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" Black Lives Matter" is more popular than either President Trump or Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to recent polling. The online research firm Civiqs found in June that voters approved of the movement by a 28-point margin. Rasmussen found 62% of likely voters viewed it favorably and 32% very favorably.

This demonstrates that there is a national consensus that the lives of black fellow citizens matter, which has not always been the case in our history. It also suggests strong support for better, fairer policing in minority communities. But that seems far more likely to be because large majorities believe in the principle of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal rather than because they support the agenda of the organization with the innocuous-sounding name, Black Lives Matter.

Fact is, "black lives matter" is a matter of common decency entirely separate from the activist, ideological, left-wing agenda of the BLM group. That organization has stated aims that go far beyond addressing police brutality. Its goals include, without apology, the upending of American society. Yet it has gained massively more attention, support, and money since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis police custody. It is therefore important that the public, much of which thinks that by supporting BLM, they are backing obviously decent and humane reforms, knows enough to make the distinction between the idea and the ideologues hijacking it.

The co-founders of Black Lives Matter are avowed Marxists. At least one names a convicted cop killer among her heroes. A key mentor in building and shaping the group is a two-time vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA. The national organization is financially supported through a leftist group whose board of directors includes a convicted terrorist. A 2017 report from Black Lives Matter describes its founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi, as three radical Black organizers. The women espouse Marxism and openly push radical identity politics.

Susan Rosenberg was listed as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, BLM's financial sponsor, until the website was pulled down in late June. She had been a member of a radical leftist revolutionary militant group known as the May 19th Communist Organization, which was affiliated with the Weather Underground terrorist group and the radical Black Liberation Army. She was convicted on weapons and explosives charges and sentenced to 58 years in prison, serving 16 years behind bars before being pardoned by President Bill Clinton at the end of his second term in January 2001.

Rosenberg was a radical in the 1960s and 1970s who landed on the FBIs Most Wanted list for a number of crimes. She was caught in 1984 while unloading hundreds of pounds of dynamite and weapons, including a submachine gun, from her car at a New Jersey storage facility. She was believed to have been part of politically motivated bombing plots. Rosenberg and her associates were also charged with bombings during the 1980s that detonated at the Capitol and the Navy War College, among other targets. They were tied to a 1981 Brinks armored car robbery in which a guard and two police officers were killed. She wrote an autobiography in 2011 titled An American Radical: Political Prisoner in My Own Country about her own radical escapades.

Garza has repeatedly talked about how convicted cop killer and wanted domestic terrorist Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, is one of her main inspirations. Rosenberg was suspected of helping Shakur escape from prison after murdering a police officer.

Garza wrote an article for Feminist Wire in 2014 claiming that hetero-patriarchy and anti-Black racism within our movement is real and felt and explaining that when I use Assatas powerful demand in my organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about Assatas significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what its political purpose and message is, and why its important in our context. Garza has repeatedly tweeted approvingly about Shakur.

Shakur is on the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $1,000,000 reward for information directly leading to her apprehension. She is believed to be hiding in Cuba. Shakur, a member of the revolutionary extremist group the Black Liberation Army, is wanted for escaping from prison in New Jersey in 1979 while serving a life sentence for murdering a police officer. In 1973, Shakur and two accomplices were stopped for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike by two state troopers. She was wanted at the time for her role in a number of serious crimes, including bank robbery. When pulled over, Shakur and her comrades opened fire on the officers, wounding one trooper and killing Werner Foerster execution-style at point-blank range.

The BLM website is operated under an umbrella group known as the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, chaired by Cullors, who said she and Garza are trained organizers and trained Marxists during a 2015 interview with the Real News Network, noting: We actually do have an ideological frame. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories, and I think what we really try to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk.

Black Lives Matter states that it was founded in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman being acquitted of the killing of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman argued hed acted in self-defense. President Barack Obamas Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder found insufficient evidence to pursue any federal civil rights charges.

Cullorss memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, includes a foreword written by Angela Davis and an opening epigraph from Shakur. In the book, Cullors writes that we do this work today because on another day work was done by Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, [transgender activist] Miss Major, the Black Panther Party, and others. In describing her move toward activism, Cullors wrote, I read, I study, adding Mao, Marx, and Lenin to my knowledge of hooks.

Mao Zedong, founder of the Peoples Republic of China, was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his own people, including 45 million or more during the Great Leap Forward, and millions more during the Cultural Revolution. Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, presided over the Red Terror, which killed many tens of thousands as he launched one of the most repressive regimes in history.

