But right-wingers easily pushed back, dismissing the movement with the retort, “All lives matter.”
I used the term “right-wingers,” not conservatives, because true conservatives deplore abuses of state power against individuals. It is the grumpy right-wingers who want those black protesters and their uppity liberal allies to shut up and go away.
To them, “All lives matter” isn’t a slogan or a movement. It is a dismissal. It is an attempt to end dialogue before it has begun.
But the tragic events of recent days should sober all of us Americans up to the need to show that all lives really matter and take action to show it.
The first casualty of the week was Alton Sterling, who police in Baton Rouge busted early Tuesday for selling bootleg CDs and shot at close range, while he was on the ground.
The following evening another black man, Philando Castile, 32, was fatally shot by the St. Anthony Police Department in Minnesota, apparently during a traffic stop.
His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, turned on the one tool she had available, her cell phone. Talking to the officer and repeatedly addressing him as “sir,” she feeds video and her agitated narration to her Facebook page as her boyfriend bleeds to death in the driver’s seat and her 4-year-old daughter cries in the back.
The news turned even more tragic during nationwide protests on Thursday night. A peaceful Dallas protest march turned violent. Sniper fire killed five police officers and wounded seven more, police said.
Ironically, earlier in the day, President Barack Obama told reporters that the shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota were “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”
He cited statistics that showed that blacks and Hispanic Americans were far more likely to be arrested and shot by police and, once charged, to receive longer sentences for the same crimes.
When people feel they have been treated unfairly and don’t trust the police, the president said, it makes the job harder for “those law enforcement officers who are doing a great job, and are doing the right thing.”
So, when people say “black lives matter,” he said, “it doesn’t mean ‘blue lives’ don’t matter, it just means all lives matter.”
Indeed, President Obama could have mentioned a recent case that most major media overlooked. Video shows Dylan Noble, an unarmed 19-year-old Fresno teen, was fatally shot June 25 by police as he was lying on the ground after a traffic stop for speeding, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Release of the video led to a large protest vigil. Mourners, not too surprisingly, planted protest signs. Appropriately, they read, “White Lives Matter.”
Indeed, they do. So do the lives of people of color — and police lives, too. The Dallas massacre of innocent police officers hurts everyone. So do misbehaving cops who make it harder for honest cops to do their jobs properly. Those of us who truly believe that “all lives matter” need to elect leaders who can put some action behind those words.
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