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Black Lives Matter movement leader Shaun King (right) spoke last Saturday with Oakland leaders (L to R) City Councilmember Desley Brooks, Cat Brooks and Carroll Fife. Photo by Ken Epstein.

Shaun King, a journalist and national leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, received a warm reception in Oakland last Saturday night when about 2,000 people came out to meet him at two hastily organized speaking events at the Oakland Technical High School auditorium.

Local activists organized the event in less than 24 hours after learning that King was visiting Oakland to speak Sunday morning at McClymonds High School for True Vine Ministries.

Also speaking Saturday night were local leaders Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, and Carroll Fife of the Black Power Network.

King is a writer on social media and senior justice writer for the New York Daily News. He is also a political commentator for The Young Turks and was previously a contributing writer for Daily Kos.

Over the last several years, he has directed his energies toward exposing the epidemic of police violence in the United States, including the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

During election season, King backed Bernie Sanders and later supported Hillary Clinton in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from winning the presidency.

Police violence is not a current affairs issue, King said at the Saturday night event. The victims are peoples babies, their husbands, their brothers, their uncles, their sisters.

We have to get to a point where its personal, he said. Were dealing with a human rights crisis. We have to get to the point where (we understand) the human cost of brutality in this country.

When activists talk about taking on white privilege, he said, they have to understand that Its not simple, its deep. Its centuries in the making. This is not new. Its old.

In order to bring about change, four elements are necessary: people who support the cause, people who are energized to bring about change, and people who are willing to put in the hard, unglamorous day-to-day work to make change happen.

At present, the first three elements exist, but what the movement is lacking is the fourth element: a strategy for moving forward.

There are pockets of very strategic people among us, but the masses of people are not clear on what the strategy is, said King.

Cat Brooks, APTP leader, said Oakland is pushing out Black people at a rate that is unfathomable.

We are at under 25 percent.

Instead of paying for policing, the city needs to put its money into educating children, building gardens and creating jobs and housing, she said.

We have to have a conversation about where our city is putting its resources, said Brooks.

Fife talked about the current struggle in Oakland to allow African Americans to own some of the new businesses are taking off in the billion-dollar cannabis industry.

We will never be free if we dont own the fruits of our own labor. What we want to do is push for (cannabis) equity, she said.

It is estimated that the racial wealth gap means that it would take 228 years for the average Black family to achieve the wealth of what the average white family has today, she said. Thats not going to change unless we do something radically different.

The discussion of cannabis equity is scheduled to go to City Council on March 7.

King told organizers he supports Oaklands fight for cannabis equity. Ownership means jobs and entrepreneurship. Equity is key, he said.

Read more:
Black Lives Matter Movement Leader Shaun King Speaks in Oakland - Post News Group (blog)

A coalition of LGBTQ stalwarts and veterans has launched apetition to counter Black Lives Matter Vancouvers efforts to havepolice forces removed from the Pride parade.

Arguing that the police is an instrument of state violence and oppression the Vancouver chapter of Black Lives Matter launched a campaign earlier this summer asking for the withdrawalof any and all presence of uniformed police officers from the annual celebration of LGBTQ communities.

But for the activists behind Our Pride Includes Our Police, this misrepresentsthe history of the relationship between local LGBTQ communities and police.

Vancouvers LGBTQ community has a long history of positive engagement with the Vancouver Police Department, readsthe petition.

One of its co-signatories, trans activist Sandy-Leo Laframboise, a 46-year veteran of LGBTQ organizing, told the National Post: Banning the police from the pride parade will undermine our commitment to diversity and inclusion and all the work weve done.

They want to remove an entity that weve been working with for over 40 years.

Gordon Hardy, co-founder of Vancouvers Gay Liberation Front and another of the petitions organizers said he had no problem with Black Lives Matter members marching in the parade and expressing their opinions.

What we object to is that they come along and start telling the rest of us in the community who can and cannot be in the parade he said.

Earlier this month, BLM Vancouverlauncheda petition to request, for the second time, that the Vancouver Pride Society have the police department withdraw all of its uniformed, armed officers from the parade.

Theyhad already issued an open letter tothe Vancouver Pride Society in July asking the police to voluntarily withdraw from the parade and participate instead in a public service float that would include firefighters, paramedics and others. The matter appeared to have been settled after the the Vancouver Police Department agreed to remove an armoured vehicle from the parade.

Although it concedes that the police can of course be present to do their jobs and show support, the chapter says that having the institution participate on a float in the parade is not appropriate, and insulting to those who made Pride celebrations possible and even died for the cause.

If some members of the queer community do not feel comfortable at Pride events we must be the priority, the petition continues.

While organizers of Our Pride Includes Our Police acknowledge the historic and ongoing injustices against the black communities in major American and Eastern Canadian cities, they argue that they do not reflect relationships between Vancouvers LGBTQ communities with local law enforcement.

Vancouver Police are one of the most progressive police forces in the country, Velvet Steele, a trans and sex worker activist who has worked on police relations, told the Georgia Straightearlier this week.

This summer, members of the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter successfully hijacked theToronto Pride parade, grinding it to a halt, and forcedorganizersto agree to a list of demands including removing oppressive police floats from future parades before ending the blockade.

As of Friday, the pro-police petitionhad collected2,501 signatures compared to 792 collected for Black Lives Matter Vancouvers petition.

