Movement Against Police Violence Condemns Violence Against Police
(COMMON DREAMS) Deirdre Fulton, July 9, 2016 — Even as racial justice advocates simultaneously mourned the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five police officers killed Thursday night in Dallas, they were forced to defend the nature and aims of their movement while fearing that the violence they seek to quell will only get worse.
That the shootings took place toward the tail end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest immediately muddied the narrative, leading some pundits and politiciansto pin blame for the attack on the national movement against police violence as opposed to the individual gunman, who told police before he died that he had operated alone and was unaffiliated with any groups.
Critics pointed out that in addition to explicitly drawing connections between the shooter and Black Lives Matter, the media and others were implicitly vilifying the movement and deepening existing divides. And as journalist Lauren Chanel Allen wrote on Twitter and at her blog, the attacks had the effect of shifting the conversation “quickly and perfectly” so that “[w]e were no longer talking about the heinous murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.”
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) network released a statement Friday morning condemning the shootings in Dallas, calling the violence “a tragedy–both for those who have been impacted by yesterday’s attack and for our democracy.”