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Comment by heterodoxxed | Hacker News Reader

The reason we just had the largest civil rights protests in American history this summer has as much or more to do with the everyday experience with the police as it does the extraordinary events such as deaths. Deaths were the spark, not the fuel.

The grinding oppression of every day life in terms of policing has been shown in study after study. It is disproportionately felt by black people, mostly men, but it has been steadily expanding to all demographics for decades now.

| Plenty of poor and middle class whites

Yeah and a lot of poor and middle class white people were out supporting the protests because of their own experiences too.

Daniel Shaver's death is not argument against BLM's goals, it's an argument in favor of them.

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So what would be the problem with changing the name of the movement to ALM all lives matter and making the focus against police militarisation rather than some divisive narrative of racism?

The vast majority of Americans understand that Black Lives Matter is an inclusive statement, not an exclusive one.

Those who make hay out of the name and have ignored the movement itself for almost a decade now are a small, ineffective minority.

The largest civil rights protest movement in American history doesn't need to spend its time focus-grouping and hand-wringing about people like that.

No, the vast majority of Americans do not believe that at all

After 10 years of a movement that culminated in protests in 2000 cities in all 50 states and 5 territories that had supermajority support in polls, the people who are still ignorant enough, feigned or otherwise, to say BLM means Black Lives Only Matter are numerically and politically insignificant.

No movement has ever changed anything by seeking to get 100% of everyone on board, least of all those most uninformed, hostile, and acting in bad faith.

> The vast majority of Americans understand that Black Lives Matter is an inclusive statement, not an exclusive one.

Do they? I'm not sure what leads you to think that. I have no evidence other than anecdote, but from what I see, I'm not sure that your claim is true.

Imagine you are at a dinner party and haven't eaten for a couple days. The guests don't realize this and are delaying dinner to chat, play games, what have you. Then finally someone says "hey morpehos137 is starving" and a large group of the guests dismiss this and say "We are all hungry" and continue to go about their business.

> Daniel Shaver's death is not argument against BLM's goals, it's an argument in favor of them.

Exactly. I've seen far more outrage about the death of a white man from those who say black lives matter than from those saying all lives matter.

Mhm. December 10, 2017. Two days after the video was released.

  #BLM Activists Call Attention To Graphic Video Of Daniel Shaver's Death At The Hands Of Arizona Police
  Black Lives Matter is against police brutality of all forms and against all people.

https://blavity.com/blm-activists-call-attention-to-graphic-...

Shaver isn't the only non-Black victim of police violence that BLM has been involved in supporting either. While their focus has always been Black people, they have never operated in an exclusive way at all.

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