Read more:
LGBTQ Activists Rally Against Black Lives Matter's Bid to Shun Cops From Vancouver Pride Parade - Heat Street

whotv.com

Des Moines School Board Giving New Meaning to Black Lives Matter whotv.com The Des Moines Public Schools District's board is standing behind three words that often sparks debate. Black Lives Matter. At their next meeting on Tuesday, Langford says several, if not all board members will be wearing black shirts with those very ...

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Des Moines School Board Giving New Meaning to Black Lives Matter - whotv.com

A Black Lives Matter march in Berkeley, Calif., in 2014. (Annette Bernhardt / CC 2.0)

A new survey conducted by Aizman Law Firm anonymously asked 200 police officers across the nation about race relations and policing, and found that 87 percent of those surveyed harbored negative feelings toward the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The Aizman survey, Blue Voices on Black Lives Matter, states:

When asked what they hoped the outcome of the movement would be, nearly 60 percent said that police brutality and racism arent real problems or the whole thing is overblown.

Another 11 percent said theyd like to see officers trained more on racial issues and how to de-escalate situations peacefully, and only 8 percent hoped that the department would connect with the black community and BLM.

However, the survey also found that while many officers felt negatively about BLM, few felt that race played a factor in their own feelings of safety:

[M]ore than 10 percent said that they fear for their lives on a daily basis.

Of those groups, the significant majority claimed that race doesnt factor into their feelings of safety, while a smaller group said they felt safer with a white individual. Almost no officers said they felt safer with a black individual.

Past studies have found evidence of racial biases in policingmost recently, for example, a Harvard study based on collected data concluded that [e]ven when the police said that civilians were compliant, blacks experienced more force.

The Aizman survey comes as many Americans are expressing concern over the future of policing in America, as President Trump has promised to be tough on crime in inner citiesa message often charged with racial stereotypes.

Others believe Trumps administration has shown outright opposition to BLM. But insofar as the Obama administration was an ally to Black Lives Matterand it was, if only through the Justice Departments series of scathing reports on systemic racism and misconduct in police departments in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and ChicagoTrump has now promised, in his official capacity as the 45th president of the United States, to be its enemy, Slates Leon Neyfakh wrote in late January.

BLM has begun to mobilize in response to the new administration. Brandon Ellington Patterson of Mother Jones wrote last week:

In the wake of Trumps immigration order, BLM organizers mobilized their networks to turn out at airports to protest. The groups also fired up their social media networks to amplify calls for the release of detained travelers. BLM leaders say their strategy will evolve as more details become known about what Trump plans to do on matters ranging from policing and reproductive rights to climate change and LGBT issues. They will focus on combating what they see as Trumps hostile, retrograde agendaand that of right-wing politicians emboldened by Trumpprimarily at the state and local levels.

Since taking office, Trump has signed executive orders reinforcing his commitment to fight crime, gangs, and drugs; restore law and order; and support the dedicated men and women of law enforcement.

John Raphling of The Hill notes, however, that the vague language of the order and related policy statements from the Trump administration feel ominous because of what the president hasnt saidthat the federal government also has an important role to play in helping to ensure that police departments are accountable.

And even police officers themselves are expressing doubts about Trumps stance on law enforcement. The New York Times reports:

We need not use arrest, conviction and prison as the default response for every broken law, Ronal W. Serpas, a former police chief in Nashville and New Orleans, and David O. Brown, a former Dallas chief, wrote in a report released last week by a leading law enforcement group. For many nonviolent and first-time offenders, prison is not only unnecessary from a public safety standpoint, it also endangers our communities.

The group warned that failing to direct these resources toward our most immediate and dangerous threats risks wasting taxpayer dollars, singling out using federal money on dragnet enforcement of lower-level offenses.

Trumps opinions toward BLM and policing are unlikely to help the dissonance that the Blue Voices on Black Lives Matter survey uncovered.

In stark contrast with their earlier statements that race doesnt matter, however, 26 percent of officers said that they believe black people are more likely to be up to no good, the Aizman survey concludes, and 11 percent said that officers are more likely to stop, search, or react violently toward black individuals.

Posted by Emma Niles.

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Small Survey Finds Negative Feelings Among Police Toward Black Lives Matter Movement - Truthdig

(AllHipHop Rumors) You know Meek Mill tries to speak up and throw his two cents in on social and political issues every now and then.

Following the shooting death of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes and a few others in Chicago this week, Meek Mill is now calling for the Black Lives Matter organization to additionally expand their focus to the black on black violence, senseless violence, and the warzone that is Chiraq aka Chicago.

Meek took to Instagram to share his thoughts,

I think its about time for black lives matter focus on Chicago its a lot of kids dying out there and we putting all our focus on cops! RIP BABY GIRL, ONE OF 3 little kids killed this week! CNN not covering this news!

Apparently 19-year-old Antwan Jones opened fire after seeing three rival gang members selling drugs nearby. Takiya was sitting in a nearby van and was struck in her right temple.

Kanari Bowers, 12, was shot in the head by a stray bullet about 30 minutes before Takiya was shot in the West Englewood neighborhood, and the murder of 2-year-old Lavontay White Jr. was captured on Facebook Live.

This sh-t is out of control in Chicago, and it has been for a while. Does Meek Mill have a valid point?

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Meek Mill Has Some Advice For Black Lives Matter - AllHipHop (blog)