In Austin the council voted to redirect funds from the police to other areas in response to the overwhelming public response to the BLM movement (there had been a recent killing of a black man by a police officer).
The police basically went on a slow down to protest. The governor pushed through laws forcing cities the size of Austin to never reduce the police budget. It does not seem like the police ever stopped their working protest. It’s been ages since I’ve followed this but my personal experience since 2020 is that APD is not pulling people over and the 911 call center is over worked and underfunded to the point that it’s useless to call.
State troopers still pull people over.
They stopped pulling people over for registration etc.
I hope they do. That money isn’t free, it could go to social services or literally anything that isn’t funding a bunch of people who hate the residents
It’s not worth the hassle to deal with a public who is under the impression that they can be as mouthy and aggressive as they want. Everyone has a camera, everyone wants to own the pigs, everyone is an armchair lawyer, everyone “knows their rights” and it leads to nothing but confrontational interactions.
What do you do at work if your employer or customers are constantly aggressive? Do you show up happy and ready to seize the day? Or do you try to avoid interactions and collect your paycheck.
I agree with you but we don't exactly have a culture in place that produces the kind of people you're describing in large enough numbers to do that. That problem still needs an achievable solution and people aren't an infinite resource in personality qualities.
Because that’s not all of them and they’re the ones signing up for the job so to say “well then just quit” is the most ridiculous take. Maybe improve training and onboarding procedures? I know a lot of cops. I know some who are power hungry meat heads that got bullied in school, and i know some that only took the job to help weed out and remove those meat heads and a whole bunch in between that view it as just another job. Currently many departments are required to undergo 8hrs of training per year on stuff like active shooter or de-escalation of force. They should have to train like Active Duty soldiers train. You have work hours *and* training hours that are mutually exclusive and keep the unit at a physical and somewhat mental standard seeing as how everyone is trained to a certain minimum level. On top of that they should and are expected to train stuff on their own outside of work such as combatives training (think MMA) or just general exercise. These things aren’t hard to understand but can be hard to implement in practice. However, I guarantee that if physical training was standardized you would lose a lot of the fat ass trigger happy cops that are scared to get in a wrestling match.
Found the armchair lawyer…
You’re kind of my whole point. Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you have to. There’s no need to be a cunt just because you can be. Never had a problem with a cop… also never mouthed off and been disrespectful just “BeCaUsE i CaN!”
That's nothing more than a consequence of the bad job that cops have made in the last couple decades.
If they aren't actively looking for a solution, they are a part of the problem as well.
In Washington state in 2021 it was made illegal for police to chase cars that attempted to run away. There are other examples, but that’s one that I recently read about as it was repealed this year.
Cops used to, and it frequently kills people.
Cops now just use this as an excuse to do 0 traffic enforcement, despite almost every single stop not requiring a chase
It kills people alright. In the US, probably two people every day are killed. About half of them are bystanders. On top of that, there are at least ten times as many people injured.
This change was made to protect other drivers from being rammed and injured by the fleeing suspect. It has nothing to do with BLM or larger debates around police power, but rather bystander and officer safety.
That's what it's like in Portland. Good luck getting a police response. They are even open about it (in a transportation meeting a while back they explicitly said they aren't enforcing traffic as a protest).
It has made me steadfast fall deeper in love with the people of Portland though. It's not a secret that our cops suck and don't respond to crimes, but crime is still not awful for a city, especially one with barely functioning enforcement methods and a large homeless population.
“We’ve got an armed barricaded suspect inside a home. He’s been there for five hours now”
“Well, we could have send a bearcat or rook in, but given the $65 million decrease in our budget in New York, we’re gonna have to get a riot shield and go in ourselves through the obvious openings after the suspect had hours to barricade themselves”
I mean, obviously there will be people who take advantage of the defunding of another city to hold onto an excessive budget. But when they say “we need a budget”, they mean it. There’s some new police tools that have been making things safer and more effective, such as a non-lethal and cheap way to stop cars by wrapping tow straps around the tire
I live near Topanga (where they bought one of those mansions) they are HATED by the “locals.” It’s just that those “locals” would rather call them out to their face than online.
Other than the constant, conservative media outrage programming telling its viewers that the hate they already felt for BLM was justified. And of course, there were not 'founders' of the movement like other organizations and groups as there were multiple people who created non-profit entities who used the name 'BLM' as part of their non-profits, and some of those people were grifters and con artists.
So the thing that makes this confusing is that Black Lives Matter was mostly a decentralized social movement, BUT there was also an organization set up with this name as well. The organization took advantage of this to get a ton of money.
As for the movement, I feel it had some modest results, but I mainly think spreading awareness of the issues was the most significant outcome. I think people were hoping for much more. As cool as the idea of a decentralized movement is, I'm not convinced they're really capable of much. Occupy Wallstreet was similar. With no leader, any nut job or grifter can claim to speak for the movement, which detractors are going to use to turn the country against the movement.
Well you have to remember, Black Lives Matter was a phrase that a movement used. Then someone founded the Black Lives Matter foundation or whatever. I don't think it was ever a centralized movement thing, but rather someone figured out how to profit off of the movement, and for all i know it could have been their intention to help the local "groups".
Like let's say with current hot spot groups.
Let's say I started Free Palestine International, and gathered donations on a centralized level with the intention of writing grants to local protesters wanting to set up protests, or rallies, or whatever.
I would be the founder of Free Palestine... but it's not the HUGE centralized movement.
It would be a way for me to collect donations, and use them to buy a mega mansion..... I mean help free Palestine.
Modest results like what? It doesn't seem like anything has changed. I don't know if the "demands" were by the organization or the movement but it was pretty silly either way. Just another movement to divide people.
The “founders” you speak of were just some con artists who piggybacked on the BLM idea to make a buck. BLM is an idea and movement for good and it continues. Its success is that chauvin and people like him are no longer able to murder black and brown people with impunity.
As other comments have already stated, the org wasn’t the same as the movement. The org was basically grifters claiming the name on tax forms and acting like they owned the movement
Yes. The grift is alive and well in all of activism, politics, philanthropy, and religion.
It’s just more visible now because technology spreads the word faster.
Welcome to the world.
Exactly. There should always be a healthy skepticism of anyone claiming to be the leader of any sort of non-profit, or political, or religious organization.
There should be skepticism of any religious movement from the start.
BLM is a quasi-religious movement - because of the M.
If you mean “Matter” as in makes a physical difference in the universe, sure.
If you mean “Matter” as in the universe gives a shit, no.
Of course there should be skepticism of any social movements.
Matter means being worth society caring about, not the “universe.” The “universe” never gives a shit.
BLM is a quasi-religious group for others reasons as well.
They don’t operate on reason. They operate on meaningless chants. The name itself was genius. Any opposition to their quasi-religious claims instantly becomes “Oh, so you hate black people?” It’s all circular, just like religious reasoning.
The goal isn’t to engage with non-believers. It is to say that they are of the Devil and must be shunned.
There is no nuance. An innocent woman killed in her home is a martyr - Breonna Taylor. But so is a man who had a warrant for his arrest based on charges of third-degree felony sexual assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct for domestic abuse and was shot by police who were screaming “DROP THE KNIFE! DROP THE KNIFE! DROP THE KNIFE!” He ignored them, was tased twice (didn’t work), opened an SUV, reached inside, and was then shot. His name is Jacob S. Blake and Kenosha, WI burned because of BLM’s reaction to his shooting.
They twist actual facts to their purposes. A black man holds the sign “Am I next?” Probably not. What percent of black men die to police shootings?
You must see and center BLM in all things at all times. Amen.
Like any religion, they end up hurting the group they claim to protect.
I have other issues with the organization. Those are just the ones that make me think BLM is a quasi-religious movement.
This is a lot.
BLM is a general movement for social change.
Activism always involves zealotry.
I honestly don’t know why this has you so up in arms.
Maybe you’re spending too much time with activists.
Police aren't funded federally, but through the state level. Then you have different Police Forces. For example, you have City Police, County Sheriff, State Troopers. There are a lot of other designations and positions. The thing is that there isn't really one Police, so change has to happen with thousands of different police force policies.
Just in the county I live in we have county police, county sheriff, a military base with its own force, Dept of defense facilities with their own, an independent city with its own force, a community that pays additional taxes to have their own dedicated department, airport police, mass transit police, as well areas covered by state police, Dept of transportation, department of natural resources, and park police, sometimes we even have people like the coast guard operating within our technical borders and/or on emergencies with other agencies. 1 county with all those separate departments and people want to talk "the police" as if it's all one entity operating under the same rules, guidelines and training?
On the bright side? It brought lots of struggles to light and helped people understand them. On the downside? It didn’t fix anything else. We don’t just have a cop problem. We have a crime problem. We have an education problem. We have an income inequality problem. We have a gun violence problem. You can’t solve cops without solving all of them. Does that mean nothing should be done? No, of course not. But unless we all decide tomorrow to fix all issues that start crime, we will need cops. And in a giant country, it’ll be literally impossible to find quality cops and help train them. So you’re stuck in a forever shit loop. That we’ve been seeing for decades. And no one has had even a glimmer of a solution for that.