Cullors told Teen Vogue in 2019 that Angela Davis is a mentor of mine. The duo have coordinated on BLMs strategies, and they appeared together at a TimesTalks event put on by the New York Times in 2018. During that discussion, Cullors called the poverty she grew up in a setup imposed upon her by a capitalist society and remarked: If this is a setup, then I can set it up differently. Davis, seen as a hero and mentor to the BLM co-founders, is another Marxist and was the Communist Party vice presidential nominee in 1980 and 1984. She was a leading apologist for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, even praising the East German and Soviet tyrannies while in East Berlin. Davis was the winner of the Soviet Unions Lenin Peace Prize and repeatedly praised the USSRs October 1917 Revolution.

In the United States, Davis was affiliated with the Black Panther Party and connected to violent, murderous radicals. Firearms registered to her were used in the takeover of a California courtroom in 1970 where four people were killed. Davis detests Israel and has been dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism for decades. She has been a fervent supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement waging economic warfare against the state of Israel in recent years. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote in his 1991 book Chutzpah that hed asked Davis if shed be willing to speak up on behalf of Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union when she went to Moscow to receive a prize and claims she told him that they are all Zionist fascists and opponents of socialism and would urge that they be kept in prison. But she has pushed for political prisoner Marwan Barghouti to be released from an Israeli prison. Barghouti, one of the leaders of the First and Second Intifada and a founder of the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, was convicted on 21 counts of murder for attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

Davis recently endorsed Biden on Moscow's state-owned Russia Today.

Garza and Davis appeared on Democracy Now! in 2017, with Garza effusive in her praise of Davis and repeatedly thanking her for helping guide the BLM leaders.

I have to say, Angela, one of the things I appreciate so much about you is that youre not waxing poetic about things that happened; youre still very much in relationship to all of us and still teaching us, Garza said. Thank you for being a constant presence for us. You are always 100% available and paying attention, and it means a lot to all of us. You are one of my greatest teachers.

Garza explained how thoroughly shed been shaped by Daviss radical ideology: I have a bookshelf full of your writings. And theres something very special and powerful about what you have offered to all of us this unapologetic way of making sure that we understand how intricately connected race and class and gender is, and then pushing that up against the state and the state apparatus and having us understand how we need to fight that with the relationship between race and class and gender in shaping our strategies and our movements is unmatched, so I want to thank you for that. Thank you for shaping not just our ideas, but the fights that we have on the ground.

Garza spoke at a leftist Net Impact Conference in 2016, where she made it clear that BLM was a wider agenda than police brutality, also pointing to the wage gap, climate change, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Reservation, and much more, arguing that at the root of these alleged problems was the capitalist system.

The closely affiliated Movement for Black Lives claimed in 2016 that Israel was an apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Cullors has repeatedly talked about the importance of solidarity with Palestine, leading a delegation to Palestine. Cullors was one of the signatories of 2015s Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine, a thoroughly anti-Israel screed that stated in part: Out of the terror directed against us from numerous attacks on Black life to Israels brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank strengthened resilience and joint-struggle have emerged between our movements. The statement also said that the signatories reject Israels framing of itself as a victim and, hand-waving away the countless terrorist attacks and thousands of rocket bombardments against Israel, falsely claimed that anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided slaughter.

In the wake of Floyds death and the subsequent protests, Black Lives Matter quickly set up a petition on its website to #DefundThePolice.

We call for an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken, Black Lives Matter said. We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.

The Black Lives Matter website explains this proposal with a July post declaring: We know that police dont keep us safe and as long as we continue to pump money into our corrupt criminal justice system at the expense of housing, health, and education investments we will never be truly safe. Thats why we are calling to #DefundPolice and #InvestInCommunities.

The group argued that George Floyds violent death was a breaking point an all too familiar reminder that, for Black people, law enforcement doesnt protect or save our lives. They often threaten and take them.

BLM is clear about its opposition to President Trump and Republicans. A letter from BLMs organizing director Nikita Mitchell has lamented that we face blatant anti-Blackness, capitalist values, and imperial projects, and she decried a rise of conservatism that has resulted in a fascist president.

BLM says that it is looking to influence Novembers election, arguing that Black voters tipped the balance in the 2018 midterm elections and that moving towards 2020, we seek to increase the power of our voices and votes. The group recently launched a #WhatMatters2020 campaign aimed to maximize the impact of the BLM movement by galvanizing BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. The campaign says that it is focused on racial injustice, police brutality, criminal justice reform, Black immigration, economic injustice, LGBTQIA+ and human rights, environmental conditions, voting rights and suppression, healthcare, government corruption, education, and commonsense gun laws.

Beyond their Black Lives Matter work, Cullors calls herself the self-described wife of Harriet Tubman and works on radical Los Angeles jail reform, while Tometi also spent years as executive director of the leftist Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Garza, Cullors, and Tometi were named three of Time Magazines 100 Women of the Year for 2013.

