Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

First published by the Washington Examiner Sept. 3.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been feted repeatedly at the White House and honored at the Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton has incorporated its claims about racist, homicidal cops into her presidential campaign pitch.

This summers assassinations of police officers havent slowed the anti-cop demonstrations or diminished the virulent hatred directed at cops during those protests.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refuses to stand for the national anthem to protest the alleged oppression of blacks, while pop singer Beyonc has made the Black Lives Matter movement the focal point of her performances.

Yet the Black Lives Matter movement is based on a lie. The idea that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of racially driven police shootings is false and dangerously so.

The facts are these: Last year, the police shot 990 people, the vast majority armed or violently resisting arrest, according to the Washington Posts database of fatal police shootings. Whites made up 49.9 percent of those victims, blacks 26 percent. That proportion of black victims is lower than what the black violent crime rate would predict.

Blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in Americas 75 largest counties in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants and 45 percent of all assault defendants, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, even though blacks comprise only 15 percent of the population in those counties.

In New York City, where blacks make up 23 percent of the citys population, blacks commit three-quarters of all shootings and 70 percent of all robberies, according to victims and witnesses in their reports to the NYPD. Whites, by contrast, commit less than 2 percent of all shootings and 4 percent of all robberies, though they are nearly 34 percent of the citys population.

In Chicago, 80 percent of all known murder suspects in 2015 were black, as were 80 percent of all known nonfatal shooting suspects, though theyre a little less than a third of the population. Whites made up 0.9 percent of known murder suspects in Chicago in 2015 and 1.4 percent of known nonfatal shooting suspects, though they are about a third of the citys residents.

Gang shootings occur almost exclusively in minority areas. Police use of force is most likely in confrontations with violent and resisting criminals, and those confrontations happen disproportionately in minority communities.

But the Black Lives Matter narrative has nevertheless had an enormous effect on policing and public safety, despite its mendacity. Gun-related murders of officers are up 52 percent this year through Aug. 30 compared to last year. The cop assassinations are only a more extreme version of the Black Lives Matter-inspired hatred that officers working in urban areas encounter on a daily basis.

Officers are routinely surrounded by hostile, jeering crowds when they try to conduct a street investigation or make an arrest. Resistance to arrest is up, officers report. Cops have been repeatedly told by President Obama and the media that pedestrian stops and public order enforcement are racist. In consequence, they are doing less of those discretionary activities in high-crime minority communities.

The result? Violent crime is rising in cities with large black populations. Homicides in 2015 rose anywhere from 54 percent in Washington, DC, to 90 percent in Cleveland. In the nations 56 largest cities, homicides rose 17 percent in 2015, a nearly unprecedented one-year spike. In the first half of 2016, homicides in 51 large cities were up another 15 percent compared to the same period last year.

The carnage has continued this year. In Chicago alone, at least 15 children under the age of 12 have been shot in the first seven months of 2016, including a 3-year-old boy who is now paralyzed for life following a Fathers Day drive-by shooting. While the world knows Michael Brown, whose fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., spurred Black Lives Matter, few people outside these childrens immediate communities know their names. Black Lives Matter activists have organized no protests to stigmatize their assailants.

For the past two decades, the country has been talking about phantom police racism in order to avoid talking about a more uncomfortable truth: black crime. But in the era of data-driven law enforcement, policing is simply a function of crime. The best way to lower police-civilian contacts in inner-city neighborhoods would be for children to be raised by their mother and their father in order to radically lower the crime rate there.

Heres a broader look at violent crime across the country:

Heather Mac Donald is the author of the newly released The War on Cops.

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The lies told by the Black Lives Matter movement

Donald Trump | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called New York Citys decision to paint "Black Lives Matter" on Fifth Avenue a "symbol of hate," rebuking his hometown's embrace of a rallying cry that has stirred nationwide protests against racism.

The presidents latest comments attacking the Black Lives Matter movement drew swift condemnation from New York City police reform groups.

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Trump also criticized cuts to the citys police department and wrote on Twitter that Mayor Bill de Blasios decision to paint Black Lives Matter on the street outside Trump Tower is denigrating this luxury Avenue.

This will further antagonize New Yorks Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the horrible BLM chant, Pigs In A Blanket, Fry Em Like Bacon, Trump wrote. Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, wont let this symbol of hate be affixed to New Yorks greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!

De Blasio told MSNBC earlier Wednesday morning that the street painting would be completed outside Trump Tower in a matter of days. The mayor's office ordered the letters painted on Fifth Avenue last week.

"Obviously we want the president to hear it because he's never shown respect for those three words, de Blasio said. When he hears Black Lives Matter, he presents a horrible negative reality of something that doesn't exist, and he misses the underlying meaning that we're saying we have to honor the role of African Americans in our history and our society."

Activists said Trump's tweet distracted from efforts to combat police brutality.

The only symbol of hate is President Trump. This is just his latest attempt to brazenly push hate and try to divert our attention from the urgent civil rights issues facing our communities, from violent policing to the pandemic, Carolyn Martinez-Class, a spokesperson for the New York City organization Communities United for Police Reform, said in a statement to POLITICO.

