George Floyd - America so f**ked up

An interesting article highlighting the disconnect between the older civil rights protesters and BLM. I think this lady speaks a lot of sense:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-activist-in-the-1960s-but-its-hard-for-me-to-get-behind-black-lives-matter/%3foutputType=amp

I can certainly appreciate that there must be a sense of frustration by younger BAME people that not enough has been achieved by peaceful protest. Although in this country riots have hardly yielded stellar results because once the damage has been cleared up everyone goes home and forgets. We have a history of race riots in the U.K., particularly in the 80s and yet the country is as institutionally racist as ever according to some. So it goes to show that you can’t riot for 20 years to keep yourself in the public conscience, sooner or later you have to put your weapons down and work your representatives into local authority and spell out clearly what your movement stands for. It’s inevitable that genuine change will only come through getting your message out there postitively then relying on politics and the ballot box.

As such I think she makes a great case for why calmer and more experienced heads are needed in the BLM movement. For once a woman of colour points out the elephant in the room about how BLMs name is misleading and works against it. It’s almost a juxtaposition to see the phrase black lives matter in the same sentence as black men 18 - 34 are more likely to die at the hands of another black man than the police. This needs to be addressed and BLM needs to change its name to something more fitting.

But on the whole it’s probably counter productive having such a movement operated by younger heads because they are more prone to succumbing to the raw emotion and in such a sensitive area could lead to as much alienation to their cause as support for it. Although it’s worth te-iterating that according to people who were there the young BAME kids mostly behaved themselves and it was the typical protest day tripper who turned up at the end with the express intention of kicking off. I personally don’t think “10 minutes of handbags” at the end was bad enough to tarnish the protest as a whole but there have been a lot of people who have focused on the violence as a reason to criticise and feel alienated by the cause, which is a shame.

Yes. 
That was the point of my posts earlier about inequalities and poverty. Racism is very important but so is the inequalities and poverty that seem to have been forgotten. I hope there will be no riots and I’m sure there won’t be over this but I hope the government will do something positive about it. But I doubt it. 
UTG!

365
"So it goes to show that you can’t riot for 20 years to keep yourself in the public conscience, sooner or later you have to put your weapons down and work your representatives into local authority and spell out clearly what your movement stands for."

I have to be honest 365 I laughed out loud at that one. There was a time, pre Thatcher, when local authorities did appear to represent their local constituency. They could raise money, borrow money to spend as they saw fit in their geographic area. Her local authority reforms completely emasculated them.
Your suggestion is seeds onto stoney ground, that opportunity does not exist. For any of us. Now factor in racial prejudice on top of that. Frustrated? I would be (am)

You can join political parties and campaign to be elected either on the local council or for parliament though can’t you, either under the banner of Lib Dem’s or Labour or as independent/BLM political party

But you will not be empowered to do anything around the issues under discussion here. I honesty believe that the current construct of local government is an Oxymoron.

Well if you are running for Parliament you would presumably at least be elected on a ticket of a manifesto for improvements to your local area so that would show the wider country that there is an appetite by your constituents to see black issues represented at a national level.

If you don’t believe that institutional change is possible then what’s the answer? Keep throwing rocks at police horses? For what?

365
It's not my intention to come after you, but
A) Are you a member of any political party?
B) If yes, have you ever attended a candidate selection process
C) Again, if yes, have you ever put yourself forward?

Moving along, there are a decent spattering of ethnic minorities in Parliament (too low). Ask any ethnic minority group whether they feel represented... either locally or nationally, or whether they think their representatives are empowered.

What is your experience and what do you think?

I am not but I lived with someone who was very passionate about politics and active in his local Labour Party.

As you say, there are ethnic minorities in parliament. The likes of David Lammy has managed to be elected representing a relatively poor constituency by London standards.

The thing is I’m not saying this is an overnight process - but I don’t see how people can really believe in change if they don’t think it can be done through local politics. If the time is not right now with National feeling the way it is to make it “easier” for BLM’s representatives to campaign at a local level then when is it? They should have a lot of good will behind them. But real institutional change will obviously take decades.

Who are the BLM youth voting for? Are they voting at all? There was a big song and dance about the grime 4 Corbyn movement that had some reasonable impact on Corbyn’s results in the 2017 election, but this time round they turned their backs on him (because of the anti-semitism iirc). If BLM youth can’t bring themselves to vote against the Tories then they are not helping themselves from the start. The Tories are very happy with the status quo and real change for anyone in society has to start with a non-Tory government.

The Tories are probably laughing their tits off about the rioting- it’s a great political tool to motivate their hardcore support at a time when Cummings-gate was seeing a momentum swing to Labour. So keep rioting and keep doing Boris’s job for him. If we get a second wave that will be meat and drink to the government too and garner more Tory support at a time when they were on the ropes due to their handling of Covid.

So if rioting doesn’t work and politics doesn’t work, what next?