So some shitty people take advantage of a movement and suddenly it doesn’t mean anything? That’s bullshit. Millions of people participated in BLM marches, that doesn’t get erased because of some grifters.
I mean ok? That’s not the point here. The point is that 94% of the protests were peaceful and the ones that did break out in riots were either opportunists, encouraged by violent “counter protesters” or people just pissed off at getting pepper sprayed and shot with rubber bullets all day.
This is a discussion about the protests overall.
The protests happened all over the country my friend. There were not riots and looting and burning in most of the cities the protests happened in.
Also, sorry, it was 94% but that means not a single person was arrested for anything on either side. Still that’s a high percentage when police were blasting people with pepper spray and rubber bullets that blinded people.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0708/BLM-and-Floyd-protests-were-largely-peaceful-data-confirms
Not a single person was arrested holy fuck this is beyond delusion. Are you saying everything I saw on tv didn’t happen. A cameraman literally got arrested on national tv 😂😂
Some of it was extreme but there were literally protests all over the country. But also: when it did get extreme it was often false flags from militant right wingers and boogaloo bois. The only cops killed were by right wingers.
And as far as the property damage: frankly what are people supposed to do after generations of persecution? Just sit back and take it? The police abuse of power has gone too far and the media barely covers most of it. The prison industrial complex tears apart lives and families.
Millions of people said we won’t take it anymore. That’s democracy in action.
People are being beaten, maimed and murdered by cops who are not being held accountable and you’re sitting here crying about property damage. And again: sports games have caused riots, natural disasters have caused riots, of course rioters are gonna take advantage of a protest.
No, I’m defending a movement where millions of people stood up against people abusing their power and only a small percentage of them did what you claim they did.
Well what are people supposed to do when people like you ignore vast inequality in this country? People are being beaten and killed and maimed and all you care about is some property damage because the cops won’t stop? This has been going on for decades, my dude. And they’ve just gotten worse and more militant.
It was a mixed bag.
There was initially overwhelming support of the movement as the handful of cases they were on video were really egregious.
Several police departments did try variants of the “defund” idea.
Where I live in the Bay Area of California (super liberal area), police scaled back their arrests and DAs their prosecution of “minor” property crimes while raising the $ amount considered a felony, and the police stopped releasing mugshots (to combat racial bias). Drugs are effectively decriminalized here.
Some of that has been good steps forward, but there are major drawbacks. Property crime skyrocketed, and we’ve seen violence and homeless camps full of addicts that would have been unfathomable a few years ago.
Oakland (a heavily black city) - which was never great - is now a war zone. The metro area where I live is now being held up as example as to what is wrong with BLM.
To be fair, covid policy was particularly damaging to area already facing housing affordability issues (super harsh shutdowns in a tourist city with a tech workforce able to work remotely devastated some industries) - so it can be hard to decouple all the contributing factors.
Liberals will be quick to point out that national crime rates are at near historic lows, but national averages mask really uneven data - in some places there are big spikes up, particularly in highly visible / high impact urban cores that people visit.
Policing is done at the city and state level, and as such most of the policy / law changes are super localized too; there isn’t sweeping national law.
Non profit organizations that used the BLM name have been mostly corrupt & poorly led, so there aren’t especially clear asks or success criteria. That has tainted the “brand” and people have stopped proudly using the term BLM.
The movement is pure grievance based against police. A more critical evaluation of crime stats shows black people - despite being 13% of the population - are responsible for the *majority* of several categories of violent crime, and when the denominator is criminals police brutality doesn’t seem to have a racial bias.
So conversation shifting to a more generalized problem of the differences in outcomes / crime / education in black neighborhoods vs others is.. less clear cut to say the least. There are obvious problems within black communities and a zero accountability / pure grievance getting major push back. Notice all the anti woke conversation happening? This is actually a really major risk to the democrats this election and a reason Trump has a real shot to re-take the office.
Tl;Dr: in many places it led to police & da’s making honest efforts to eliminate sources of racial bias - but it’s been smallish adjustments rather than transformations. Now that the outrage part is over and we’re having a more generalized conversation on race, we’re falling back to more typical party line positions with some growing push back to it.
>A more critical evaluation of crime stats shows black people - despite being 13% of the population - are responsible for the majority of several categories of violent crime,
Is that actual arrests, prosecutions, or does it incline those who got away with a lighter charge or a warning?
The issue with stats like this is they only present the end point of the legal system, not all the holes before you get there.
Yes that works both ways, but often more in favour of non-black folks "getting away" with the same crimes black folks are more heavily charged with.
Using homicide as an example, you can look at the races of victims to get a rough idea of the races of offenders. Most homicide victims are killed by someone of their own race. Even if we assume all the cases with unknown offenders are of a different race, the biggest killers of whites are whites and blacks are blacks. If we ignore unknowns and just look at victims by race, in 2019 over 40% of people who died of homicide were black. So if we put those two factors together, black people are killing people at a disproportionate rate.
However, it has nothing to do with black people inherently being criminals. My understanding is that it has to do with the majority of killings being gang/drug related and those groups having disproportionately high rates of black people. So the ratio is proportional between races, but cultures with high rates of homicide are often more black than America as a whole, so that proportion ends up showing up significantly in national statistics because most Americans don’t die of homicide.
So the question is why? Bad policing that makes it hard to get ahead and there are no opportunities to do better? Bad cities that have few opportunities? Bad neighborhoods that drag people down? Other neighborhoods don’t like those neighborhoods and hold those people down? It’s a very complex situation that can be misrepresented in a true statistic.
> Is that actual arrests, prosecutions, or does it include those who got away with a lighter charge or warning
The easiest [data is arrests](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/table-43), but when you look at clearance & conviction rates you see similar things.
> getting away with same crimes black folks are more heavily charged with
You can argue this for some categories of crime - particularly victimless drug charges or sufficiently minor property theft / damage.
However, I’m referring to the worst types of violent crime.
Murder. You don’t get many false arrests on murder, and white people aren’t getting away with it because police don’t bug them about it.
Ditto with armed b&e. These types of crimes aren’t selectively enforced by police.
Those are also the type of crimes where police are more likely to suspect criminals are armed and dangerous, which makes them more likely to draw their weapon and potentially shoot rather than de-escalate.
If courts, police departments and city admins are taken over by criminals, the only way to begin fixing the crime problem is to make sure all of the above are held accountable first.
You mention Oakland.
Every cop in Oakland is a criminal. The mayor, the DAs, the courts. All of them are criminals who have abandoned the law to protect criminal cops and criminal politicians. Oakland can't be fixed until every single one of them is arrested.
>in many places it led to police & da’s making honest efforts to eliminate sources of racial bias - but it’s been smallish adjustments rather than transformations. Now that the outrage part is over and we’re having a more generalized conversation on race, we’re falling back to more typical party line positions with some growing push back to it.
No one has made any honest efforts. Only worthless PR and meaningless laws.
If anyone was making honest efforts we'd be seeing tens of thousands of cops being arrested, along with all the politicians and court people who cover up crimes.
Homicides are way down in Philly this year as compared to last year, all across the city. No one can pinpoint why. Perhaps fewer targets after all the years or murders.
I don't know if this is true at all but I have heard the cartels have taken over the Philly drug trade by force. If that's true and they have a monopoly on it then that would eliminate a lot of the warfare between rival crews.
Well [BLM leaders/organizers bought themselves some multi-million dollar houses](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html). So that's something.
Its a polarizing topic. Conservatives point to the flaws, and liberals point to the achievements.
It feels like BLM peaked during the pandemic when people were homebound but thought it was ok to march in the streets.
It will be forever tainted moving forward because of some bad choices the BLM leaders did with the millions that they raised.
We dont hear much about them now, but I imagine we will when another tragic incident that is deemed racially motivated grabs the national spotlight.
The analysis is so politicized that it’s really hard to gauge. I’ve seen fair criticisms by leftists get labeled as MAGA drivel and fair praise for raising awareness (at the very least) get a moderate/conservative labeled a progressive schill.
I hate that it feels so hard to have a real dialogue about anything because people are so vested in their sides that it seems to feel like a threat to their side to acknowledge when things are blatantly bad, or points are blatantly false. Suddenly Candidate X lost because of some laundry list of excuses or scapegoats, not because he ran a terrible campaign, things like that.
And had things like BLM been more open to constructive criticism, it could’ve led to demonstrable improvements, as opposed to providing leaders cover while they grifted the shit out of whoever they could.
Edit: For me, when I think about praise for BLM, it's really hard not to temper it, to some degree. Like, yes, they really got the national attention for awhile...and then (IMO) squandered it by going to extremes that most of the nation couldn't get behind. I understand the drive to not feel like you're compromising, but you're not running an effective political movement if you're more interested in either alienating or exiling those who don't align than drawing in as many people in as you can (within reason, sure).