The painting of Black Lives Matter on Fifth Avenue follows the passing of the citys budget in the early hours of Wednesday morning. While the $88.19 billion budget cuts funding to the police department, reform activists were unhappy and said the reductions did not go far enough in reducing the NYPDs role in the city.

Martinez-Class called on the mayor to go beyond performative gestures of support and actually make changes to abusive, racist policing in New York City to show that Black lives really matter to him.

In the weeks since the police killing of George Floyd ignited mass demonstrations opposing police violence, Trump has not adopted the message of Black Lives Matter protesters.

In mid-June, he told Fox News that he thought many demonstrators who took to the streets were unaware what they were protesting for. Trump has not said the words black lives matter, and has instead focused on defending law enforcement from accusations of systemic racism.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered Black Lives Matter to be painted near the White House in June, as well as ordering a nearby street to be renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in a rebuke to the president. That move was panned by some activists who characterized as an empty gesture without tangible steps to reduce police funding.

Erin Durkin contributed to this report.

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Trump: Black Lives Matter is a 'symbol of hate' - Politico

Particularly after President Obama was elected, everybody assumed other than those in the Black community that racism was toast. We elected a Black president, which was phenomenal, but what ended up happening was that those views that existed became magnified. And it made it easy for a candidate like Trump to galvanize all that energy, and it emerged in a lot of residual racism that just has never been resolved.

When you add the economic issues that existed in the nation then and now, now even worse all of that contributes to what might be, I dont like to use this term, but maybe it was a perfect storm. Because in storms, all kinds of things can happen.

There is a tendency to sanitize social movements in retrospect, to make them seem less confrontational and controversial than they were. Do you see parallels between how your father was regarded during his lifetime and how Black Lives Matter is regarded today?

Theres always going to be a group that attempts to demonize that which is being done, and for their own purposes not because its right, good or just, but just because they want to foster a different position. Dad totally used the method of nonviolence, and he was consistently criticized. If you go back and look at polling data at the time he was killed, he was a marked person.

I think the difference today is, because of what we saw in the murder of George Floyd, the overwhelming majority of Americans saw this as unjust and are understanding now that Black Lives Matter isnt saying that other lives dont matter. When Black people are consistently killed, even children like Tamir Rice I mean, a kid what is the world coming to? This is what happens over and over and over to Black people.

I dont know if we as a nation have had on blinders and all of a sudden the veil was lifted, or if the incidents were not always fully captured on video and there were always some questions.

The thing with this incident is that he was not able to move, so there was no need to use excessive force, and people see that. Theres no question about this man. He was asking for help over and over and over again. He called for his mom. Everyone can empathize with what happened and see the wrongness in what happened, and now maybe realize that this is a problem that has been going on for a while.

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Martin Luther King III on a Pivotal Wave of Black Lives Matter Protests - The New York Times

Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar, here in July 2019, tells NPR the popular neighborhood app is taking steps to address reports of racial profiling and censorship on the platform. Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar, here in July 2019, tells NPR the popular neighborhood app is taking steps to address reports of racial profiling and censorship on the platform.

As protests swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, there was a surge of reports that Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social media app, was censoring posts about Black Lives Matter and racial injustice.

In an interview with NPR, Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar said the company should have moved more quickly to protect posts related to Black Lives Matter by providing clearer guidance.

It "was really our fault" that moderators on forums across the country were deleting those posts, she said.

People of color have long accused Nextdoor, which serves as a community bulletin board in more than 265,000 neighborhoods across the U.S., of doing nothing about users' racist comments and complaints. But Nextdoor came under especially heavy criticism in May after the company voiced public support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Unpaid volunteers, known as leads, moderate posts on Nextdoor. Friar said they were deleting posts about Black Lives Matter because they were following outdated rules stating that national conversations have no place in neighborhood forums. Those guidelines have now been revised to state that conversations about racial inequality and Black Lives Matter are allowed on Nextdoor.

"We did not move quickly enough to tell our leads that topics like Black Lives Matter were local in terms of their relevance," Friar said. "A lot of our leads viewed Black Lives Matter as a national issue that was happening. And so, they removed that content, thinking it was consistent with our guidelines."

She added that the new rules make one thing clear: "Black Lives Matter is a local topic."

Friar said that Nextdoor is taking several more steps to improve the moderation of comments. It will soon offer unconscious bias training to all moderators. It will also launch a campaign to enlist more Black moderators. And it is ramping up efforts to detect and remove instances of racial profiling.

Apologizing, then asking for help from Black users

Neighbors take to Nextdoor to search for a local plumber, find a babysitter or sell a piece of furniture. But the app also has gained notoriety for spreading panicked messages that carry racist overtones.

In recent weeks, as the national conversation has centered on racial injustice, Black users have shared their stories of abandoning Nextdoor. One person wrote on Twitter that they stopped using it after reading repeated complaints about "large groups of black teens walking in their neighborhood." Another tweeted that their neighbors would write messages such as "Saw a black youth hanging out next door. Calling the cops."

