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BLM

The red flags waved for a decade

Jpharoahdoss
3 min readApr 14, 2022
Photo by Christer Ehrling on Unsplash

In 2012 a black teen was fatally shot by a Florida community watch volunteer. The volunteer claimed self-defense. He wasn’t arrested or charged with a crime. Civil Rights organizations rushed to Florida to demand the arrest of the volunteer.

This started the Black Lives Matter movement. The BLM slogan was quickly embraced, but no one knew their agenda.

In 2014 a white police officer fatally shot a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer claimed he fired in self-defense. Witnesses said the teen was shot while his hands were up. Rioting and protests took place for over a week.

Here, BLM gained national recognition, but there were some red flags.

No video captured the shooting, and no one knew what happened. Instead of waiting for the official investigation to reveal more information, protesters and rioters went forward based on their assumptions. Taking drastic measures before knowing all the facts was irresponsible and reckless. (As it turned out, the hands-up story was false.) Also, Ferguson and Florida were different. The goal in Florida was to arrest the community watch volunteer and let the system play out. Ferguson had no equivalent agenda.

That same year, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who had an airsoft gun replica, was fatally shot by a police…

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Jpharoahdoss
Jpharoahdoss

Written by Jpharoahdoss

J. Pharoah Doss is a columnist for the New Pittsburgh Courier.

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