and support for lifetime learning programs personally I would like to know how exactly they calculated that this is the appropriate amount of reparations for the circumstance because how they quantifying the amount of money required to provide all of this and this would indeed be a privilege no one else not even white people in America enjoy these kind of privileges number two reparations for the continued divestment from discrimination toward and exploitation of our communities in the form of a guaranteed minimum livable income for all black people with clearly articulated corporate regulations are we talking about some kind of negative income tax here because if it's for all black people that would presumably include the unemployed ones as well so who is employing them whose hanging them it seems like you're just asking for money from the government number three reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism slavery food apartheid housing discrimination and racialized capitalism in the form of corporate and government reparations focused on healing ongoing physical and mental trauma and ensuring our access and control of food sources housing and land that's just insane just look give us everything we want let us control all of it you just foot the bill it's an absurd overreach to request this not only do I think this is not going to solve the emotional problems that are the cause of the life circumstances of the black people we are talking about here hashtag not all but some clearly through bad parenting when they were growing up but I think it's going to come with a whole host of new problems honestly I think anyone who is given these kind of privileges is going to turn into a spoiled brat regardless of who they're black or white or Mexican or whatever the race is inconsequential anyone who gets to live like a king with no responsibilities on someone else's money is going to turn into a massively entitled child especially and probably a violent and criminal one if there are no punishments or deterrence for committing a crime number four reparations for the cultural and educational exploitation erasure and extraction of our communities in the form of mandated public school curriculums that critically examine the political economic and social impacts of colonialism and slavery and funding to support to build preserve and restore cultural assets and sacred sites to ensure the recognition and honoring of our collective struggles and triumphs so they effectively wants to colonize the educational system so they can teach everyone to think like them honestly I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this demand either because anyone who's interested in propagating an ideology is going to most successful when they can indoctrinate children that's how it's going to be most deeply embedded and longest lasting and most uncritically internalized number five legislation at the federal and state level that requires the United States to acknowledge the lasting impacts of slavery establish an executor plan to address those impacts this includes the immediate passage of HR 14 the Commission to study reparation proposals from African Americans Act or subsequent versions which call for reparations remedies well after seeing the example of Germany and the terrible guilts they have from the Nazi regime I really think this is a bad idea this is just going to institutionalize white guilt so they are what is effectively the official demands of black lives matter couched in this collection are some very reasonable and some very necessary ideas that would definitely help on a broader scale not just the black community but all of society in general however the few reasonable ideas are packaged with dozens of absurd and illiberal ideas to radically reform society and frankly make its almost unrecognizable and to create a specific privileged racial hierarchy to the deliberate exclusion of one specific racial group that is expected to pay for this I can't imagine a more blatant system of racial privilege and I think that they've asked for this because this is what they think white people have in the United States needless to say not only do I think this is unworkable and that it's going to create a worse situation than already exists not only for black people but for white people as well and it's informed by a deep neurosis caused by a victim complex because I think it's very easy to other white people and just point the finger and say they did it the white supremacist capitalist colonizers did this when in reality this isn't the result of systemic oppression this is the result of many individual choices and the people who have to live with those choices and let's be honest and be fair here the people living with these choices are not always the people making them in many ways I think this is a reflection of the young black community being angry at the life choices of their parents

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Keywords: funny, stupid, feminism, mra, news, comedy, politics, hilarious

Id: fg0rTlq0u7A

Length: 38min 35sec (2315 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2016