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Explainer: What does ‘Black Lives Matter’ believe?
Acton Institute ^ | JUNE 18, 2020 | REV. BEN JOHNSON

Posted on 07/27/2020 12:49:41 PM PDT by Vendome

BLM proudly proclaims its belief that all black Americans should receive a guaranteed minimum income and “free” healthcare, schooling, food, real estate, gender reassignment surgery, and abortion; bring an “an end to all jails” as we know them; disrupt the traditional family; demand reparations on behalf of foreign nations; and form a “global liberation movement” that will “overturn US imperialism [and] capitalism.”

Americans could be excused for not knowing that BLM is a political organization with an agenda no less comprehensive than reshaping the entire world. The media have not reported its aims — at least, not in context of the recent riots.

However, they have no inkling that "Black Lives Matter" is not just a maxim or a graphic to be posted online. It is a radical pressure group that embraces a vista of controversial, extremist positions. Those who march under its banner are unwittingly putting themselves in a position to be identified by BLM's activists as endorsing these beliefs.

BLM activists have made no secret of their views. “When we started Black Lives Matter, it wasn’t solely about police brutality and extrajudicial killing,” one of BLM’s three co-founders, Opal Tometi, confessed to The New Yorker. The issue was just “a spark point” to begin “calling for the defunding of police, a moratorium on rent, a moratorium on mortgages and utilities” and issuing “demands” relating to “housing and education and health-care systems.”

“[T]he U.S. is a country that does not support, protect or preserve [b]lack life,” the M4BL original statement says. “And so we seek not reform but transformation.” While the planks often amount to little more than platitudes, replete with grammatical errors, the platform offers a clear demand for socialism under the cover of racial reconciliation. The steps the organizations propose include:

Reparations through racial socialism: The M4BL platform, which BLM endorses, states, “We demand reparations for past and continuing harms,” including both “corporate and government reparations” for a litany of ills that include “food apartheid” and “racialized capitalism.” Government reparations will take “the form” of “a guaranteed minimum livable income for all Black people.” M4BL/BLM’s “universal health care” policy mandates that “wealthy residents pay for a portion of their services while low-income and working class folks receive free services.” The new system will be modeled on France or Germany. Black Americans will also receive government-funded “control of food sources, housing and land.” Robust reparations programs will include “full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education” at any university, community college, or technical education facility, as well as “retroactive forgiveness of student loans.”

“To ensure an intersectional approach,” the group continues, the public school budgeting process must include “representation from specific populations of people,” including “formerly and currently incarcerated” people.

Defunding the police and ending prisons: BLM’s best-known demand is to “defund the police.” M4BL also proposes an “end” to arrests of any black students, and “an end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them.” House arrest would be promoted equally with imprisonment. The government would also expand Pell grant funding to educate inmates and “[a]llow access to gender affirming surgeries” in penitentiaries at taxpayers’ expense.

Dismantling the family: Black Lives Matter endorses two contradictory policies: “We make our spaces family-friendly,” it states. It then looks forward to the destruction of the traditional family:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

Start a “global liberation movement” to overthrow capitalism: “The interlinked systems of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy shape the violence we face,” the M4BL/BLM platform states. “As oppressed people living in the US, the belly of global empire, we are in a critical position to build the necessary connections for a global liberation movement. Until we are able to overturn US imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy, our brothers and sisters around the world will continue to live in chains.”

“America is an empire,” and “American wars are unjust,” the M4BL manifesto states baldly. And “Israel is an apartheid state.” America’s “alliance with Israel” makes the U.S. “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people….it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government.” BLM does not state what punishment it would mete out to civilians complicit in "genocide." However, it demands lawmakers cut “the US military budget by 50%, which will lead to the closure of the over 800 U.S. military bases the U.S. [operates] around the world” and the return of troops deployed overseas — a move many Americans, especially libertarians, support.