Black Lives Matter raises money through the ActBlue donation platform, though claims that this makes it a "shell company" for the Democratic Party are unfounded. Black Lives Matter appears to make up the majority of the donation work that Thousand Currents does, with the 2019 public audit statement for the latter group showing just over $6.4 million in total financial assets, including holding more than $3.3 million in assets for Black Lives Matter as of the end of last June. The audit shows Thousand Currents released nearly $1.8 million in donations to Black Lives Matter during the year ending on June 30, 2019.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has pulled in huge amounts of cash since Floyds death, telling the Associated Press that it had received more than 1.1 million individual donations as of mid-June, with each donor giving an average of $33 per donation meaning the group brought in more than $33 million in less than a month. Donations have continued to roll in since then.

BLM announced funds totaling $12.5 million in recent weeks. It first unveiled a $6.5 million fund to support its grassroots organizing work on June 11, stating in a press release that it was grateful for the generosity and support of donors and that the fund would be available to all chapters affiliated with the BLM Global Network Foundation. Beginning July 1, affiliated chapters may apply for unrestricted grant funding of up to $500,000 in multi-year grants," the group said, later adding that another $6 million will go to helping black-led grassroots organizers.

In the upcoming year, we will provide resources to those new to the movement and interested in Black Liberation strategies by developing curriculum, Cullors said when announcing the new fund. In this stunning moment in American history, we will honor those lost, and those who have come before us in the fight for Black Liberation.

Radicals attempting to co-opt otherwise constructive social movements are nothing new. The far Left participated in, and in some cases infiltrated, civil rights groups without discrediting the just and necessary fight against Jim Crow. But the arguments that won the day against segregation were rooted in the best American traditions, not in overthrowing those traditions. Distinguishing Black Lives Matter the group from the growing sentiment in favor of racial justice driving the phrase's popularity is a necessary first step in repeating that history.

Jerry Dunleavy is a Justice Department reporter for the Washington Examiner .

Read more:
Who Is Black Lives Matter? - washingtonexaminer.com

Editors note: This is the third printed and updated edition of the Black Lives Matter pamphlet.

Preface

These are difficult times: Our nation is in the throes of a triple-layered crisis of COVID-19, a deep economic crisis with 50 million unemployed, and an escalating nationwide struggle against the virus of racist police murders.

There is another dimension that negatively affects everything: we have a white nationalist, neo-fascist president in the White House.

These problems are rooted in a general crisis of U.S. capitalism.

But the thing that worries the ruling class most is the massive multi-racial, anti-racist movement that has exploded on the scene all across the nation. The latest figures I have seen show large powerful protests in nearly every state and in 300 cities. Millions continue to march from sea to shining sea.

The capitalist 1% and their right-wing allies are not serious about eliminating racismthat is why they are engaging in a vicious campaign to slander, derail, and smash this historic movement. But the movement remains united and is growing.

Trump and his white nationalist allies, who are armed, want to wreak havoc. They are deliberately trying to discredit this historic movement against racism and turn it into a gang of looters and arsonists. But it is not working. Shame on the fascists who are responsible. They should be weeded out and prosecuted.

Trump looked ridiculous to everyone when he attacked demonstrators at the White House so that he could stage his Bible-toting photo-op that the ministers of the church roundly condemned. That was as phony as his attack on Antifa. We need to be in solidarity with Antifa.

These right-wing provocations, aimed at identifying the peaceful vast majority of protesters with those who are looting and setting fires, must and will be defeated. As George Floyds brother put it, We dont have to loot and burn. We can win this fight. We have the numbers.

With respect to some who are breaking into stores around the city, I take a different view. Lets remember that people are trapped in desperate poverty and cant survive. These are people without the basics of food and decent shelter. During the Great Depression, on the Iron Range in Hibbing, Minnesota, working families were starving and so desperate that they organized a looting of the general store to get food for their families. These were mainly white workers. That story was told to me by Gus Hall who went on to become the General Secretary of the CPUSA.

Today just like back then our people will not starve!

The Justice for George Floyd movement is winning. It forced Minnesota authorities to fire and arrest Derek Chauvin along with the other cops who aided Floyds public execution.

The protest also resulted in the appointing of Attorney General Keith Ellison as the head of the prosecution.

The tragic video of the callous murder of George Floyd, and linking it with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, has given birth to this new movement. We extend our congratulations, solidarity, and support.

Among its just demands are:

Lets turn the marches in the streets to marches to the ballot box in November and beyond! Below, find our take on the Black Lives Matter struggle in New York and other cities. We look forward to your comments and feedback!

Where We Have Come From

With capitalism came modern American slavery and the government policy of racist oppression and brutality.

Our history as a nation shows capitalism and slavery are an especially toxic mix. It has taken tens of millions of lives over the centuries.