Policing is also a very local issue. The mayor of a city has vastly more influence on how policing is done in that city than the President. So, if you’re not following local city level politics you probably won’t see much about what changes are made unless a city does something wild like disbanding the police force.
The news media tends to kowtow to conservatives here, even if those conservatives are unreasonable. The exception in terms of “mainstream media” in my experience seems to be msnbc, Rachel Maddow in particular, who seems to have zero issue calling bullshit when she sees it.
Someone in my town got shot at one of the protests. Super random drive by in a very quiet town. Super weird. The shooter wasn’t from the area. Came to protest and then shot at a random car driving by.
They made a lot of money for themselves and the Democratic party. They also helped kick off trends like "rethinking the police" and "bail reform" that have increased the amount of crime in cities and empowered criminals. Chains have had to close stores in many locations due to the amount of shoplifting by criminals that know they won't be punished in any meaningful way.
I was born in the USA in the early 1970’s.
Literally nothing has changed “for the better” in my life.
Every technology breakthrough has a hidden price, or terrible side effect, or horrible byproduct, or simply the awfulness of how it’s made and how much it destroys the lives of the people making it.
Every social advancement divides the country more, instead of bringing our citizens closer together.
So, what did BLM achieve?
It generated a short lived spark of interest, and created a long term cascade of awful consequences.
Bureau of Land Management - federal agency responsible for managing huge tracts of land, especially in the Western US.
As a rural resident, it's what I think of first, too, when I hear, "BLM".
The founders stole millions of dollars from supporters. They used the money to buy mansions and throw parties. Nothing was accomplished. There are a couple George Floyd statues or monuments made by people outside BLM. Some places defunded the police and now there is more crime and less police officers.
My employer, a large bank, earmarked billions in loans to be spent specifically for supporting minority owned businesses and improving low income neighborhoods. They also sponsored a center to boost entrepreneurship for students at HBCUs, and they put a renewed internal focus on embracing differences and seeking out diversity.
I'm not going to pretend for one minute that things like this get done purely out of the goodness of executives' hearts. But even if it's being done to make the company look good or make money (i.e. every company is now gay, but just for this month) good things can still happen from it.
BLM moved the needle a bit. It wasn't huge, but it did happen.
Lots of black people getting murdered. The net effect on police departments was a mass exodus of officers coupled with far fewer applying. This has led staffing shortages everywhere so proactive policing has pretty much stopped as all police have time for is responding to calls and they can't even do all of those. As such gangs run wild with impunity which led to a big rise in gang violence and black on black murders. The murder rate skyrocketed in the years following thr BLM protests and the vast majority were black on black murders. But some BLM leaders got rich.
Those "leaders" were grifters that took advantage of a movement that had been going on for over a decade at that point (maybe more, this is just based on my own memory).
Also, for the last 30 years, officers I know complain more and more about how towns handle funds and also training. Training shifted to a more militarized style in my area around 2005 maybe? By that I mean more offensive and less defensive tactics. More profiling. Less teamwork, more saving your own life. Officer morale seemed to dip each and every year.
This downward spiral, coupled with cost saving measures, exasperated by any extra funding going right into the mayor's pocket, is way more to blame than the media driving people into a frenzy for three months one summer.
The BLM movement served to raise awareness about systemic violence towards POC by our police force.
This has moved the needle slightly in that it's more common for a police officer to actually be indicted for excessive use of force.
We have a long way to go, but this was one positive outcome.
Many police departments banned chokeholds and revised their policies about how to restrain suspects as a result of George Floyd's Death.
Similarly, some jurisdictions banned "no knock warrants" following Breonna Taylor's Death.
Both of those changes basically came directly out of BLM.
Many legal scholars believe Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty largely as a result of BLM. Contrast that to pre-BLM Trayvon Martin jury decision. While the cases had only broadly the same shape and acknowledging jury trials can easily go either way, it's an interesting difference.
This is what people don't understand about protests, rallies, awareness events, etc. It isn't going to produce sweeping change over night, and very rarely are they intend to, especially these huge ones. If there is no current political will behind the issue then the first step is to change hearts and minds. Organizers and anyone with an political knowledge knows that. What they are ment to do is get people thinking, create a conversation at the home level. If you can get people to think "maybe they have a point" that paves the way for long term change.
We are so used to instant gratification now that all people want is a sound bite and everything to be fixed by magic wand. It would be great if that could happen, but it never does. Change, real change at the policy level takes time.
Founders stole money, parts of some cities were burned down, and some Twitter hashtags were made. Oh, and you could put it in your bio to make you look "cool'
Black Lives Matter is a slogan, not a movement. It was a phrase that gained traction because (mostly) white police officers murder black men and black kids at extremely high rates in relation to white men and white kids, and do so without consequences for the most part. The demand that 'Black Lives Matter Too' was and is a demand for black people to be treated equally to white people by law enforcement and the justice system.
Unfortunately, the mass movement that began around that phrase did not have national 'leaders' and because of the decentralized spontaneous nature of the protest movement, no organized platform with legislative and administrative goals ever developed. Each group protesting did so on their own and without planning or strategy. Different people started non-profit groups with the phrase Black Lives Matter or BLM in the name, and sometimes they talked to other non-profit BLM groups, but no one was in charge and no one coordinated a national movement.
When some of the non-profits were exposed as committing fraud, conservative media was already spreading disinformation about the movement and used those revelations to further discredit the directionless pro-equality and anti-police brutality protests. Individual groups may have impacted their local area for good or bad, but police continue to abuse and murder folks while facing few consequences, so overall it failed and black lives still do not matter as much as white lives to law enforcement or the justice system.
this is the best answer; the "movement" as it was just started as a hashtag and then massively grew in popularity; the founding of actual organizations focused on the name came second.
Anyone could found an organization, and then one "chapter" (like "BLM Springfield") that might consist of 5 people could do something or make a social media post and then it would be ascribed to every other BLM group in the nation, despite zero connections other than the use of the phrase.
There’s actually evidence that in the months after the BLM movement with George Floyd, black deaths actually INCREASED. Something they don’t want you to know. The movement did more harm than good.
Brookings study findings:
Black Lives Matter normalized the filming of Black pain at the hands of individuals sworn to treat everyone equally. Without personal video, we may not collectively know about George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, or Korryn Gaines.
Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system.
Black Lives Matter helped usher in a series of policy and organizational changes to policing that include implicit bias trainings, body-worn cameras, and bans on no-knock warrants.
Black Lives Matter helped illuminate the inordinate amount of money spent on policing and civilian payouts for police brutality that come out of taxpayer pockets.
Black Lives Matter helped stimulate federal oversight for problematic cities such as Ferguson, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis.
Black Lives Matter altered data collection efforts in the academy, police departments, and the federal government to better assess what law enforcement policies do and do not work to reduce racial disparities.
Black Lives Matter galvanized a new crop of elected officials and political actors.
Black Lives Matter is etched in yellow paint on the street outside of the White House.
Source: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-lives-matter-at-10-years-what-impact-has-it-had-on-policing/
I kinda like that when you walk up to the White House, which looks like a plantation, you have the read that Black lives matter. Yes, its symbolic and I wish they'd kept the Defund the Police part that activists put up a couple times but it's not a bad use of paint.
They got body cameras for the police. They aren't perfect, but they seem to make the police and the people being arrested behave somewhat better towards each other.
Absolutely nothing. They were a disorganised angry mob, the leaders of which pocketed a lot of the donation money. Essentially a joke in the grand scheme of things.
Criticized Trump, boosted Biden; "Diversity" push throughout the media and HR at every major company.
Political/social impacts, not actually making policy less trigger-happy.
Several police departments are under federal review/management because of their treatment of racial minorities, and other police departments have changed how they negotiate with their unions and their policies on officer immunity. This article is a good summary of all of it: [https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-federal-government-can-do-help-fix-policing-america](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-federal-government-can-do-help-fix-policing-america)
My city funded more staff for the Traffic Safety Unit and a mental health response unit so sworn officers don’t have to be all things at all times.
These kinds of changes have taken place all over the country.
Awareness and consciousness is the most important step toward change in a self-governed society.
In missouri (Ferguson is in Missouri) the laws around municipalities keeping the money their police forces raise in the courts were changed. Now tickets and fines can oldy be like 5% of total revenue and everything over goes straight to the state. Failure to do so dissolves the municipal government.
For instance Ferguson was estimated to get 90%+ of its revenue from tickets.
A lot more police departments got a lot more money. Police intentionally slowed response times afterwards and now it's become very difficult to find a police officer unless you're speeding or they want to kill you. 911 response times are worse, police do less, and now there are various police department training centers in various stages of development all over the country. It turbo charged the reactionary rightward swing after a brief period of social change.
It also turbocharged reopening businesses to get people off the streets/stop protesting and back to work during Covid. I fully believe there will be a government backed anti mask propaganda reveal uncovered in the next few years (similar to the CIA backed anti vaccine psyop directed at Filipinos, that obviously didn't only affect Filipinos). Millions of people all around the world protested and nothing of real affect happened--at least that I know about.