Friar has apologized to Black users who have said they do not feel welcomed or respected on the app, vowing that racism has no place on Nextdoor.

She also announced that Nextdoor was cutting off a tie to law enforcement by ending a "forward to police" feature that allowed users to report observed activity to authorities.

But Friar told NPR that Nextdoor's efforts to combat racism on the app will go even further.

Nextdoor has enlisted Stanford University psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt to help slow down the speed of comments to tamp down on racial profiling, and it's working with her to make unconscious bias training available to hundreds of thousands of moderators.

It is a change that some Nextdoor users have demanded. In an online petition, they criticized the app's "murky" guidelines for content moderation, which users said led to abuse and the silencing of Black voices.

In response to Nextdoor's commitments, the Minneapolis-based group Neighbors for More Neighbors, which helped organize the petition, applauded the news but remained cautious.

"This is a positive step towards creating a true community forum where all people in our neighborhoods feel safe to participate," said activist Andrea Cervone with the group. "We will be keeping an eye on the company to make sure they continue forward and fulfill these public commitments."

Friar said Nextdoor has kicked off an effort to recruit more Black leads. This includes inviting especially active Black users to become moderators and starting outreach campaigns to encourage Black users to join the app.

"We recognize that is an underrepresented group on Nextdoor," Friar said of Black users. "There are others of course, but we want to start there because we really feel that the Black Lives Matter movement is so critical and important right now just to the health of our country."

Friar described Nextdoor's content moderation as "a layered cake," saying it involves local moderators, artificial intelligence tools and the company's human reviewers.

She said that the app's AI programs are being fine-tuned to better detect both explicit racism and posts that engage in racial profiling, or what she called "coded racist content." Nextdoor is now dedicating more staff to focus on attempting to ferret out racist content on the app.

"We're really working hard to make sure racist statements don't end up in the main news feed, making sure that users that don't act out the guidelines aren't on the platform anymore," Friar said. "It is our No. 1 priority at the company to make sure Nextdoor is not a platform where racism survives."

Confronting the 'Karen problem'

Though anecdotal evidence suggests Nextdoor's user base is largely white, Friar said the company has no internal metrics about the race of its users.

The app does not ask about race when users sign up, a decision that Friar said may soon change as the company examines how best to hold itself accountable in its push to diversify the platform.

"We are debating that," she said. "Because if we want to measure our success of being a diverse platform, perhaps that's something we do need to ask."

Critics of Nextdoor, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have drawn attention to the app's so-called Karen problem. It's a term that has come to describe a middle-aged, privileged white woman with racist habits, whether overt or subtle.

When asked if Nextdoor has a Karen problem, Friar deflected by saying any intolerance or racism on the app is a snapshot of issues plaguing the entire country, not problems confined to the neighborhood platform.

"Does the U.S. have that problem? Yes, it's out there," Friar said. "But I think we're working as hard as we can to make sure neighbors are doing right by each other, that they're being civil, being respectful and that they're not falling back to calling each other names but rather trying to deeply understand."

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Nextdoor Will Offer Bias Training To App Moderators To Combat Racism - NPR

Americans who were moved to fight for racial justice after George Floyds killing by police donated millions of dollars to the wrong Black Lives Matter foundation a cautionary tale for anyone who gives money to charity.

Donors tried to send an estimated $4.35 million to a California-based nonprofit called the Black Lives Matter Foundation, BuzzFeed News reported, but it has no connection with the Black Lives Matter social justice movement. Most of the money didnt end up at the Black Lives Matter Foundation, because officials at companies involved in raising the cash realized the mistake and froze the funding.

The incident shines a light on the growing role that third-party companies play in collecting and distributing the roughly $300 billion that individual Americans give to charity every year. Its also a reminder that it pays to do your own research about any organization you want to give money to, especially if youre donating through online fundraising platforms or employee-matching programs.

This unfortunate scenario demonstrates the importance of donor diligence, said Yael Fuchs, president of the National Association of State Charity Officials. She added, Many online platforms only require that entities raising money prove that they have 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, but having (c)(3) status does not mean that the organization is legitimate or well run.

Before you click on that donate button, heres how to avoid sending your money to the wrong group.

Donors sent money to the Black Lives Matter Foundation through employee-matching donation programs at their jobs and through third-party fundraising platforms including GoFundMe and the PayPal Giving Fund. This happened because the foundation showed up when users searched those platforms for Black Lives Matter.

But as its founder explained to BuzzFeed, despite the similar names, the Black Lives Matter Foundation has no affiliation with the Black Lives Matter social justice movement founded in 2013 by three community organizers. (The movement is not a tax-exempt nonprofit, so it accepts donations through a fiscal sponsor called Thousand Currents.)

Employees at Apple AAPL, -0.18%, Google GOOG, +1.72%, Microsoft MSFT, +0.58% and Dropbox DBX, +0.04% tried to send donations to the Black Lives Matter Foundation through gift-matching programs run by Benevity, a company that manages employee giving and other social responsibility functions for companies, including MarketWatchs parent company, News Corp NWSA, +1.85%.