Turning human beings into commodities to be bought and sold and basically worked to death meant a level of viciousness, brutality, and suffering that humanity had never experienced. Maintaining this system required a reign of terror to try to prevent people from pursuing freedom.

The system of chattel slavery was defeated, but racial oppression remains a cornerstone of capitalist rule in our country. After the defeat of the old Jim Crow (U.S. apartheid) in the 1960s, new forms were created. The majority of African Americans remained segregated and unequal in most vital areas of life.

Jim Crow extended the reign of terror by keeping millions of African Americans and other people of color trapped in poverty, ill-housed, ill-fed, poorly educated, brutalized by the police, and incarcerated at the highest rate in the world.

All of this was not possible without systemic, structural racism, including a policy of racial exclusion, to make it work. Racial profiling in law enforcement and in private and public employment has a central place in a system of oppression that penalizes people of color with double and triple unemployment, poverty, and incarceration rates.

Holding Black folks in deep poverty and oppression, in order to keep peopleespecially working-class peopleracially divided remains a basic part of U.S. capitalist rule. It is a central reason the ruling 1% can maintain their power and privilege. Most African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian, and Pacific peoples who find themselves trapped in a super-exploited, racially oppressed crisis state of existence are there not because they are childlike, criminal, inferior, lazy, unintelligent or violent or lack initiative and discipline.

It is the system of racial oppression and terror thats primarily responsible, and this is what must be challenged. This should be the historic mission of all people of good will who want a democratic and humane society with economic and social equality and justice for all.

The New Jim Crow

Since Reagans election in the 1980s, with new right neoliberal ideology and trickle-down Reaganomics, things have taken an even more ominous turn. The impact of the structural crisis of U.S. capitalism meant massive numbers of hard-working people, often long-term union members, becoming the long-term unemployed and underemployed. Along with massive cuts in social programs accompanied by new repressive anti-drug laws came severe brutalization by police. Entrapment reached new heights. Communities of color were basically under siege. Millions were criminalized. The drugs did bring more violence and killing, but who brought in the drugs and the guns?

As a result of anti-crime racist hysteria, police-state methods were imposed. Three strikes laws, along with disproportionate penalties for crack vs. powder cocaine, resulted in the prison population more than tripling. Many lives were lost, many others ruined.

The Land of the Free now incarcerates more people than any other country. Today an astounding 70 million have criminal records. This racist, inhumane policy was funded with trillions that could have been used to build decent housing and schools, creating good jobs, but instead was used to incarcerate millions.

All of this was rationalized by promoting racist hysteria about crime. As Michelle Alexander points out in her seminal work The New Jim Crow, being a Black man became synonymous with being a criminal. Fictitious figures like Reagans Black welfare queen in Chicago, who supposedly picked up her welfare check in a Cadillac, became an argument for repealing welfare.

When George Bush Sr. ran for president, he used the case of rapist Willie Horton, a Black man who was released on parole and committed another crime, to defeat his more liberal opponent. The case was then used to advocate mandatory sentencing.

Playing the race card is how both Reagan and Bush Sr. were elected. They criminalized the poor and rationalized cutting funds for education. Prisons are the largest government housing programs in the U.S. today.

The Struggle Continues

The brutal police choke-hold murder of Eric Garner in Staten Island and the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparked a broad grassroots, anti-racist movement calling for justice for all victims of police misconduct and murders, especially unarmed people of color.

The movement demanded democratic reform, starting with an end to racial profiling, holding police accountable, and rolling back their militarization. Better training in race relations and avoiding the use of deadly force were demanded. Hands Up, Dont Shoot became the rallying cry dramatizing Mike Browns unarmed posture before he was shot and killed.

Black Lives Matter is basically a call for an end to racial profiling and for the police to respect the lives and rights of all people. It is part of the demand to put the focus on poverty and the real causes of crime rather than continuing to build more prisons and hire more police. The main victims of policies that promote incarceration are Black and Latino young men. Even if they survive the streets and prison, their lives and families are damaged. In some states ex-offenders are denied the right to vote, and since most employers wont hire them, these former prisoners face a lifetime of unemployment and poverty.

Demonstrators called for special prosecutors to try cases of police murders, especially when district attorneys, whose first allegiance is to the police, failed to do so. The federal government was pushed to step in and use existing federal civil rights laws to bring justice to the victims and their families.

A New Moment

The development of this nationwide movement, mainly initiated by African American youth in Ferguson, activated large numbers of people of all races, nationalities, and ages. Like the Occupy movement and the Justice for Trayvon Martin movement, they marched at night for weeks. This tactic spread across the country. The core constituency were youthblack, brown, Asian, and white coming from the ghettos and barrios, along with high schools and college campuses.