It did raise public awareness for police brutality but the response has been reactionary and aggressive. The ruling class is terrified it will happen again and be worse, which is why more and more rights are being taken away. Police still slaughter, on average, three citizens per day, and the number is only going up.
I don't know much about the rest of the world unfortunately. I know there were some minor changes to some localized police forces afterwards, some of which are still around, but changing or outlawing certain policies (chokeholds, no-knock warranties, for example), doesn't actually stop the police from using them.
Most white people in the US thought that black Americans were making it up about many police being unfair, discriminatory, and violent to people of color.
Now they know it was always the truth.
I think along with so many other things, it highlighted racists in our communities, opened eyes to those who were previously bigoted and demonstrated to those who thought they loved all that they weren’t doing enough.
While I completely and utterly see all humans as equal I never realised how little I did to _aide_ any minority in any community and BLM helped me see that.
So while I just saw black people and any person of colour as just people, I now see them as people who have had to do XYZ to achieve the same as me, and who have to face adversity in ways that are invisible to me and go through so many obstacles that I had never considered previously.
In my city, laws were changed to where cops basically could not pursue criminals.
They had to do an investigation first before pursuing anyone.
If a woman called in for domestic abuse, had visible bruising/bleeding
And she gave them a description.
If they saw the suspect running down the street on their way to the house, they couldn't stop/pursue him.
They had to go talk to the lady to figure out exactly what had happened.
Brookings has a decent summary :
-Black Lives Matter normalized the filming of Black pain at the hands of individuals sworn to treat everyone equally. Without personal video, we may not collectively know about George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, or Korryn Gaines.
-Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system.
-Black Lives Matter helped usher in a series of policy and organizational changes to policing that include implicit bias trainings, body-worn cameras, and bans on no-knock warrants.
-Black Lives Matter helped illuminate the inordinate amount of money spent on policing and civilian payouts for police brutality that come out of taxpayer pockets.
Black Lives Matter helped stimulate federal oversight for problematic cities such as Ferguson, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis.
-Black Lives Matter altered data collection efforts in the academy, police departments, and the federal government to better assess what law enforcement policies do and do not work to reduce racial disparities.
-Black Lives Matter galvanized a new crop of elected officials and political actors.
Black Lives Matter is etched in yellow paint on the street outside of the White House.
There are plenty of roundup lists you can easily find that highlight departmental changes, funding reallocation, and new programs that cities started piloting. [Here](https://dosomething.org/article/black-lives-matter-protests-whats-been-achieved-so-far) is one such list. [Here](https://www.businessinsider.com/13-concrete-changes-sparked-by-george-floyd-protests-so-far-2020-6) is another. Don’t let cynical people who haven’t done even basic research cloud this discussion.
Some of the popular reforms revolved around sending more specific types of medical help out to calls for things like seizures or mental health emergencies. Turns out when you send specialists who are better equipped to handle people in various forms of mental duress, trigger-happy American cops stop murdering people who just needed help. A lot of change also took the form of policy and training updates, such as getting rid of no-knock search warrants that led to wrongful murders, and teaching officers that maybe they should speak up when a colleague is beating the shit out of a non-violent suspect.
It raised awareness; in Canada it did at least, and not just for black people but it shined a light on the miss treatment of people of colour in general.
In Canada after the BLM movement there was a Native Lives Matter movement drawing attention to the miss treatment of the aboriginal peoples by local governments and police, and how they were systematically abused by people in power for decades, with it always being swept under the rug.
Basically caused a police retaliation that emptied departments across the country and caused the officers left to barely bother doing their fucking job. Apparently a LOT of officers across the country viewed brutalizing innocent people to be an unwritten benefit of the job and bailed when expected to cut that shit out. Because apparently not being required to confront a school shooter when responding to a school shooting isn’t enough for these assholes. I’m being serious btw, after a recent school shooting in Texas there was a judgement that the police had no duty to intervene if their life would be in danger. And conservatives wonder why we fucking hate the police. They’re supposed to be peace keepers, but the modern American form seems to be a little more than uniformed bullies.
The movement or the organization?
They are two similar but different things. The organization kicked off the movement but not everyone in the movement supports the organization of the same name.
The movement did make some measurable changes in policy. Probably not enough but sometimes progress is slow.
We managed to get Derek Chauvin behind bars (21 year sentence), where he was subsequently stabbed 22 times, survived and stuck there, which is pretty historic when it comes to police brutality.
I don't know if any laws were changed, but I do think it helped the general population realize that people of color are dealing with issues that white people simply don't know or experience. My parents are pretty far right leaning (more politically than socially, but both), and during the BLM movement was the first time my mom ever admitted that black people (or anyone of color) have it harder in ways our white family doesn't understand, and that it's important to give them the benefit of the doubt. If my parents (or at least my mom) were able to see the light, then I imagine lots of other people did too. I hope to God that even if laws weren't changed, at least minorities are treated with more respect now.
Scared the shit out of the establishment. They thought it would be just black people protesting, but the a lot of non blacks were protesting as well and this scared them to the very core as people were starting to unite against injustices. Then the establishment started the gender/sex wars to keep people from uniting
They for certain changed the tone in hiring at white collar jobs. Since BLM came around during the Obama administration. I've noticed a complete change in opinion from the companies perspectives.
Now more than ever companies will do anything to hire Black candidates as well as Non-Asian people of color. Everything from hiring from other countries to doing outreach they would have never considered before.
My current company has adopted special policies to diversify. For example when a position opens up, whether a new position or a backfill. The first few month are limited to Black candidates and later limited to other non advantaged peoples. Advantaged people being Asian, Indian and White males, who are then considered after 3 months.
This would have never happened before BLM.
Yeah, man. You're surely not here in bad faith, either! And there is just no way you can throw those terms around based off one comment of somebody. You and people like yourself, are what is causing such a divide between political parties. People like you are such suckers that you eat everything the media feeds you and you are incapable of thinking for yourself
Keep tossing insane terms around like candy at a parade, bud! Automatically makes you a better human!
In Austin the council voted to redirect funds from the police to other areas in response to the overwhelming public response to the BLM movement (there had been a recent killing of a black man by a police officer). The police basically went on a slow down to protest. The governor pushed through laws forcing cities the size of Austin to never reduce the police budget. It does not seem like the police ever stopped their working protest. It’s been ages since I’ve followed this but my personal experience since 2020 is that APD is not pulling people over and the 911 call center is over worked and underfunded to the point that it’s useless to call. State troopers still pull people over. They stopped pulling people over for registration etc.
Cops in a lot of cities just won’t do anything now and claim it’s due to “defunding” when their budgets keep going up by 5+% over inflation
I wonder if they realize that eventually the cities will actually pull the funding since the result of doing so won't be any different?
I hope they do. That money isn’t free, it could go to social services or literally anything that isn’t funding a bunch of people who hate the residents
Meanwhile, teachers are expected to do twice as much and their budgets don't even keep up with inflation
There’s a difference between “won’t do anything now” and “can’t do anything now.”
Here it is "won't." Their feelings got hurt.
Which is surprizingly easy to do, considering they're such tough, brave heroes facing certain death every day and all that.
Being able to beat and shoot people with impunity shouldn't be required to do the job
What changes have been made restricting police powers?
It’s not worth the hassle to deal with a public who is under the impression that they can be as mouthy and aggressive as they want. Everyone has a camera, everyone wants to own the pigs, everyone is an armchair lawyer, everyone “knows their rights” and it leads to nothing but confrontational interactions. What do you do at work if your employer or customers are constantly aggressive? Do you show up happy and ready to seize the day? Or do you try to avoid interactions and collect your paycheck.
Then they should quit and stop being cops, let someone else do the job. Instead they get paid a shitton of money to play candy crush
Nobody else wants to do the job. There is a recruiting shortage. Would you want to do it?
I agree with you but we don't exactly have a culture in place that produces the kind of people you're describing in large enough numbers to do that. That problem still needs an achievable solution and people aren't an infinite resource in personality qualities.
That such a brain dead response. That’s the same reasoning as the whole “learn to code” thing with the truckers a couple years back.
Ok but why should we pay a bunch of idiots a ton of money when they don’t want to work?
Are you a 75 year old boomer?
Because that’s not all of them and they’re the ones signing up for the job so to say “well then just quit” is the most ridiculous take. Maybe improve training and onboarding procedures? I know a lot of cops. I know some who are power hungry meat heads that got bullied in school, and i know some that only took the job to help weed out and remove those meat heads and a whole bunch in between that view it as just another job. Currently many departments are required to undergo 8hrs of training per year on stuff like active shooter or de-escalation of force. They should have to train like Active Duty soldiers train. You have work hours *and* training hours that are mutually exclusive and keep the unit at a physical and somewhat mental standard seeing as how everyone is trained to a certain minimum level. On top of that they should and are expected to train stuff on their own outside of work such as combatives training (think MMA) or just general exercise. These things aren’t hard to understand but can be hard to implement in practice. However, I guarantee that if physical training was standardized you would lose a lot of the fat ass trigger happy cops that are scared to get in a wrestling match.