None of the money those employees donated to the Black Lives Matter Foundation actually ended up with the foundation, according to Apple, Google, and Microsoft. (Dropbox did not respond to a request for comment.) All told, employees at about 200 of Benevitys 650 client companies donated to the Black Lives Matter Foundation through its platform, said Benevity founder and executive chair, Bryan de Lottinville.

This unfortunate scenario demonstrates the importance of donor diligence.

After discovering that donors were sending money to a group that wasnt affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, and after further investigation revealed that the foundation was not in good standing with state authorities in California, where it is based, Benevity did not release any of the donations to the foundation, de Lottinville told MarketWatch. (Benevity has since deactivated the foundation on its platform and added a note to its profile explaining that the foundation is not related to the movement.)

Other donations to the Black Lives Matter Foundation were made by individuals who gave money to fundraisers on GoFundMe. Users launched 180 campaigns that raised some $350,000 for the Black Lives Matter Foundation, a GoFundMe spokesman said. GoFundMe listed the foundation on its platform because it was in a database operated by its partner, the PayPal PYPL, +1.83% Giving Fund. GoFundMe and PayPal are working to redirect the donations, spokespeople for the companies said.

There have been attempts to trademark the phrase Black Lives Matter, but no one owns it, which means it can end up in the hands of people who arent affiliated with the official group, a decentralized global movement with 22 chapters across the country.

The Black Lives Matter Foundation doesnt appear to have been intentionally deceiving anyone. The foundation was established as a legitimate nonprofit by a Black man who told BuzzFeed his wifes ex-husband was allegedly killed by the police. The founder also noted that his goals differ from the movements goals. His groups mission is to unify the police and the community, while the movement advocates for defunding the police. (The foundations founder could not be reached for comment.)

We understand the desire to run a movement in an innovative, non-hierarchical way, but this does leave the door open for fraudsters or other opportunists to claim popular names.

In the corporate world, one company wouldnt be able to incorporate using anothers name, de Lottinville noted. But social movements like MeToo, for example often have no defined ownership.

Many social justice organizations choose not to incorporate or otherwise adopt more traditional leadership structures, said Fuchs, who is also co-chief of the New York State Office of the Attorney Generals charities bureau enforcement section. We understand the desire to run a movement in an innovative, non-hierarchical way, but this does leave the door open for fraudsters or other opportunists to claim popular names and may limit protections that are available to the legitimate entity.

Scammers often use sound-alike names to get donors to open their wallets. Dozens of fake charities were busted in 2018 after using names similar to legitimate groups helping military veterans. Similar frauds have happened with cancer charities.

One tip for steering clear of name confusion: Find out a charitys EIN (employer identification number) before you donate. No two charities have the same one, and donors can use the number to verify whether a charity is legit.

If you want your donation to be tax deductible, the group youre giving to has to be a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the IRS. You can check the IRS website to make sure a nonprofit is in good standing. But donors should also check with authorities in the state where the charity is based. Most state attorneys general have easily searchable databases where donors can check a charitys status. If you dont know who your state charity regulator is, you can find it on the National Association of State Charity Officials site.

If donors to the Black Lives Matter Foundation had typed its name into the California Attorney Generals charity verification tool, they would have seen that state authorities had issued a cease and desist letter to the foundation because it had not registered with the attorney generals office, yet was soliciting donations, said Tania Ibanez, senior assistant attorney general in charge of the charitable trust section of the California Attorney Generals Office.

There is pending legislation in the California State Assembly that would require third-party platforms like GoFundMe, PayPal, and Benevity to vet the status of charities in California before listing them on their platforms, Ibanez noted.

When donors come across a charity on a third-party fundraising platform or on a friends social media feed, where its common for people to ask for donations in lieu of birthday presents, its easy to quickly click donate, especially when its a cause thats been in the news lately.

Third-party fundraising platforms like Benevity, GoFundMe or PayPal Giving Fund typically have blurbs describing the charities that are listed on their sites. But before deciding whether to donate, donors should hit pause and visit the charitys own website. (The Black Lives Matter Foundation, for example, doesnt have its own website.)

My general counsel would be to slow down and take time to look at a website and the mission statement in particular and, if possible, check the list of donors on the website, said Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and author of Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count. A charitys website should clearly explain its mission and accomplishments. You can also look to see who is on the groups board of directors. Make sure it all makes sense, Buchanan said.

After you check out a charitys website yourself, also check its rating on sites such as BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Candid (formerly Guidestar), CharityNavigator, CharityWatch, Givewell, or GreatNonprofits.

Slow down and take time to look at a website and the mission statement in particular and if possible check the list of donors on the website.

However, even rating sites dont always give a complete picture. The Black Lives Matter Foundation was listed on CharityNavigator, for example. because it was a registered 501(c)(3) organization, but the foundation had no rating, a CharityNavigator spokesman noted. CharityNavigator has now updated the entry with a moderate concern advisory.

Theres no national database of complaints against charities. But donors can do a little digging by Googling the groups name with words like fraud, lawsuits, or complaints to see if any news stories come up. Dont forget to click past the first page of results.