In Ferguson police used military weapons to disperse unarmed demonstrators. Yet every night for weeks these courageous, mainly African American youth kept on marching. State and federal governments were forced to speak out. The courage and fighting capacity of our youth gave the lie to talk about apathy and shows that the younger generation is political and progressive.

Despite irrefutable video evidence in Staten Island and a huge public outcry, including statements from then Attorney General Holder and President Obama, the district attorneys in both the Brown and Garner cases manipulated grand juries to avoid indicting the police. George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin, had a trial that was widely considered a sham. But in the cases of policemen Darren Wilson (Ferguson) and Daniel Pantaleo (Staten Island), they were not even brought to trial! In response, marches grew larger and more militant. The families of the victims called for peaceful demonstrations, and for the most part, despite police provocations and misleading media images, protests remained overwhelmingly so.

The New York City Story

In response to the murder of Eric Garner, thousands of demonstrators again hit the streets night after night for many weeks, blocking traffic, including on main highways. These actions reminded me of the level of mass protest at the height of the Civil Rights and antiVietnam War struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. Mayor De Blasio supported the right of demonstrators to protest peacefully, including the right to carry out acts of civil disobedience. There were some incidents and arrests, but for the most part the NYPD, under orders from the mayor, were restrained.

This movement was broad and united people of differing political views. Every action taken, every experience, if history is any judge, helped undermine racism and raise political consciousness. Many of the newly activated were not just looking at the racist policies of NYPD and other police forces and public officials, but also at structural racism on all levels. Growing numbers see inequality as systemically tied to the capitalist system.

Millions of people of good will from communities, campuses, churches, mosques, temples, and unions from all walks of life were disappointed and angered that neither of the white policemen involved in the killing of Garner and Brown was indicted and brought to trial.

This included professional athletes and well-known figures in the mass media. Basketball players warmed up in I Cant Breathe T-shirts to commemorate the last words of Eric Garner as he died in Daniel Pantaleos illegal choke hold. They understood that this was justice denied.

In reaction to the nationwide movement, extreme-right politicians, media, police, and police association officials launched an aggressive racist defense of the accused officers. That reaction showed that the demonstrations were having a major impact on public opinion.

Then there was another tragic turn in events in New York City. Two NYPD officers were shot dead while sitting in their patrol car in the Bedford Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were shot by a mentally ill Black man in the middle of New Yorks largest Black community. This tragedy gave a green light to the most right-wing, racist opponents of democratization of the NYPD. No doubt thinking they would now have the public on their side, the right-wing stepped up their attacks, placing the blame on the mayor and the movement for police reform.

Patrick Lynch, Voice of Racism

Patrick Lynch, the head of the NY Patrolmens Benevolent Association (PBA), became another loud voice for racism. There are over 35,000 members of the NYPD, with 23,000 belonging to the PBA. Lynch launched a hate campaign against Mayor De Blasio. He called on his members to sign a pledge saying that if they are killed in the line of duty, they dont want the mayor to speak at their funeral. Throughout the whole Garner struggle, Lynch became a loud voice defending the accused officers, even in the face of video evidence.

Lynch attacked the people marching for justice, Reverend Al Sharpton, and anyone who had spoken out. He actually claimed that Officer Pantaleo did not use a choke hold, causing Eric Garners sister to wonder whether Lynch and company had seen the same video everybody else saw.

Former Mayor Giuliani blamed Garners death on the victim because he was overweight. Besides, he said in one TV interview, this was not racism because one of the cops on the scene was an African American woman, and she did not speak out against what was going on.

Lynch went on to organize police to turn their backs on the mayor when he spoke at the funerals of the two slain officers. At the Police Academy commencement ceremony for new officers at Madison Square Garden, the PBA was able to organize another back-turning protest. They even organized a slow-down in issuing tickets and making arrests, hoping the tragedy would turn the public against De Blasio and the movement against police murders.

The mayor spoke at both funerals and personally visited the families in their homes. The families were receptive and called for peace on the streets and between the mayor and the PBA. The mayor also asked that demonstrations stop until after the funerals. Numbers were diminished, but people continued to demonstrate.

The murder of the two officers created a problem for the movement. Most movement leaders spoke out and expressed sympathy to the families and said that they were not against cops but against police misconduct.

Basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar, in an article entitled The Police Arent under Attack, Institutionalized Racism Is (Time Magazine 12/24/14), got it right. Coming from a family of police officers, he called the deaths of the two officers a national tragedy. He went on to write, We need to understand that their recent deaths are in no way related to the massive protest against systemic abuses of the justice system as symbolized by the recent deathsalso national tragediesof Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, and Michael Brown. The killer wasnt an impassioned activist expressing a political frustration, argued Jabbar, He was a troubled man.

