While White Liberals Hand Wring Over BLM Tactics, Police Violence Continues Unabated

Only 36 hours after Bernie Sanders’ event in Seattle was shut down by two Black Lives Matter protesters, Ferguson police shot 18 year old Tyrone Harris on the anniversary of the murder of Michael Brown. The two events are connected now, part of a broader issue: the obfuscating concentration by many progressives on the tactics of BLM and not the issue of police violence at the heart of the movement.

Bernie Sanders is seen as the great liberal hope in a contest all but certain to be won by Hillary Clinton. As such, the interruption to his panned speech to supporters in the city of Seattle was met with hand wringing horror from the “liberal” wing of the Democratic Party.

But what really happened to Bernie? His speech was interrupted by two young women, representatives of the Black Lives Matter Movement, who wanted to take the opportunity to speak to a crowd that by all rights should have been on their side. But instead the crowd (in the city Sanders had just called one of the most progressive in the nation) responded to their call for a moment of silence for Mike Brown, one year on, by chanting the name of the white man who had just ceded the podium.

In the wake of this abominable behavior (by the crowd), many liberals on social media and online declared their disapproval of the tactics of the BLM movement and symbolically and virtually washed their hands of it. Others went so far as to call the interruption of Sanders a Clintonian plot to chip away at Sanders’ support among liberal Democrats, as if such Machiavellian machinations were necessary from the presumptive nominee and far and away front-runner.

Fast forward less than a day and a half from that moment. On the one year anniversary of Michael Brown’s murder, a memorial service and concert were attended by police in riot gear. Unsurprisingly, the police took advantage of having their toys and opened fire late at night. Video shows multiple shots fired during an interview with the Ferguson police chief. Another video shows the victim, Tyrone Harris, lying on the ground bleeding.

Ferguson police have released images of police cars with the windows shot out. Apparently this is a justification for shooting young black men.

What happens to black people on a daily basis in the United States at the hands of the police is a fucking atrocity. It is a crime against humanity, it is terrorism. The police act as brutal enforcers of white supremacy in their relentless oppression of and violence towards members of the black community all over the country.

If only those who claim to be the allies of BLM, the “liberal” wing of the Democratic Party, had the same energy and passion for supporting the value of black life in America that they have for a political rally being disrupted. If only police violence against black bodies generated the number of thinkpieces that BLM’s actions in Seattle did. If only.

BLM taking the microphone from Bernie Sanders is a far better reason for the movement to be in the news than the shooting by police of another unarmed African-American. The problem is, the latter happens daily.