See also:Some of Americas biggest employers dont match employee donations to charity

A nonprofit should be able to say what it does with donations. If it cant, thats a red flag.

The nonprofit should also provide visibility into how the nonprofit operates, said Kevin Scally, spokesman for Charity Navigator. Are they an advocacy organization? Do they provide direct services? Do donations fund research? Legitimate organizations should make the answer to these questions very clear.

Donors can see details of how an organization spends money including salaries for executive directors on Form 990s, which all nonprofits are required to file. Legitimate 501(c)(3) charities should file a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service annually, Scally noted. If they have not done so, for example, if the organization was something recently formed and you are having difficulty finding information on it, err on the side of caution, he said.

Third-party platforms make donating to charities easier than ever. They function as online directories where people can quickly look up causes theyre interested in supporting. Theyre fast and convenient, and help get exposure for charities that may not have big marketing budgets.

But because third-party platforms are essentially middlemen between donors and their money, there are caveats. Some of these platforms charge nonprofits fees to appear on their sites. Platforms have been known to go out of business, leaving donations undistributed to charities. Sometimes theres a delay between when a donor makes a donation and the nonprofit receives that money.

Generally when donors give money to a charity through these platforms, their donation doesnt go directly to the charity. Typically it first goes to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit thats run by the platform, which then gives the money to the charity.

That loss of control comes with pros and cons. The buffer between donor and charity worked well in this case, said Benevitys de Lottinville, because it prevented money from ending up with the wrong group. Benevity only lists charities that are in good standing with the IRS, and before it distributes funds to charities, it does another round of vetting.

During that round, Benevity discovered the California cease and desist letter, de Lottinville said, and also realized that the Black Lives Matter Foundation wasnt affiliated with the movement. Its unfortunate, but this is exactly what were set up to do, is help protect our corporate client and our donors, he told MarketWatch.

Likewise, GoFundMe donors are protected by a guarantee that their money will go to the intended recipients and allows for refunds in some cases. Donors to the PayPal Giving Fund are advised that if their donation cant be sent to their chosen charity, PayPal will reassign the funds and whenever possible will consult with you on the reassignment.

He said he doesnt know exactly how much money Benevity has helped raise for racial-justice groups in the past month, but estimated that its probably in the $100 million range.

The roughly $4 million that donors tried to send to the Black Lives Matter Foundation through Benevity sounds like a big number, de Lottinville said, but in the context of the total giving through the platform to these issues, it was actually relatively small.

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People donated millions of dollars to the wrong Black Lives Matter foundation read this before you give to any charity - MarketWatch

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) The Black Lives Matter Movement is seeing a lot of support from people of all races.

Tristan Chasing Hawk is a Native American who lives in Sioux Falls. He supports the Black Lives Matter movement.

We should all stand up and talk about how Black lives matter, the importance of standing up against extra judicial police killings without overshadowing Black lives right now too, Chasing Hawk said.

Shondey Nguyen grew up in Sioux Falls with a Vietnamese father and a Native American mother. She believes its important for people to learn about the other cultures around them.

No one owes anyone education and its up to you to really educate yourself about racist issues or peoples culture. Its a beautiful thing to learn and youll understand a lot of peoples ideas a lot more if you actually educate yourself and take that time, Nguyen said.

Soleil Bashale is a black man who grew up in Sioux Falls. He hopes people can begin to understand why protests are happening.

All we want is equal opportunity and the past sins of this country on its people of color to be recognized. We just want it to be recognized. And people to actually actively make a change, not because they feel guilty and forced to, but because they actually want to, Bashale said.

Chasing Hawk, Nguyen and Bashale each believe change is possible if we take the time for education and understanding.

Coming up at 10 p.m., Bashale, Chasing Hawk and Nguyen talk about growing up in South Dakota. In tonights Eye On KELOLAND, theyll share their stories of stereotypes and discrimination because of the color of their skin.

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People of all races are supporting the Black Lives Matter movement - KELOLAND.com

Darrell Keaton Sr., a 49-year-old black Democrat from Wausau, Wis., several hours north of Mr. Perry, said the protests after Mr. Floyds death were monumental for changing views on structural racism in America. Finally, he said, it feels like white people are listening and joining in the protests.

We have just been racking our brains and screaming at the top of our lungs for so many years that were going to need other people to stand up alongside the black community to change anything, he said.

Though the poll over all shows former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in a very strong position, especially on racial justice, and voters belief in his ability to unite a divided country, it also indicates how difficult a task that could be: More than 40 percent of white respondents agreed in some measure that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as other forms of discrimination, reinforcing a theme of white grievance politics that the president and his supporters have long expressed.

There are also broad generational gaps between how voters are responding to the national moment of unrest. Every age bracket said the use of force by the police against black Americans was a bigger problem than looting at demonstrations. But support for Black Lives Matter got more tepid among older voters, the polls found. Sixty-seven percent of voters ages 18 to 29 had a very favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement as did 54 percent of voters ages 30 to 44.