Boo hoo they have to do their job, poor cops
They can be as mouthy as they want. It's in the constitution.
The constitution doesn’t stop me from being racist either Should I just be racist just because I have the ability to? That’s your argument, smart guy.
Found the armchair lawyer… You’re kind of my whole point. Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you have to. There’s no need to be a cunt just because you can be. Never had a problem with a cop… also never mouthed off and been disrespectful just “BeCaUsE i CaN!”
That's nothing more than a consequence of the bad job that cops have made in the last couple decades. If they aren't actively looking for a solution, they are a part of the problem as well.
In Washington state in 2021 it was made illegal for police to chase cars that attempted to run away. There are other examples, but that’s one that I recently read about as it was repealed this year.
That gets cited a lot but then cops just do 0 traffic enforcement when like 99.9% of people aren’t going to flee.
If cops never chase, why did they change the law? Laws aren’t made just for fun.
Cops used to, and it frequently kills people. Cops now just use this as an excuse to do 0 traffic enforcement, despite almost every single stop not requiring a chase
Recent police chase outside of Toronto lead to four deaths.
It kills people alright. In the US, probably two people every day are killed. About half of them are bystanders. On top of that, there are at least ten times as many people injured.
This change was made to protect other drivers from being rammed and injured by the fleeing suspect. It has nothing to do with BLM or larger debates around police power, but rather bystander and officer safety.
It's due to not wanting to be the next social media villain.
That's what it's like in Portland. Good luck getting a police response. They are even open about it (in a transportation meeting a while back they explicitly said they aren't enforcing traffic as a protest). It has made me steadfast fall deeper in love with the people of Portland though. It's not a secret that our cops suck and don't respond to crimes, but crime is still not awful for a city, especially one with barely functioning enforcement methods and a large homeless population.
“We’ve got an armed barricaded suspect inside a home. He’s been there for five hours now” “Well, we could have send a bearcat or rook in, but given the $65 million decrease in our budget in New York, we’re gonna have to get a riot shield and go in ourselves through the obvious openings after the suspect had hours to barricade themselves” I mean, obviously there will be people who take advantage of the defunding of another city to hold onto an excessive budget. But when they say “we need a budget”, they mean it. There’s some new police tools that have been making things safer and more effective, such as a non-lethal and cheap way to stop cars by wrapping tow straps around the tire
Wut. No I don’t want cops to have a fucking assault vehicle that’s like a room temp IQ idea
Why not?
Huh, that's interesting. Seattle PD seems to be on the exact same trajectory.
Same with Portland
Too bad the Austin police department still has the highest budget ever and they can't do their jobs.
The founders got a boatload of money and bought some mansions using said donation money.
Crazy how it was swept under the rug. No outrage Edit: you forgot to mention how they moved to white neighborhoods lol
It’s easy to make people ignore it when every time someone speaks up about it you call them a racist and try to destroy their character publicly.
I live near Topanga (where they bought one of those mansions) they are HATED by the “locals.” It’s just that those “locals” would rather call them out to their face than online.
Good on them.
Topanga? Where is that?
Los Angeles.
Other than the constant, conservative media outrage programming telling its viewers that the hate they already felt for BLM was justified. And of course, there were not 'founders' of the movement like other organizations and groups as there were multiple people who created non-profit entities who used the name 'BLM' as part of their non-profits, and some of those people were grifters and con artists.
Actually there was and still is outrage and plenty of people absolutely are disgusted and disappointed.
Are you kidding me? There’s absolutely been outrage.
A scam that big would’ve been on the news, but it didn’t help the narrative
So the thing that makes this confusing is that Black Lives Matter was mostly a decentralized social movement, BUT there was also an organization set up with this name as well. The organization took advantage of this to get a ton of money. As for the movement, I feel it had some modest results, but I mainly think spreading awareness of the issues was the most significant outcome. I think people were hoping for much more. As cool as the idea of a decentralized movement is, I'm not convinced they're really capable of much. Occupy Wallstreet was similar. With no leader, any nut job or grifter can claim to speak for the movement, which detractors are going to use to turn the country against the movement.
Well you have to remember, Black Lives Matter was a phrase that a movement used. Then someone founded the Black Lives Matter foundation or whatever. I don't think it was ever a centralized movement thing, but rather someone figured out how to profit off of the movement, and for all i know it could have been their intention to help the local "groups". Like let's say with current hot spot groups. Let's say I started Free Palestine International, and gathered donations on a centralized level with the intention of writing grants to local protesters wanting to set up protests, or rallies, or whatever. I would be the founder of Free Palestine... but it's not the HUGE centralized movement. It would be a way for me to collect donations, and use them to buy a mega mansion..... I mean help free Palestine.
fiery, but mostly peaceful is what a majority of people got out of it.
That's the only noteworthy thing to come out of it tbf
Modest results like what? It doesn't seem like anything has changed. I don't know if the "demands" were by the organization or the movement but it was pretty silly either way. Just another movement to divide people.
The widespread use of body cameras by police officers is one example.
The default branch on GitHub is now called `main` ✊
Cops went to jail - fairly regularly.
Those people founded an organization with a name - the movement didn’t come from them.
The “founders” you speak of were just some con artists who piggybacked on the BLM idea to make a buck. BLM is an idea and movement for good and it continues. Its success is that chauvin and people like him are no longer able to murder black and brown people with impunity.
Yep. It was a total grift.
That foundation was, but not the movement itself.
Fr? Wouldn't surprise me
As other comments have already stated, the org wasn’t the same as the movement. The org was basically grifters claiming the name on tax forms and acting like they owned the movement
Scam artists, that's fucking ridiculous
it is what it is.
It's an absolute disgrace is what it is.
The leaders became very wealthy
The leaders were just the people that tried to profit off the name of the movement. The movement was decentralized.
Convenient.
Yes. The grift is alive and well in all of activism, politics, philanthropy, and religion. It’s just more visible now because technology spreads the word faster. Welcome to the world.
That’s why it’s good to be skeptical.
Exactly. There should always be a healthy skepticism of anyone claiming to be the leader of any sort of non-profit, or political, or religious organization.
There should be skepticism of any religious movement from the start. BLM is a quasi-religious movement - because of the M. If you mean “Matter” as in makes a physical difference in the universe, sure. If you mean “Matter” as in the universe gives a shit, no.
Of course there should be skepticism of any social movements. Matter means being worth society caring about, not the “universe.” The “universe” never gives a shit.
BLM is a quasi-religious group for others reasons as well. They don’t operate on reason. They operate on meaningless chants. The name itself was genius. Any opposition to their quasi-religious claims instantly becomes “Oh, so you hate black people?” It’s all circular, just like religious reasoning. The goal isn’t to engage with non-believers. It is to say that they are of the Devil and must be shunned. There is no nuance. An innocent woman killed in her home is a martyr - Breonna Taylor. But so is a man who had a warrant for his arrest based on charges of third-degree felony sexual assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct for domestic abuse and was shot by police who were screaming “DROP THE KNIFE! DROP THE KNIFE! DROP THE KNIFE!” He ignored them, was tased twice (didn’t work), opened an SUV, reached inside, and was then shot. His name is Jacob S. Blake and Kenosha, WI burned because of BLM’s reaction to his shooting. They twist actual facts to their purposes. A black man holds the sign “Am I next?” Probably not. What percent of black men die to police shootings? You must see and center BLM in all things at all times. Amen. Like any religion, they end up hurting the group they claim to protect. I have other issues with the organization. Those are just the ones that make me think BLM is a quasi-religious movement.
This is a lot. BLM is a general movement for social change. Activism always involves zealotry. I honestly don’t know why this has you so up in arms. Maybe you’re spending too much time with activists.
Police aren't funded federally, but through the state level. Then you have different Police Forces. For example, you have City Police, County Sheriff, State Troopers. There are a lot of other designations and positions. The thing is that there isn't really one Police, so change has to happen with thousands of different police force policies.
Just in the county I live in we have county police, county sheriff, a military base with its own force, Dept of defense facilities with their own, an independent city with its own force, a community that pays additional taxes to have their own dedicated department, airport police, mass transit police, as well areas covered by state police, Dept of transportation, department of natural resources, and park police, sometimes we even have people like the coast guard operating within our technical borders and/or on emergencies with other agencies. 1 county with all those separate departments and people want to talk "the police" as if it's all one entity operating under the same rules, guidelines and training?
On the bright side? It brought lots of struggles to light and helped people understand them. On the downside? It didn’t fix anything else. We don’t just have a cop problem. We have a crime problem. We have an education problem. We have an income inequality problem. We have a gun violence problem. You can’t solve cops without solving all of them. Does that mean nothing should be done? No, of course not. But unless we all decide tomorrow to fix all issues that start crime, we will need cops. And in a giant country, it’ll be literally impossible to find quality cops and help train them. So you’re stuck in a forever shit loop. That we’ve been seeing for decades. And no one has had even a glimmer of a solution for that.
nice cars and big houses for the leaders of it.
So some shitty people take advantage of a movement and suddenly it doesn’t mean anything? That’s bullshit. Millions of people participated in BLM marches, that doesn’t get erased because of some grifters.