Police rebellions against elected mayors over charges of police racism, brutality, and killing happened before. They occurred under mayors John Lindsey, Abe Beam, Ed Koch, and David Dinkins. The police were able to mobilize public opinion on behalf of the accused officers, and they won. Ten thousand cops demonstrated against Dinkins, the citys first Black mayor, in September of 1992, and Rudy Giuliani used the heightened racism and anti-crime hysteria to defeat Dinkins bid for reelection.

After all is said and done, its clear that Lynch was basically defending the right of the police department to practice the most repressive policies and practices. Policies like stop and frisk, which focused primarily on communities of color, brought out the most violent and bigoted behavior on the part of the police who had monthly arrest quotas. Communities were virtually under martial law. A reign of terror was directed at young men of color.

But Lynch was not without opposition. It appears he had a real problem among the membership of his own union and faced a challenge for leadership in reaction to his antics. Indeed, a membership meeting in Queens broke up in a shouting match over his insistence that the mayor needed to apologize; Lynch then withdrew the demand. In the end, only five percent of the PBA agreed to sign the pledge not to invite the mayor to speak at their funeral.

War on Crime or War on Poor Folks?

What was really behind these repressive measures? In fact, this was and remains a war on the poor. Authorities knew that high poverty contributes to increased crime rates.

Across the country there is a growing understanding that racist police methods and mass incarceration of black and brown people are really a way of terrorizing and controlling poor folks. They want to drive poor people out of their communities so real estate speculators can take over, gentrify neighborhoods, and make huge profits.

Millions have been victims of these policies. The fightback may start with the excesses and killings by the police, but to win fundamentally it must lead to a united labor and peoples movement fighting for economic and social justice.

This is beginning to take shape. It was important that the head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, went to Ferguson and put labor on the side of social justice there. Other union locals and internationals have done likewise. The United Federation of Teachers nationally and in New York was sharply attacked by PBA for acting in solidarity with the victims of police killings.

Real Reforms

Whats it going to take to really address the problem of police murder, and are the people ready to support real change, including structural changes in how police are policed?

Establishing real civilian controls over police behavior, for example, would be a great step forward. The Police Complaint Review Board in NY was not independent of the police. Its basically set up and appointed by the cops. Complaints are reviewed and processed by them, and rarely is justice served.

As a result, people are forced to take complaints to court. Every year, the city of New York pays out tens of millions of dollars in settlements for police abuses.

Thats why establishing a civilian control board independent of the NYPD to investigate civilian complaints is necessary. As the police department is an agency of the state sworn to uphold the law, the NYPD must be held accountable for the actions of their employees and for the outcomes of their policies. Not everyone who passes a test and meets the physical qualifications makes a good officer. Bullies and people who exhibit openly bigoted and racist behavior should not be permitted to serve.

Disputes between police and civilians are not conflicts between individuals with equal power. As Prof. Michael Dyson has stated, the police have the power of the state behind them. They are vested with the enormous power to legally take away a persons freedom, to harm people. Just as government meat or building inspectors need to be policed, the police need to be policed. A real civilian complaint board needs to have the right to appoint special prosecutors and have the ability to suspend, indict, and fire police who are abusers.

In light of the poverty and harsh conditions of life imposed on communities of color, the role that the police are ordered to play to try to maintain order without justice is problematic. No justice, no peace does not arise from nowhereits a correct slogan that must be supported.

Stop the War on the Poor and Start Winning the War on Poverty

Since poverty is the root cause of crime, it must be reduced and eliminated. This issue needs to be at the center of the discussion. The elimination of poverty and social injustice is key to ending the crisis of crime. Economists are saying the United States is becoming a low-wage, high-poverty country. In New York City, according to the mayor, 47% of residents are at or near the poverty level. Most New Yorkers are non-white. This means that racism is felt most sharply by more than half the population.

Current policies in low-income communities are to treat being poor as a crime. Therefore you criminalize and incarcerate the poor to control the poor. Want to eliminate homelessness? Eliminate poverty. To do that means turning communities of color into communities of quality affordable housing, schools, health care, and day care. It means decriminalizing undocumented workers and raising the minimum wage to a livable wage. It means rebuilding depressed urban and rural communities. Todays low-income neighborhoods need clean and accessible mass transit. This program will help all working people, but affirmative action is needed to make sure that those now left behind will equally benefit.

When big business fails, the government helps them. We all remember when the banks were bailed out. The auto industry was bailed out. They call that help in the national interest. But when tens of millions of Americans are locked in the death grip of poverty for generations, the attitude is, You are on your own and Get it together.

These changes are possible only with a comprehensive enforcement of laws against all forms of discrimination, including racial profiling in both private and public sectors.

Where Will the Money Come From?

This program would be paid for by drawing down the US military presence around the world and pursuing a foreign policy of peace and negotiations. By taxing the rich and super rich and closing the trillions in tax giveaways in the form of loopholes, the gap between the ultra rich and the poor could be reduced and poverty alleviated. Yes, we need to sharply raise taxes on the rich.