Among people 45 to 64, the support dropped to 37 percent, while 22 percent had a somewhat favorable view. Voters 65 and over were the least persuaded: Only 31 percent had a very favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, and 25 percent had a somewhat favorable opinion.

Michael Berlinger, 67, who lives in Lancaster, Pa., and considers himself an independent voter, said he thought the Black Lives Matter movement is too myopic. The protests over Mr. Floyds death have been too destructive, he said.

The whole message has been undermined in a lot of ways, said Mr. Berlinger, a white retired teacher. Im not a big fan of people who break the law to say theyre working for a cause. I dont think thats the correct way of doing it.

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How Trump and the Black Lives Matter Movement Changed White Voters Minds - The New York Times

Screenshot/The Libertarian Marine

Melissa Kiser (top right) and Kristina Furi of Black Lives Matter in Cortland, N.Y., were guests on Matthew McIntyres podcast The Libertarian Marine on June 22.

CORTLAND, N.Y. As the Black Lives Matter movement here looks to turn its public support into political momentum, local libertarians are making a late push to align themselves with the movement that nationally was sparked by youth activism.

The Libertarian Party in Cortland County or the group of people trying to form it has been slow to publicize its support for Black Lives Matter. At the center of this is state Assembly candidate Matthew McIntyre, who has actively reached out to the leaders of Black Lives Matter organizers in Cortland. He sees systemic police brutality against Black residents as a product of government overreach, the free market as an avenue for leveling the playing field and recent Black Lives Matters protests cut from the same cloth as Reopen New York protests, which Libertarians supported.

Many libertarians, including McIntyre, advocate for the decriminalization of nonviolent, victimless drug offenses and an end to the war on drugs. They also call for less government regulation on business, particularly business licensing.

Black Lives Matter organizers here are concerned about whether the libertarian support will be genuine in the long term, after the spotlight on protests and police reforms dims. Melissa Kiser and Steve Williams, two organizers of Black Lives Matter in Cortland, have spent the past few weeks educating themselves on libertarianism, how their views align and if a partnership will result in what Williams calls piggyback protesting when movements and organizations use momentum from Black Lives Matter to advance their own agendas.

Its a concern that national leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have about the Democratic Party. Some organizers, such as in Tampa, Fla., have soured on the Democratic alignment with the Black Lives Matter movement. Theyre weary of Democratic politicians using outrage from their movement as a political tool.

But in Cortland, for the newly forming Libertarian Party, it boils down to the same question Kiser and Williams ask when politicians reach out as election season approaches: Where was the support before the police killing of George Floyd?

[Theres] a fear of hijacking the movement, Williams said on June 16. Like I said, I cant speak too intelligently to libertarian affairs, but knowing how they define themselves, and being to the protests Ive been to, its the fear of the movement being hijacked.

But Kiser and Williams are lending their ear to McIntyre for now, in part because Americas two-party system leaves few people excited about the two presidential candidates, they said.

I want to see what your five-year plan is for minorities and I want to see what your five-month plan is for Black Lives Matter, Kiser said of politicians aligning themselves with Black Lives Matter. I want to see it and I want to see you start doing it. Thats what I need. I dont need any more overtures, I dont want you to put up signs on your lawn, posting stuff on your website.

In Cortland County, 800 of the 48,300 residents are Black and 898 are biracial or multiracial. Kiser and Williams have previously described a need for more Black teachers and counselors in schools, more Black legislators in city and county government and police reform that includes accountability and transparency in Cortlands police department. So far, both the city of Cortland and Cortland County, which are separate entities, have made their use-of-force policy public, and the city council agreed to paint Black Lives Matter on a downtown street. The largest police reforms in Cortland County stem from Albany.

The Libertarian support for Black Lives Matter mirrors the partys statewide and national platform. Larry Sharpe, the Libertarian candidate for New York governor in 2018, has advocated for breaking police departments into different sectors that serve more concentrated needs, including mental health.

We generally agree on the activism part, Sharpe said of Black Lives Matter. Not the political part. He meant that Black Lives Matter is often linked to candidates who are Democrats, not Libertarians. Jo Jorgenson, the Libertarian presidential nominee, recently tweeted, I am the Libertarian candidate. #BlackLivesMatter, and I am committed to governance that reflects that.

McIntyre equates the Black Lives Matter movement with the Reopen New York rally because both problems, he said, were rooted in government overreach.

These are very very big issues, these are very very powerful groups, he said in a separate interview. And their message is exactly the same thing: smaller government and less overreach and more liberty. But theyre seen as different because of the narratives that have been spun.

Kiser and Williams have said Black Lives Matter and Reopen New York are completely different.

There are stances that Kiser is non-negotiable on, making the 80/20 rule which McIntyre has described as agreement on 80% of a politicians views equating to political alignment problematic for her. She also is concerned that this is the first time the Libertarian Party had reached out to Black Lives Matter.

But Kiser said while the stakes are high in this presidential election, she is interested in working with McIntyre. She has not endorsed him.

I think I would love to work with Matthew and see where things continue to go, she said.