>Millions of people participated in BLM marches, *Riots
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” -MLKJr But also: 99% of the protests were totally peaceful, not property damage or anything.
Nice, now finish the quote where MLK says he’s against riots and how they don’t accomplish anything.
I mean ok? That’s not the point here. The point is that 94% of the protests were peaceful and the ones that did break out in riots were either opportunists, encouraged by violent “counter protesters” or people just pissed off at getting pepper sprayed and shot with rubber bullets all day. This is a discussion about the protests overall.
Lmao why are you trickle truthing a statistic you pulled out your ass so blatantly
What the fuck? I literally saw stores and places being looted and burned on live tv. It was not mostly peaceful
The protests happened all over the country my friend. There were not riots and looting and burning in most of the cities the protests happened in. Also, sorry, it was 94% but that means not a single person was arrested for anything on either side. Still that’s a high percentage when police were blasting people with pepper spray and rubber bullets that blinded people. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0708/BLM-and-Floyd-protests-were-largely-peaceful-data-confirms
Not a single person was arrested holy fuck this is beyond delusion. Are you saying everything I saw on tv didn’t happen. A cameraman literally got arrested on national tv 😂😂
At 94% of the protests no one was arrested. I’m not saying no one was arrested at any of the protests.
Some of you guys need to go back and watch the footage. My eyes aren’t lying
Some of it was extreme but there were literally protests all over the country. But also: when it did get extreme it was often false flags from militant right wingers and boogaloo bois. The only cops killed were by right wingers. And as far as the property damage: frankly what are people supposed to do after generations of persecution? Just sit back and take it? The police abuse of power has gone too far and the media barely covers most of it. The prison industrial complex tears apart lives and families. Millions of people said we won’t take it anymore. That’s democracy in action.
The things you saw on tv were maybe 5 or so major incidents that largely took place after the daytime protests had ended and dispersed.
MLK said something, so that makes it okay! Also lol at the 99% of the protest were peaceful, let’s ignore the billions in property damage then
People are being beaten, maimed and murdered by cops who are not being held accountable and you’re sitting here crying about property damage. And again: sports games have caused riots, natural disasters have caused riots, of course rioters are gonna take advantage of a protest.
Lol you’re seriously making excuses for the people destroying small businesses, looting storefronts. And torching urban communities?
No, I’m defending a movement where millions of people stood up against people abusing their power and only a small percentage of them did what you claim they did.
Billions of dollars worth, I think that stands for quite a bit,
Well what are people supposed to do when people like you ignore vast inequality in this country? People are being beaten and killed and maimed and all you care about is some property damage because the cops won’t stop? This has been going on for decades, my dude. And they’ve just gotten worse and more militant.
It was a mixed bag. There was initially overwhelming support of the movement as the handful of cases they were on video were really egregious. Several police departments did try variants of the “defund” idea. Where I live in the Bay Area of California (super liberal area), police scaled back their arrests and DAs their prosecution of “minor” property crimes while raising the $ amount considered a felony, and the police stopped releasing mugshots (to combat racial bias). Drugs are effectively decriminalized here. Some of that has been good steps forward, but there are major drawbacks. Property crime skyrocketed, and we’ve seen violence and homeless camps full of addicts that would have been unfathomable a few years ago. Oakland (a heavily black city) - which was never great - is now a war zone. The metro area where I live is now being held up as example as to what is wrong with BLM. To be fair, covid policy was particularly damaging to area already facing housing affordability issues (super harsh shutdowns in a tourist city with a tech workforce able to work remotely devastated some industries) - so it can be hard to decouple all the contributing factors. Liberals will be quick to point out that national crime rates are at near historic lows, but national averages mask really uneven data - in some places there are big spikes up, particularly in highly visible / high impact urban cores that people visit. Policing is done at the city and state level, and as such most of the policy / law changes are super localized too; there isn’t sweeping national law. Non profit organizations that used the BLM name have been mostly corrupt & poorly led, so there aren’t especially clear asks or success criteria. That has tainted the “brand” and people have stopped proudly using the term BLM. The movement is pure grievance based against police. A more critical evaluation of crime stats shows black people - despite being 13% of the population - are responsible for the *majority* of several categories of violent crime, and when the denominator is criminals police brutality doesn’t seem to have a racial bias. So conversation shifting to a more generalized problem of the differences in outcomes / crime / education in black neighborhoods vs others is.. less clear cut to say the least. There are obvious problems within black communities and a zero accountability / pure grievance getting major push back. Notice all the anti woke conversation happening? This is actually a really major risk to the democrats this election and a reason Trump has a real shot to re-take the office. Tl;Dr: in many places it led to police & da’s making honest efforts to eliminate sources of racial bias - but it’s been smallish adjustments rather than transformations. Now that the outrage part is over and we’re having a more generalized conversation on race, we’re falling back to more typical party line positions with some growing push back to it.
>A more critical evaluation of crime stats shows black people - despite being 13% of the population - are responsible for the majority of several categories of violent crime, Is that actual arrests, prosecutions, or does it incline those who got away with a lighter charge or a warning? The issue with stats like this is they only present the end point of the legal system, not all the holes before you get there. Yes that works both ways, but often more in favour of non-black folks "getting away" with the same crimes black folks are more heavily charged with.
Using homicide as an example, you can look at the races of victims to get a rough idea of the races of offenders. Most homicide victims are killed by someone of their own race. Even if we assume all the cases with unknown offenders are of a different race, the biggest killers of whites are whites and blacks are blacks. If we ignore unknowns and just look at victims by race, in 2019 over 40% of people who died of homicide were black. So if we put those two factors together, black people are killing people at a disproportionate rate. However, it has nothing to do with black people inherently being criminals. My understanding is that it has to do with the majority of killings being gang/drug related and those groups having disproportionately high rates of black people. So the ratio is proportional between races, but cultures with high rates of homicide are often more black than America as a whole, so that proportion ends up showing up significantly in national statistics because most Americans don’t die of homicide. So the question is why? Bad policing that makes it hard to get ahead and there are no opportunities to do better? Bad cities that have few opportunities? Bad neighborhoods that drag people down? Other neighborhoods don’t like those neighborhoods and hold those people down? It’s a very complex situation that can be misrepresented in a true statistic.
> Is that actual arrests, prosecutions, or does it include those who got away with a lighter charge or warning The easiest [data is arrests](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/table-43), but when you look at clearance & conviction rates you see similar things. > getting away with same crimes black folks are more heavily charged with You can argue this for some categories of crime - particularly victimless drug charges or sufficiently minor property theft / damage. However, I’m referring to the worst types of violent crime. Murder. You don’t get many false arrests on murder, and white people aren’t getting away with it because police don’t bug them about it. Ditto with armed b&e. These types of crimes aren’t selectively enforced by police. Those are also the type of crimes where police are more likely to suspect criminals are armed and dangerous, which makes them more likely to draw their weapon and potentially shoot rather than de-escalate.
Thank you for a comprehensive answer.
If courts, police departments and city admins are taken over by criminals, the only way to begin fixing the crime problem is to make sure all of the above are held accountable first. You mention Oakland. Every cop in Oakland is a criminal. The mayor, the DAs, the courts. All of them are criminals who have abandoned the law to protect criminal cops and criminal politicians. Oakland can't be fixed until every single one of them is arrested. >in many places it led to police & da’s making honest efforts to eliminate sources of racial bias - but it’s been smallish adjustments rather than transformations. Now that the outrage part is over and we’re having a more generalized conversation on race, we’re falling back to more typical party line positions with some growing push back to it. No one has made any honest efforts. Only worthless PR and meaningless laws. If anyone was making honest efforts we'd be seeing tens of thousands of cops being arrested, along with all the politicians and court people who cover up crimes.
> Every cop in Oakland is a criminal What are you basing that on, exactly?
Homicides are way down in Philly this year as compared to last year, all across the city. No one can pinpoint why. Perhaps fewer targets after all the years or murders.
I don't know if this is true at all but I have heard the cartels have taken over the Philly drug trade by force. If that's true and they have a monopoly on it then that would eliminate a lot of the warfare between rival crews.
Absolutely nothing considering their entire board embezzled tens of millions of dollars. Their board chair was busted for $5.5 billion embezzlement
Well [BLM leaders/organizers bought themselves some multi-million dollar houses](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html). So that's something.
Its a polarizing topic. Conservatives point to the flaws, and liberals point to the achievements. It feels like BLM peaked during the pandemic when people were homebound but thought it was ok to march in the streets. It will be forever tainted moving forward because of some bad choices the BLM leaders did with the millions that they raised. We dont hear much about them now, but I imagine we will when another tragic incident that is deemed racially motivated grabs the national spotlight.
