The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid...
Did you read your Wikipedia list? We have a whole bunch of people shot by cops, a few looters shot by store owners, people shot in unrelated murders that happened near protests, people run over by cars that drove into crowds, some people shot when groups of armed racists started gunfights with groups of armed antiracists, etc.
This list does not at all support the thesis that organized BLM protests were intentionally violent.
* * *
Yeah, there was a time that a group of white BLM sympathizers heckled another white BLM sympathizer who was eating at a restaurant table on the sidewalk, and the heckling was caught on video. The people involved are obnoxious jerks (organizers and most others in the BLM movement also agree they are jerks).
Similar heckling by all sorts of groups of jerks happens all over the country on a regular basis. For example a bunch of MAGA folks were following and heckling Lindsay Graham at an airport a few days ago.
But you really think heckling at a restaurant should be compared to an armed mob breaking into the Capitol building, chanting for the Vice President's execution and for the overthrow of the US government, beating cops to death, ransacking offices, stealing sensitive national security materials, and literally shitting all over?
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,”
> Hawk Newsome has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (“BLM”) founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi — and is not the “president” of BLM or any of its chapters. Only BLM chapters who adhere to BLM’s principles and code of ethics are permitted to use the BLM name. The reason for this is simple: unaffiliated uses of BLM’s name are confusing to people who may wrongly associate the unsanctioned group and its views and actions with BLM. As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not entered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.
If you look hard enough you can find unaffiliated yahoos of every ideological persuasion and self-proclaimed identity (libertarians, stoics, Christians, vegans, Canadians, chess players, computer programmers, stamp collectors, minivan owners, ...) spouting militant nonsense. Such statements should be condemned (and have been by those nonviolently protesting police brutality), but cannot be taken as sweeping evidence that everyone with similar self-proclaimed ideology or identity is a supporter of hateful violence.
If you intend to apply this kind of standard, then surely every organization that calls itself "conservative" should be similarly held responsible for the actions of the MAGA insurrectionists, right?
The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid...
In various cities a small number of people acted violently. These were opportunists without apparent link to the Black Lives Matter organizers who took advantage of the situation to smash things up. Some were likely sympathetic to the BLM message, but others have been identified as far-right agitators. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-cause... https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-an...