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Cortland Black Lives Matter Cautiously Considers Support From Local Libertarians - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

To understand the power of a movement that began in 2013, we have to jump back nearly 400 years and grasp onto perhaps the same struggle the Black community fought then; the idea that all people should be treated fairly in the eyes of the law and in every institution.

"Ultimately when our responses become human responses as opposed to racial responses, that is when were going to change as a society. - Dr. Finnie Coleman, UNM Associate Professor

The University of New Mexico Associate Professor Finnie Coleman said the Black Lives Matter movement mirrors similar ambitions of the NAACP in the 1920s, when the association led the Black civil rights struggle in fighting injustices that included voting rights, racial violence, discrimination in employment and segregated public facilities. He said its also no different than the Black Panther Party movement that began in 1966.

We are quick to forget what we are told in this country, Coleman said. The idea that we should have to ask certain groups for permission to exercise our rights that the Constitution already guarantees us; thats a huge disconnect and I think its one of the reasons why we have a difficult time talking about race.

In fact, Coleman explained Black Lives Matter doesnt want to be given anything. Instead, he said, what Black people want is to be able to leave their homes, to peacefully assemble and address government without fearing for their lives.

In 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot as he walked home from a convenience store. George Zimmerman, who was patrolling the townhouse community in Sanford, Florida, pulled the trigger. Zimmerman later claimed to have shot the teenager in self-defense during a physical altercation. It took weeks before Zimmerman was eventually arrested and charged with Martins murder. Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to Zimmermans acquittal.

Trevier Gonzalez

The global organization says its mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives. Black Lives Matters three founders,Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, say the project is now a member-led global network that includes more than 40 chapters.

In a really important way, the Black Lives Matter movement circles us back to the beating of Rodney King in March 1991 and the riots that followed the acquittal of the four police officers in April 1992, Coleman said. I reference Rodney King because it has to do with surveillance and the ability of average citizens to produce evidence for the public record. Its not so much that we have an epidemic of police brutality; cell phones and social media now allow the average person witnessing a tragedy to capture it and upload it in real-time.

Coleman explained there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement. He said the struggle is for not only the Black community, but for all people to be treated fairly.

In every institution, whether its religious, academic, governmental, economic, all aspects of American life, the want is to be treated equally, he said. I think theres a huge mistake and a conceit by people who find themselves in the dominant culture, who imagine that the Black Lives Matter movement is asking them for something. What the movement is asking is to stop doing certain things. Stop preventing me from exercising my rights. Im not asking you to give me my rights; Im asking you to stop preventing me from exercising my rights.

In recent weeks, protests and riots have erupted around the globe after the murder of George Floyd. The 46-year-olds death while in police custody in Minneapolis has re-ignited a nationwide movement against police killings of Black Americans. Coleman said as people around the world watched details surrounding Floyds murder unfold, individuals in the dominant culture were quick to offer the wrong type of response.

Trevier Gonzalez

The dominant culture is quick to say, Thats a horrible thing thats happened to you guys. How can we help you? Coleman said. But when I see that video, my response is a human response, not a racial response my response was not an us versus them response. I felt the same way every other human being should have felt when they saw what happened to George Floyd. It did not matter to me who was under the officers knee; in this case, it just so happened to be a Black man. That incident made me as angry as I could be not solely because George Floyd was Black, but because no person should ever be senselessly brutalized and murdered by an officer of the law.

According to Coleman, the Black communitys taut relationship with law enforcement stems from the historical development of law enforcement in America; law enforcement's roots in the policing of a slaved South.

From the very beginning, police have had a relationship with the Black community that has been primarily focused upon surveillance, he said. When they were enforcing the law, for much of our countrys history, they were enforcing laws that were differential where race was concerned; where it was against the law for Black people to drink from that fountain, get an education, be in a certain part of town after 5 p.m. Historically, police had a very different relationship with Black people than they have had with other groups in this country. For most white people, their first instinct is to believe that the police are here to protect them and their property, but for many Black people, their first instinct is that the police are there to protect someone else from them they are there to make sure that you do not break the law not to protect you from lawbreakers.

A majority of recent protests have centered around police brutality. Photos from around the U.S. show protesters staged outside police precincts, holding signs that read, defund the police. Coleman said he believes there is no one meaning for this term.

For some people defunding means, abolish police. For others it means, lets have a look at the amount of money cities and states pour into police departments and see if we might not redistribute those resources in ways that make more sense, he said.

Some of the protests have led to riots and violence.

"I know there are a lot of people who are critical of the violence in the protests that are happening all over the country, and while I dont condone the violence and property destruction, I do understand the energy behind those reactions and I dont necessarily condemn the people using whatever voice they see fit, Coleman said. 'If you dont hear me and Im telling you, I cant breathe, what do you expect me to do? If I break a window or burn down a building, will that get you to take your knee off my neck?'We have to be really careful about our outrage about the outrage.

Emma Hotz

Coleman said many of his sentiments he shares are the same he lectures in front of his students at UNM. Coleman, who served in the U.S. Army for 11 years, said he encourages his students to continue to have more sophisticated conversations about these topics. Only then, he said, will people start to see a change in society.