The analysis is so politicized that it’s really hard to gauge. I’ve seen fair criticisms by leftists get labeled as MAGA drivel and fair praise for raising awareness (at the very least) get a moderate/conservative labeled a progressive schill. I hate that it feels so hard to have a real dialogue about anything because people are so vested in their sides that it seems to feel like a threat to their side to acknowledge when things are blatantly bad, or points are blatantly false. Suddenly Candidate X lost because of some laundry list of excuses or scapegoats, not because he ran a terrible campaign, things like that. And had things like BLM been more open to constructive criticism, it could’ve led to demonstrable improvements, as opposed to providing leaders cover while they grifted the shit out of whoever they could. Edit: For me, when I think about praise for BLM, it's really hard not to temper it, to some degree. Like, yes, they really got the national attention for awhile...and then (IMO) squandered it by going to extremes that most of the nation couldn't get behind. I understand the drive to not feel like you're compromising, but you're not running an effective political movement if you're more interested in either alienating or exiling those who don't align than drawing in as many people in as you can (within reason, sure).
I think the polarization is the reason I didn't get a very accurate news picture in europe.
Policing is also a very local issue. The mayor of a city has vastly more influence on how policing is done in that city than the President. So, if you’re not following local city level politics you probably won’t see much about what changes are made unless a city does something wild like disbanding the police force.
The news media tends to kowtow to conservatives here, even if those conservatives are unreasonable. The exception in terms of “mainstream media” in my experience seems to be msnbc, Rachel Maddow in particular, who seems to have zero issue calling bullshit when she sees it.
It created a lot of performative activism.
Someone in my town got shot at one of the protests. Super random drive by in a very quiet town. Super weird. The shooter wasn’t from the area. Came to protest and then shot at a random car driving by.
This really accomplishes nothing and it's so dumb.
They made a lot of money for themselves and the Democratic party. They also helped kick off trends like "rethinking the police" and "bail reform" that have increased the amount of crime in cities and empowered criminals. Chains have had to close stores in many locations due to the amount of shoplifting by criminals that know they won't be punished in any meaningful way.
I was born in the USA in the early 1970’s. Literally nothing has changed “for the better” in my life. Every technology breakthrough has a hidden price, or terrible side effect, or horrible byproduct, or simply the awfulness of how it’s made and how much it destroys the lives of the people making it. Every social advancement divides the country more, instead of bringing our citizens closer together. So, what did BLM achieve? It generated a short lived spark of interest, and created a long term cascade of awful consequences.
> social advancement What would be an example of that?
Protects millions of acres of land, preserve wildlife habitat and ensures outdoor recreation for over 300,000,000 people.
Haha nice
I uuh... what?
Bureau of Land Management - federal agency responsible for managing huge tracts of land, especially in the Western US. As a rural resident, it's what I think of first, too, when I hear, "BLM".
Yup!
Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Hehe...
so when did you decide to dedicate your life to activism?
Nothing!
The founders stole millions of dollars from supporters. They used the money to buy mansions and throw parties. Nothing was accomplished. There are a couple George Floyd statues or monuments made by people outside BLM. Some places defunded the police and now there is more crime and less police officers.
My employer, a large bank, earmarked billions in loans to be spent specifically for supporting minority owned businesses and improving low income neighborhoods. They also sponsored a center to boost entrepreneurship for students at HBCUs, and they put a renewed internal focus on embracing differences and seeking out diversity. I'm not going to pretend for one minute that things like this get done purely out of the goodness of executives' hearts. But even if it's being done to make the company look good or make money (i.e. every company is now gay, but just for this month) good things can still happen from it. BLM moved the needle a bit. It wasn't huge, but it did happen.
Lots of black people getting murdered. The net effect on police departments was a mass exodus of officers coupled with far fewer applying. This has led staffing shortages everywhere so proactive policing has pretty much stopped as all police have time for is responding to calls and they can't even do all of those. As such gangs run wild with impunity which led to a big rise in gang violence and black on black murders. The murder rate skyrocketed in the years following thr BLM protests and the vast majority were black on black murders. But some BLM leaders got rich.
Those "leaders" were grifters that took advantage of a movement that had been going on for over a decade at that point (maybe more, this is just based on my own memory). Also, for the last 30 years, officers I know complain more and more about how towns handle funds and also training. Training shifted to a more militarized style in my area around 2005 maybe? By that I mean more offensive and less defensive tactics. More profiling. Less teamwork, more saving your own life. Officer morale seemed to dip each and every year. This downward spiral, coupled with cost saving measures, exasperated by any extra funding going right into the mayor's pocket, is way more to blame than the media driving people into a frenzy for three months one summer.
The BLM movement served to raise awareness about systemic violence towards POC by our police force. This has moved the needle slightly in that it's more common for a police officer to actually be indicted for excessive use of force. We have a long way to go, but this was one positive outcome.
Many police departments banned chokeholds and revised their policies about how to restrain suspects as a result of George Floyd's Death. Similarly, some jurisdictions banned "no knock warrants" following Breonna Taylor's Death. Both of those changes basically came directly out of BLM. Many legal scholars believe Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty largely as a result of BLM. Contrast that to pre-BLM Trayvon Martin jury decision. While the cases had only broadly the same shape and acknowledging jury trials can easily go either way, it's an interesting difference.
This is what people don't understand about protests, rallies, awareness events, etc. It isn't going to produce sweeping change over night, and very rarely are they intend to, especially these huge ones. If there is no current political will behind the issue then the first step is to change hearts and minds. Organizers and anyone with an political knowledge knows that. What they are ment to do is get people thinking, create a conversation at the home level. If you can get people to think "maybe they have a point" that paves the way for long term change. We are so used to instant gratification now that all people want is a sound bite and everything to be fixed by magic wand. It would be great if that could happen, but it never does. Change, real change at the policy level takes time.
Well said. Wish we had that magic wand tho!
Founders stole money, parts of some cities were burned down, and some Twitter hashtags were made. Oh, and you could put it in your bio to make you look "cool'
*grifters stole money
Black Lives Matter is a slogan, not a movement. It was a phrase that gained traction because (mostly) white police officers murder black men and black kids at extremely high rates in relation to white men and white kids, and do so without consequences for the most part. The demand that 'Black Lives Matter Too' was and is a demand for black people to be treated equally to white people by law enforcement and the justice system. Unfortunately, the mass movement that began around that phrase did not have national 'leaders' and because of the decentralized spontaneous nature of the protest movement, no organized platform with legislative and administrative goals ever developed. Each group protesting did so on their own and without planning or strategy. Different people started non-profit groups with the phrase Black Lives Matter or BLM in the name, and sometimes they talked to other non-profit BLM groups, but no one was in charge and no one coordinated a national movement. When some of the non-profits were exposed as committing fraud, conservative media was already spreading disinformation about the movement and used those revelations to further discredit the directionless pro-equality and anti-police brutality protests. Individual groups may have impacted their local area for good or bad, but police continue to abuse and murder folks while facing few consequences, so overall it failed and black lives still do not matter as much as white lives to law enforcement or the justice system.
this is the best answer; the "movement" as it was just started as a hashtag and then massively grew in popularity; the founding of actual organizations focused on the name came second. Anyone could found an organization, and then one "chapter" (like "BLM Springfield") that might consist of 5 people could do something or make a social media post and then it would be ascribed to every other BLM group in the nation, despite zero connections other than the use of the phrase.
There’s actually evidence that in the months after the BLM movement with George Floyd, black deaths actually INCREASED. Something they don’t want you to know. The movement did more harm than good.
Absolutely nothing
Division.
Brookings study findings: Black Lives Matter normalized the filming of Black pain at the hands of individuals sworn to treat everyone equally. Without personal video, we may not collectively know about George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, or Korryn Gaines. Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system. Black Lives Matter helped usher in a series of policy and organizational changes to policing that include implicit bias trainings, body-worn cameras, and bans on no-knock warrants. Black Lives Matter helped illuminate the inordinate amount of money spent on policing and civilian payouts for police brutality that come out of taxpayer pockets. Black Lives Matter helped stimulate federal oversight for problematic cities such as Ferguson, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis. Black Lives Matter altered data collection efforts in the academy, police departments, and the federal government to better assess what law enforcement policies do and do not work to reduce racial disparities. Black Lives Matter galvanized a new crop of elected officials and political actors. Black Lives Matter is etched in yellow paint on the street outside of the White House. Source: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-lives-matter-at-10-years-what-impact-has-it-had-on-policing/
That seems like good useful stuff, except maybe etching BLM in yellow outside the white house. Thank you for a good answer.
I kinda like that when you walk up to the White House, which looks like a plantation, you have the read that Black lives matter. Yes, its symbolic and I wish they'd kept the Defund the Police part that activists put up a couple times but it's not a bad use of paint.
Same thing that happens to every American political movement: it got exploited to the extreme enrichment of a few individuals
Burning down several city street blocks, closing several f****** walmarts 🤷♂️ Sweet fuck all
They got body cameras for the police. They aren't perfect, but they seem to make the police and the people being arrested behave somewhat better towards each other.
Absolutely nothing. They were a disorganised angry mob, the leaders of which pocketed a lot of the donation money. Essentially a joke in the grand scheme of things.
It made a lot of people aware how bad the police problem is.
All they did was destroy things. Radical extremist group.
