As the semester comes to a close I have been reflecting on this course as a whole and wondering what to talk about in my final blog post. I finally settled on the concept of similarities between 1968 and 2020 and how these two years have been incredibly similar to one another. We have seen this year more than any other in the 21st century I believe a return to the movements that characterized the 1960s and 70s.
I believe that when we look at 1968 and the Civil Rights Movement and 2020 and the Black Lives Matter movement we can see that the two are not so different from one another. This summer we could see that the BLM Movement really took off and it was characterized by images that we also saw in 1968, protestors facing off against heavily armed and organized police officers. I think further to this we can also see that the use of technology has similarities between the two years and while undoubtedly we are better connected than ever the fact that we like people in the 1960s are watching these events play out live has an aura of specialness around it as I feel that we are as they were, living through history.
I think that also the issues of the presidential election and Brexit give cause for us to evaluate the political situations in both of these years as we can see these polarizations have caused rifts in communities in both the United Kingdom/Ireland as well as the United States.
I think that you’re right in saying that there is a connection between the civil rights movement and BLM movement in the fact that technology has been essential to both. MLK was adamant in the fact that there needed to be some sort of altercation when protesting in order to get the publicity and attention that the movement needed. There was a goal of provoking the police in order to cause disorder. I think that the BLM movement has taken a similar approach. Many peaceful marches have been accompanied by looting, which tends to really trigger people. This gets them talking about the movement, albeit sometimes in a negative light, but regardless the movement is front page news and on every news channel. So while the two movements may not be perfect mirrors of each other, they have clear connections in their methods.
Semester is almost over – So I’m going to take a pretty hot take here. The BLM movement, and the organization itself are not at all equivalent to the civil rights movement. Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and countless other victims or heroes of the civil rights movement would be disgusted by the chosen figure heads of the BLM movement. With the exception of Mr Floyd – the entirety of the “causes” of riots and protests have been laughable. Jacob Blake – serial sexual predator, armed, assaulted police officers – attempted to drive a vehicle with children inside essentially weaponizing said vehicle. BLM rioted for a second time in Minneapolis because a man committed suicide outside a mall. Even Breona Taylor – this is gonna get spicy for ya’ll – boyfriend fired first, after police officers had identified themselves – the AG of Kentucky made a public statement regarding this – so you can fact check me if you’d like. If police officers cannot respond to being fired upon with a lethal weapon what is the point of a law enforcement agency anyways?
Now we can make an entirely different case as to whether or not the raid in and of itself was justified – I am a firm opponent of the war on drugs, but when the intended victim of the raid fires first, on officers of the law who have identified themselves, what else are they supposed to do?
I hope you all see my point. Equating the heroes of the civil rights movements to BLM Marxists is rather silly.