The federal government should focus on “taxing ‘bads’ not ‘goods.’” BLM would increase the death tax, the capital gains tax, impose new taxes on real estate transfers and financial “speculation,” and create a national wealth tax. Each state would follow suit by imposing a heavily progressive state income tax on individuals and corporations and 50 state wealth taxes. All “tax reform legislation” must be drawn up “in accordance with racial equity goals” to “help build the wealth of households of color.”

Reparations for drug dealers: M4BL/BLM would legalize prostitution and the “possession and sale of all drugs, no matter the quantity.” Prisoners convicted of these crimes would be released and their records retroactively expunged. But that’s not far enough for Black Lives Matter: Any government savings “must be invested into reparations to all people who have been adversely impacted by the drug war and enforcement of prostitution laws.” The government “must also ensure that people criminalized by the ‘war on drugs’ are able to participate in legal drug markets where decriminalization has already taken place.” Many libertarians support decriminalizing some or all drugs (and prostitution), but they typically envision government regulations on the manufacture and sale of narcotics. One of their most resonant selling points is that “repeal of drug prohibition will take the drug business out of the cartels’ hands.” BLM would guarantee the Medellin cartel a piece of the action.

Reparations for foreign nations and terrorist states: The M4BL/BLM's thirst for racialized wealth redistribution doesn't stop at the water's edge. Their manifesto demands reparations for foreign nations, as well. The group insists the U.S. make “reparations to countries and communities devastated by American war­making, such as Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Honduras.”

Let incarcerated prisoners, illegal immigrants, and felons vote: The M4BL’s voting reforms demand universal voter registration, as well as “pre­registration for 16­-year­-olds, enfranchisement of formerly and currently incarcerated people, local and state resident voting for undocumented people, and a ban on all disenfranchisement laws.” Felon disenfranchisement laws date back to ancient Greece. M4BL’s drive to “expand the range of eligible voters” sleights the rule of law while favoring core Democratic Party constituencies, which favor more expensive government welfare policies.

This list of policy proposals is far from comprehensive. If anything, BLM’s “demands” are more expansive and government-expanding yet. However, this gives an accurate flavor of the platform Black Lives Matter would implement if given the opportunity. It is not one that should be shared by people of faith or supporters of limited government, unalienable rights, and equal justice under the law.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blm; criminal; idiots; marxist; proto
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Hmmm....
1 posted on 07/27/2020 12:49:42 PM PDT by Vendome
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To: Vendome

Cause white folks already get all that. Right?


2 posted on 07/27/2020 12:52:49 PM PDT by rktman ( #My2ndAmend! ----- Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH?)
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To: Vendome

They’ve not be paid enough ($13 an hour) to think.


3 posted on 07/27/2020 12:57:05 PM PDT by WKUHilltopper
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To: Vendome

Black lives matter except for the 7000+ black on black murders committed every year. Since they are not racially motivated I guess that is why they are ignored.


4 posted on 07/27/2020 12:59:45 PM PDT by antidemoncrat (uff)
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To: Vendome

Black as I say,
not black as I do.


5 posted on 07/27/2020 1:02:05 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
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To: Vendome

98 percent I bet of BLM criminal goons believe in collecting their $$$$ from SorozNazi’s riot organizers. And, in stealing as much Goodies as they can in their breakins


6 posted on 07/27/2020 1:03:01 PM PDT by faithhopecharity (Politicians are not born, theyÂ’re excreted. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: Vendome
Amendment 28 Proposal

America will never be a communist country. Socialism and communism are the natural enemies of American Constitutional Law, American culture and the American free market economy. Any person endorsing in any way socialism or communism within U.S. territories is participating in an act of insurrection and will through due process have their property seized, their citizenship revoked and subjected to permanent exile.

7 posted on 07/27/2020 1:03:54 PM PDT by conservativeimage (When you realize world leaders are continuing Charles Mansons HELTER SKELTER)
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To: Vendome
BLM believes...

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).

8 posted on 07/27/2020 1:05:57 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: conservativeimage.com

Nice! Let’s push this up the chain!