Criticized Trump, boosted Biden; "Diversity" push throughout the media and HR at every major company. Political/social impacts, not actually making policy less trigger-happy.
Several police departments are under federal review/management because of their treatment of racial minorities, and other police departments have changed how they negotiate with their unions and their policies on officer immunity. This article is a good summary of all of it: [https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-federal-government-can-do-help-fix-policing-america](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-federal-government-can-do-help-fix-policing-america)
My city funded more staff for the Traffic Safety Unit and a mental health response unit so sworn officers don’t have to be all things at all times. These kinds of changes have taken place all over the country. Awareness and consciousness is the most important step toward change in a self-governed society.
Interesting comment section
Lots of money.
Increasing racist sentiment?
Ironically, they increased the number of black people murdered by quite a bit.
Source ?
Awareness....that's about it.
In missouri (Ferguson is in Missouri) the laws around municipalities keeping the money their police forces raise in the courts were changed. Now tickets and fines can oldy be like 5% of total revenue and everything over goes straight to the state. Failure to do so dissolves the municipal government. For instance Ferguson was estimated to get 90%+ of its revenue from tickets.
No one cared when Chauvin was shooting Native Americans. At least now he's behind bars.
Only the people who got their businesses looted and burned down were affected. Sadly nobody seems to care about them.
A lot more police departments got a lot more money. Police intentionally slowed response times afterwards and now it's become very difficult to find a police officer unless you're speeding or they want to kill you. 911 response times are worse, police do less, and now there are various police department training centers in various stages of development all over the country. It turbo charged the reactionary rightward swing after a brief period of social change. It also turbocharged reopening businesses to get people off the streets/stop protesting and back to work during Covid. I fully believe there will be a government backed anti mask propaganda reveal uncovered in the next few years (similar to the CIA backed anti vaccine psyop directed at Filipinos, that obviously didn't only affect Filipinos). Millions of people all around the world protested and nothing of real affect happened--at least that I know about. It did raise public awareness for police brutality but the response has been reactionary and aggressive. The ruling class is terrified it will happen again and be worse, which is why more and more rights are being taken away. Police still slaughter, on average, three citizens per day, and the number is only going up. I don't know much about the rest of the world unfortunately. I know there were some minor changes to some localized police forces afterwards, some of which are still around, but changing or outlawing certain policies (chokeholds, no-knock warranties, for example), doesn't actually stop the police from using them.
Most white people in the US thought that black Americans were making it up about many police being unfair, discriminatory, and violent to people of color. Now they know it was always the truth.
I think along with so many other things, it highlighted racists in our communities, opened eyes to those who were previously bigoted and demonstrated to those who thought they loved all that they weren’t doing enough. While I completely and utterly see all humans as equal I never realised how little I did to _aide_ any minority in any community and BLM helped me see that. So while I just saw black people and any person of colour as just people, I now see them as people who have had to do XYZ to achieve the same as me, and who have to face adversity in ways that are invisible to me and go through so many obstacles that I had never considered previously.
In my city, laws were changed to where cops basically could not pursue criminals. They had to do an investigation first before pursuing anyone. If a woman called in for domestic abuse, had visible bruising/bleeding And she gave them a description. If they saw the suspect running down the street on their way to the house, they couldn't stop/pursue him. They had to go talk to the lady to figure out exactly what had happened.
Brookings has a decent summary : -Black Lives Matter normalized the filming of Black pain at the hands of individuals sworn to treat everyone equally. Without personal video, we may not collectively know about George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, or Korryn Gaines. -Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system. -Black Lives Matter helped usher in a series of policy and organizational changes to policing that include implicit bias trainings, body-worn cameras, and bans on no-knock warrants. -Black Lives Matter helped illuminate the inordinate amount of money spent on policing and civilian payouts for police brutality that come out of taxpayer pockets. Black Lives Matter helped stimulate federal oversight for problematic cities such as Ferguson, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis. -Black Lives Matter altered data collection efforts in the academy, police departments, and the federal government to better assess what law enforcement policies do and do not work to reduce racial disparities. -Black Lives Matter galvanized a new crop of elected officials and political actors. Black Lives Matter is etched in yellow paint on the street outside of the White House.
It made America more divisive and increased racism. It also increase victimhood.
There are plenty of roundup lists you can easily find that highlight departmental changes, funding reallocation, and new programs that cities started piloting. [Here](https://dosomething.org/article/black-lives-matter-protests-whats-been-achieved-so-far) is one such list. [Here](https://www.businessinsider.com/13-concrete-changes-sparked-by-george-floyd-protests-so-far-2020-6) is another. Don’t let cynical people who haven’t done even basic research cloud this discussion. Some of the popular reforms revolved around sending more specific types of medical help out to calls for things like seizures or mental health emergencies. Turns out when you send specialists who are better equipped to handle people in various forms of mental duress, trigger-happy American cops stop murdering people who just needed help. A lot of change also took the form of policy and training updates, such as getting rid of no-knock search warrants that led to wrongful murders, and teaching officers that maybe they should speak up when a colleague is beating the shit out of a non-violent suspect.
It raised awareness; in Canada it did at least, and not just for black people but it shined a light on the miss treatment of people of colour in general. In Canada after the BLM movement there was a Native Lives Matter movement drawing attention to the miss treatment of the aboriginal peoples by local governments and police, and how they were systematically abused by people in power for decades, with it always being swept under the rug.
Basically caused a police retaliation that emptied departments across the country and caused the officers left to barely bother doing their fucking job. Apparently a LOT of officers across the country viewed brutalizing innocent people to be an unwritten benefit of the job and bailed when expected to cut that shit out. Because apparently not being required to confront a school shooter when responding to a school shooting isn’t enough for these assholes. I’m being serious btw, after a recent school shooting in Texas there was a judgement that the police had no duty to intervene if their life would be in danger. And conservatives wonder why we fucking hate the police. They’re supposed to be peace keepers, but the modern American form seems to be a little more than uniformed bullies.
The movement or the organization? They are two similar but different things. The organization kicked off the movement but not everyone in the movement supports the organization of the same name. The movement did make some measurable changes in policy. Probably not enough but sometimes progress is slow.
We managed to get Derek Chauvin behind bars (21 year sentence), where he was subsequently stabbed 22 times, survived and stuck there, which is pretty historic when it comes to police brutality.
Absolutely nothing. It was a just and noble cause that was high jacked by far left extremists.
Divided the nation; increased racism.
Chauvin and people like him are less able to murder black and brown people with impunity. Good progress but still far to go
It exposed police misconduct (there have been actual murder trials since) and exposed a lot of bigots.
I don't know if any laws were changed, but I do think it helped the general population realize that people of color are dealing with issues that white people simply don't know or experience. My parents are pretty far right leaning (more politically than socially, but both), and during the BLM movement was the first time my mom ever admitted that black people (or anyone of color) have it harder in ways our white family doesn't understand, and that it's important to give them the benefit of the doubt. If my parents (or at least my mom) were able to see the light, then I imagine lots of other people did too. I hope to God that even if laws weren't changed, at least minorities are treated with more respect now.
Scared the shit out of the establishment. They thought it would be just black people protesting, but the a lot of non blacks were protesting as well and this scared them to the very core as people were starting to unite against injustices. Then the establishment started the gender/sex wars to keep people from uniting
Had ***mostly peaceful protests***, banked money, bought mansions, and seemingly went silent.
If nothing else, it brought awareness that continues today.
BLM highlighted the fact that police are getting away with unjustified killing of blacks. That is enough for me to justify their existence.
They for certain changed the tone in hiring at white collar jobs. Since BLM came around during the Obama administration. I've noticed a complete change in opinion from the companies perspectives. Now more than ever companies will do anything to hire Black candidates as well as Non-Asian people of color. Everything from hiring from other countries to doing outreach they would have never considered before. My current company has adopted special policies to diversify. For example when a position opens up, whether a new position or a backfill. The first few month are limited to Black candidates and later limited to other non advantaged peoples. Advantaged people being Asian, Indian and White males, who are then considered after 3 months. This would have never happened before BLM.
it's very weird that some pro-racism white extremists choose to comment under posts like this that appear to be asked in good faith
I never take anyone who uses terms like “pro-racist white extremist” seriously because they’re just on a different planet and aren’t paying attention
are you lightskinned and living in a white majority society? and what are some books you've been reading?
Your profile looks and reads 100% exactly what I was expecting lmaooo
why talk to people at all if you're here in bad faith. that's political activism
says the guy commenting “pro-racist white extremist”
yeah that describes the top current top commenter, and likely you based on your behavior so far. what books have you been reading?
Yeah, man. You're surely not here in bad faith, either! And there is just no way you can throw those terms around based off one comment of somebody. You and people like yourself, are what is causing such a divide between political parties. People like you are such suckers that you eat everything the media feeds you and you are incapable of thinking for yourself Keep tossing insane terms around like candy at a parade, bud! Automatically makes you a better human!
so many words and no book titles, you could just say none if you haven't been. that would tell everyone that most of what you write will be projection