Ring of Fire Radio: #BlackLivesMatter Leadership Wants Progressives and Bernie Destroyed, Read This

[Comrade Grumpy]

28. In her own words:

She sounds like the architect of a self-marginalizing movement:

If you think Ring of Fire is making this up, all you need to do is read the following writing by Alicia Garza, the co-founder of BLM, which full article is available at A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.

Below are just some of the quotes:

When you design an event / campaign / et cetera based on the work of queer Black women, don’t invite them to participate in shaping it, but ask them to provide materials and ideas for next steps for said event, that is racism in practice. It’s also hetero-patriarchal. Straight men, unintentionally or intentionally, have taken the work of queer Black women and erased our contributions. Perhaps if we were the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story, but being Black queer women in this society (and apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy.

We completely expect those who benefit directly and improperly from White supremacy to try and erase our existence. We fight that every day. But when it happens amongst our allies, we are baffled, we are saddened, and we are enraged. And it’s time to have the political conversation about why that’s not okay.

Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement. [As stated in WikiPedia, “The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground, black nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed largely of former Black Panthers (BPP), the organization’s program was one of ‘armed struggle’, and its stated goal was to ‘take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.’ The BLA carried out a series of bombings, murders, robberies (what participants termed ‘expropriations’), and prison breaks.]

It is an acknowledgment that Black women continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families and that assault is an act of state violence. Black queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us is state violence; the fact that 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows is state violence; the fact that Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war is state violence; Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state-sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by White supremacy is state violence. And the fact is that the lives of Black people—not ALL people—exist within these conditions is consequence of state violence.

And, to keep it real–it is appropriate and necessary to have strategy and action centered around Blackness without other non-Black communities of color, or White folks for that matter, needing to find a place and a way to center themselves within it. It is appropriate and necessary for us to acknowledge the critical role that Black lives and struggles for Black liberation have played in inspiring and anchoring, through practice and theory, social movements for the liberation of all people. The women’s movement, the Chicano liberation movement, queer movements, and many more have adopted the strategies, tactics and theory of the Black liberation movement. And if we are committed to a world where all lives matter, we are called to support the very movement that inspired and activated so many more. That means supporting and acknowledging Black lives.

Progressive movements in the United States have made some unfortunate errors when they push for unity at the expense of really understanding the concrete differences in context, experience and oppression. In other words, some want unity without struggle. As people who have our minds stayed on freedom, we can learn to fight anti-Black racism by examining the ways in which we participate in it, even unintentionally, instead of the worn out and sloppy practice of drawing lazy parallels of unity between peoples with vastly different experiences and histories.

Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down unity and a more active solidarities with us, Black people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend on it.

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As the founders of BLM make clear, the movement (from their perspective) is all about black women. Anyone such as Bernie Sanders who wants to raise the plight of all struggling Americans offends them. They want the sole focus to be on them. They don’t want a peaceful movement that follows the lead of Martin Luther King, Jr. Instead, they want a militant movement that follows the lead of the Black Panther Party.

This is why Bernie frightens the leadership of BLM so much, because he is creating a huge movement of destroying the present system, which racist system gives the leaders of BLM their voice. These same leaders rather keep the status quo. If we at Ring of Fire are wrong, then we ask them to stand up and take a very strong stance against what is occuring at these rallies, and to state what their true goals are, and how we can assist them to help struggling black Americans.