General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: To the older folks at DU from a 20-year-old, about protests, confusion, and love for one another [View all]F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)It was illegal for me to block that intersection. It's illegal to block store entrances. It's illegal to do a whole lot of protest tactics, actually.
If you mean non-violent, then yes--I completely agree. Not a fan of riots, they're scary as hell for everybody. This is kinda what this OP is about, though--disagree with the riots, but understand why they're happening, and don't attack the oppressed when they do happen. Like MLK said, riots are the language of the unheard. Baltimore only happened after days of ignored protests, and I still supported those in the riot despite disagreeing with them. Their perspective is very different from ours, just as mine is very different from yours.
This post wasn't to articulate all the things I need protesting--our whole society is backwards, if you haven't noticed. But for now, the simple message that Black Lives Matter is good enough for me. When you get right down to it, that contains everything we need to start a whole new society. Certainly one that's nothing like the current American system. If you ask for more specifics, I'd simply point out that when you were 20, protesting "racism" was good enough for you.
If I had a specific goal? It'd be to change people's perspectives so that they're at least aware of what's happening to black communities. After that, maybe we can start changing minds, changing ideas, and taking a look at our own communities.