9 posted on 07/27/2020 1:06:50 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Vendome

They all want transportation to Syria so they can Repopulate and Rebuild the Country in their own Image.

10 Free One Way tickets to the first 10 callers!!!


10 posted on 07/27/2020 1:07:08 PM PDT by eyeamok
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To: Vendome

11 posted on 07/27/2020 1:20:08 PM PDT by Erik Latranyi (The Democratic Party is communism)
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To: antidemoncrat
Black lives matter except for the 7000+ black on black murders committed every year. Since they are not racially motivated I guess that is why they are ignored.

The #1 killer of young black lives in America is: ABORTION.

12 posted on 07/27/2020 1:23:56 PM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: Jan_Sobieski

just tweeted @realdonaldtrump


13 posted on 07/27/2020 1:27:41 PM PDT by conservativeimage (When you realize world leaders are continuing Charles Mansons HELTER SKELTER)
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To: Vendome

No wait in he!! BLM wrote this!


14 posted on 07/27/2020 1:29:28 PM PDT by notaliberal (St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,)
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To: Vendome
BLM = Burn--Loot--Murder
15 posted on 07/27/2020 1:42:41 PM PDT by Fiddlstix (Warning! This Is A Subliminal Tagline! Read it at your own risk!(Presented by TagLines R US))
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To: notaliberal

The original blm people used to visit the white house to see our marxist president on a regular basis. They’re simply trying to use the black thing to institute global marxism/communism. The issue is never the issue(black people) There’s only the revolution.


16 posted on 07/27/2020 1:42:44 PM PDT by Pollard (whatever)
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To: Vendome

Good article. I knew that, but it bears repeating and repeating.

I’m guessing that the average, good-hearted, low-information chump believes that Black Lives Matter = black lives matter, in the sense that the country should be doing more to end any existing discrimination and make sure that incidents such as the one that resulted in George Floyd’s death don’t happen again. They haven’t looked far enough to see what the true agenda is.

A local coffee house announced on FB that it was closing today. The owner is a conservative. I’ve talked to him. He is a veteran and a retired firefighter and has one son who graduated from the Naval Academy and another from West Point. When the town had its George Floyd rally, he criticized in on social media. He has a right to do that, but he didn’t do it with great finesse. Well, people jumped all over him, calling him a racist, and urging people not to patronize his business. He stayed open for carry-out during the original COVID restrictions and made it through them but I knew he was struggling. But I’ll bet his business also suffered because of allegations that he is a racist. A new coffee shop recently opened down the street. That owner posted in social media in favor of BLM and defunding the police. I’m sure the pro-BLM types took their business there.

There were lots of responses to the closing announcement, all but one saying they were sad to see the business close. That one said good riddance, because the owner is a racist. I’m betting that this person — a young, female twerp —has no idea about BLM’s agenda, but she would call anyone a racist who doesn’t support it.

One small businessman bites the dust. “BLM” marches on.

The average schmoe who “supports” BLM can almost be excused for ignorance. Almost. The big corporations, universities, media outlets, sports teams, etc., cannot. They know exactly what’s going on. Why do they support BLM? I dunno. Maybe a suicide wish?


17 posted on 07/27/2020 1:44:26 PM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.)
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To: Vendome; All

The Stupid Party should publish, in a bullet point format, exactly what BLM stands for.


18 posted on 07/27/2020 2:28:12 PM PDT by Cobra64 (Common sense isnÂ’t common anymore.)
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To: Vendome

Those mongrels believe one thing, viz. if they throw a long enough temper tantrum, whitey will once again throw trillions of dollars at the ghetto. This time, it’ll be called “reparations.” Follow the money, cracka.


19 posted on 07/27/2020 2:52:54 PM PDT by LouAvul (Put them in fear, O Lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Psalms 9:20)
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican

These people really are dumber than a truckload of turnips...


20 posted on 07/27/2020 3:27:54 PM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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