Some will ask, Is it worth it? The bigger question is, can we afford the disasters of mass unemployment, mass incarceration, and underfunded schools?

All this social and economic dislocation and the resulting pain is about covering up the great flaws of the capitalist system. The system cannot meet the needs of all the people. Repression and terror happen to keep the dollars flowing to the 1%. A society that builds jails instead of affordable housing is a society in decay and on the path to chaos and economic collapse.

Its time to end the war on the poor and begin the war on poverty.

How Can This Be Won?

The award-nominated film Selma showed how voting rights were won. It reminds us of the revolutionary qualities of the fight against racism and for civil rights. This was a monumental struggle for freedom of African American people, and it advanced democracy for all.

The revolutionary process is not a sprint, but a marathon. Things can and do change; they do not stay the same. To say that we are making gains is not a call to slow down but to fight harder because we are getting closer to real freedom. Humanity is pushing forward. The pace of change depends on the size and unity of the progressive forces and the divisions in the ruling group.

The great battle today is focused on police crimes. But fundamentally it is the same battle that was fought in 1964 for voting rights. The chant Black Lives Matter could have been chanted in Selma. It is a call that all lives matter. There were those who argued that voting rights would never be won. They were wrong. The African American vote is now a critical and decisive part of all presidential races. Without the over 90% African American vote, Obama could not have won.

An Update

Since the writing of this pamphlet, the epidemic of police murders of unarmed people, particularly black men, has continued. But so has the broad grassroots anti-racist movement demanding justice.

In North Charleston, South Carolina, on April 4, 2015, Walter Scott, an unarmed 50-year-old African American worker, father of four and military vet, was shot eight times in the back while fleeing white policeman Michael Slager. Feidin Santana witnessed the murder of Scott and recorded it on his cell phone. After he heard officer Slagers made-up version of events, he decided to make his video public. Officer Slager was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. This act of cold-blooded murder fueled a new wave of mass anti-racist demonstrations in North Charleston and around the country.

Eight days later on April 12 in West Baltimore, Freddie Grey was arrested for making eye contact with police and then running away. He was seriously injured, could not walk, and was thrown in the back of a police van while shackled. Once again, as in Staten Island and North Charleston, a bystander videoed his limp body being thrown into the van while Grey cried out in pain. After a rough ride in the police van, the critically injured Grey ended up in the hospital and died seven days later of severe spinal injuries. For days after, the streets of Baltimore were full of mainly young people demonstrating.

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Black Lives Matter! Communist Party USA

Many see the slogan Black Lives Matter as a plea to secure the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans, especially historically wronged African Americans. They add the BLM hashtag to their social-media profiles, carry BLM signs at protests and make financial donations.

Tragically, when they do donate, they are likely to bankroll a number of radical organizations, founded by committed Marxists whose goals arent to make the American Dream a reality for everyone but to transform America completely.

This might be unknown to some of the worlds best-known companies, which have jumped on the BLM bandwagon. Brands like Airbnb and Spanx have promised direct donations.

True, others like Nike and Netflix have shrewdly channeled their donations elsewhere, like the NAACP and other organizations that have led the struggle for civil rights for decades. These companies are likely aware of BLMs extreme agenda and recoil from bankrolling destructive ideas. But it requires sleuthing to learn this.

Companies that dont do this hard work are providing air cover for a destructive movement and compelling their employees, shareowners and customers to endorse the same. Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.

In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuelas Marxist dictator Nicols Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.

Millions of Venezuelans suffering under Maduros murderous misrule presumably couldnt be reached for comment.

Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan Now We Transform. Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek.

One proclaims: We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another.

A partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.

Another M4BL demand is the retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record expungement of all drug-related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the war on drugs and criminalization of prostitution.

This agenda isnt what most people signed up for when they bought their Spanx or registered for Airbnb. Nor is it what most people understood when they expressed sympathy with the slogan that Black Lives Matter.

Garza first coined the phrase in a July 14, 2013, Facebook post the day George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Her friend Cullors put the hashtag in front and joined the words, so it could travel through social media. Tometi thought of creating an actual digital platform, BlackLivesMatter.com.

The group became a self-styled global network in 2014 and a fiscally sponsored project of a separate progressive nonprofit in 2016, according to Robert Stilson of the Capital Research Center. This evolution has helped embolden an agenda vastly more ambitious than just #DefundthePolice.

The goals of the Black Lives Matter organization go far beyond what most people think. But they are hiding in plain sight, there for the world to see, if only we read beyond the slogans and the innocuous-sounding media accounts of the movement.

The groups radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of society the family with the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other. Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed.

Theirs is a blueprint for misery, not justice. It must be rejected.