Our arrogance often prevents us from having these conversations, he said. Its imperative that we move beyond white supremacy, hegemonic masculinity, and racism that allow rogue policeman and neighborhood vigilantes to destroy black bodies in public spaces.

Coleman said hes optimistic about the future because he believes the beauty of this nation is shown in the very moment people begin to protest.

We must continue to progress to that place where America lives up to its ideals; ideals spelled out in the Constitution of the United States, Coleman said. When we get to the point where our responses arent conditioned by our position and our racial attitudes; ultimately when our responses become human responses as opposed to racial responses, that is when were going to change as a society.

Racism: An Educational Series (previous stories)Learning from the Past: A brief historical background

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Meaning behind the movement: Black Lives Matter - UNM Newsroom

As protests against racism and police violence swept across the country, drawing massive crowds into the streets amid a pandemic, public health officials worried about what the overall impact would be.

The latest from the coronavirus outbreak in Colorado:

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Would these protests which many health leaders said they support also turn out to be virus super-spreading events?

But a new study by a nationwide research team that includes a University of Colorado Denver professor has found something surprising: The protests may have slowed the overall spread of the coronavirus in cities with large demonstrations, including Denver.

We think that whats going on is its the people who are not going to protest are staying away, said Andrew Friedson, the CU-Denver professor who is one of the papers co-authors. The overall effect for the entire city is more social distancing because people are avoiding the protests.

Friedsons specialty is economics specifically the economics of health care. The field of COVID-19 research now contains a multitude of subspecialties, and it has often been economists leading the way in understanding how people are changing their behaviors in response to the pandemic.

MORE: Coloradans are moving around at nearly pre-pandemic levels. Will a second coronavirus wave follow?

As the protests built, Friedson said he and his colleagues took note of the rising concerns about virus spread. He said they also realized they had the ability to answer that question using official coronavirus case counts and the anonymous, aggregated cell phone data that has become the gold standard for tracking societal shifts in movement.

The team worked quickly and published their findings earlier this month as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Im someone who likes to get the answers out, Friedson said. There are a lot of people who say, Well I think it should happen or I think this should happen, and its nice to have some numbers to inform these decision-making processes.

The paper comes as officials in Colorado and other states are concerned about rising infections, especially among young people.

New infections among young people have contributed significantly to Colorados uptick in cases in recent days a rise that reversed a weeks-long trend of falling case numbers and has put Colorado back onto the list of potential coronavirus problem spots. Meanwhile, the number of new infections among older Coloradans has dropped.

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With the July 4 holiday approaching, Gov. Jared Polis and county health officials have pleaded with people to be responsible and avoid large gatherings.

We dont have the direct causation of this uptick, Polis told reporters last week, noting that there is evidence that some young people who are part of an outbreak in Boulder had attended protests while other outbreaks are tied to social gatherings. And we hope this is a trend that is reversed in our state.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said that, while the state has now seen rising numbers of new cases for two consecutive weeks, we have not seen any clear association between the protests and an increase in cases.

The spokesman, Ian Dickson, said the uptick in infections may be partly due to some Coloradans changing their behavior especially socializing in larger groups, sometimes without proper distancing or mask wearing.

Friedson said his paper doesnt try to figure out whether the protests spread the virus among the people at the protest. Instead, he said the research took the bigger-picture view: What did the protests mean for overall transmission of the virus within the entire community?

The study looked at 315 American cities with populations of more than 100,000 and found that 281 of those cities saw protests. The remaining 34 cities that did not see protests which, at the time, included Aurora were used as a control group against which to measure the impact of the protests.

The researchers found that protests correlated with a net increase in overall stay-at-home behavior in cities where they occurred and the increase was larger in cities that saw more sustained protests or reports of violence.

Friedson said he and his colleagues were a bit surprised at first. The protests in many cities, including Denver, were massive, drawing tens of thousands of people out to march. But they occurred in cities with hundreds of thousands to millions of residents.

We started thinking about it a little more and we thought, Oh my gosh were capturing everybody else, he said.

The paper also found that, with greater social distancing, COVID case growth slowed in cities with protests from what would be expected but not by a statistically significant amount. There may be other explanations for the trends, the studys authors note. Overall, though, they say the data show that any resurgence in coronavirus cases cant be pinned entirely on the protests.

Public speech and public health did not trade off against each other in this case, the authors wrote in the paper.

But Friedson said there is one last important thing to keep in mind about this study: Its not a green light for governments to fully reopen bars, concert venues and other places where people gather in large numbers. The key to the researchers conclusions is that the protests, while receiving lots of support, were ultimately things most people decided to avoid. Thats not true of many other large gatherings.

An outdoor wedding doesnt generate avoidance behavior; were measuring avoidance behavior, Friedson said. People dont say, Oh man, theres an outdoor wedding next door, we should stay home.

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Black Lives Matter protests may have slowed overall spread of coronavirus in Denver and other cities, new study finds - The Colorado Sun