Andrew Olivastro is director of coalition relations at the Heritage Foundation. Michael Gonzalez is a Heritage senior fellow and author of the forthcoming book The Plot To Change America.

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The agenda of Black Lives Matter is far different from the ...

Backlash against Black Lives Matter includes branding it as Marxist.

The attack has been made in recent weeks by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trumps personal lawyer; Ben Carson, Trumps secretary of Housing and Urban Development; conservative talk show host Mark Levin; and PragerU, which has more than 4 million Facebook followers.

Arent sure what Marxism is, actually? It was developed by 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx and is the basis for the theory of communism and socialism. "Marxism envisioned the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat (working class people) and eventually a classless communist society," Encyclopedia Britannica and Oxford Reference say.

These days, Marxism usually means analyzing social change through an economic lens, with the assumption that the rich and the poor should become more equal.

In a recently surfaced 2015 interview, one of the three Black Lives Matter co-founders declared that she and another co-founder "are trained Marxists."

But the movement has grown and broadened dramatically. Many Americans, few of whom would identify as Marxists, support Black Lives Matter, drawn to its message of anti-racism.

"Regardless of whatever the professed politics of people may be who are prominent in the movement, they dont represent its breadth," said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University African American Studies professor and author of "From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation."

"There are definitely socialists within the movement, as there have been in every single social movement in 20th century American history and today. But that does not make those socialist movements, it makes them mass movements," she said.

Trained Marxists

In a Facebook post labeling Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement, PragerU included a video interview with Carol Swain, a Black conservative and former professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities. She said, "Now, the founders of Black Lives Matter, theyve come out as Marxists."

Swain alluded to Black Lives Matters three co-founders, who are still featured prominently on the groups website Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Their primary backgrounds are as community organizers, artists and writers. Swain, though, was referring to a newly surfaced interview Cullors did in 2015, where she said:

"We do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists. We are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think what we really try to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folks."

We didnt find that Garza and Tometi have referred to themselves as Marxists. But the book publisher Penguin Random House has said Garza, an author, "describes herself as a queer social justice activist and Marxist."

What Black Lives Matter says

Black Lives Matter was formed in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Florida. The group calls its three co-founders "radical Black organizers."

The project started with a mission "to build local power and to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes," the groups website says. "In the years since, weve committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic and political power to thrive."

Included on its list of beliefs is one that has drawn criticism as being consistent with Marxism:

"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

A spokesperson for Black Lives Matter; Kailee Scales, managing director at Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation;and the three co-founders did not reply to our requests for information.

"On one level, these are just put downs," University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Richard Wolff, author of "Understanding Marxism," told PolitiFact about the attacks on Black Lives Matter.

If people declare themselves Marxists, they are in effect Marxists, but "there really is no standard" of what Marxism is, "theres no way to verify anything."

Black Lives Matter today

Its important to recognize that movements evolve.

Noting Cullors declaration of being Marxist trained, "one has to take that seriously: if the leadership says it is Marxist, then there's a good chance they are," said Russell Berman, a professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its conservative Hoover Institution who has written critically about Marxism.

But "this does not mean every supporter is Marxist Marxists often have used useful idiots. And a Marxist movement can be more or less radical, at different points in time," he said.

Black Lives Matters "emphatic support for gender identity politics sets it apart from historical Marxism," and the goals listed on its website "do not appear to be expressly anti-capitalist, which would arguably be a Marxist identifier," Berman added.

The groups support is broad.

Even as some Americans express support for socialism, most view it negatively, and few of the supporters would identify themselves as Marxist.

Meanwhile, 50% of registered voters support Black Lives Matter as of mid-July, up from 37% in April 2017, according to Civiqs, an online survey research firm.

In July, the New York Times reported that Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history, as four polls suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of Floyd and others in recent weeks. (That does not account for similar protests overseas.)

"I am fairly convinced these are mostly attempts to smear anti-racist activists. I think in some media, Marxist is dog-whistle for something horrible, like Nazi, and thus enables to delegitimize/dehumanize them," Miriyam Aouragh, a lecturer at the London-based Westminster School of Media and Communication, told PolitiFact.

Black Lives Matter "is not an organization, but a fluid movement; it doesnt actually matter if one of its founders was a liberal, Marxist, socialist or capitalist."

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PolitiFact | Is Black Lives Matter a Marxist movement?

The Greater Atlanta organization maintained an active presence on Facebook, sought donations through GoFundMe, and cheered on the protesters. Weve been blown away by the millions that are coming together to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others whove had their lives taken, said one of its posts in August.

Mr. Page said in private messages that the donations it received were being used to finance the groups activism, federal investigators said. None of the money was used for personal items, Mr. Page wrote in one of the messages. All movement related.

Other groups based in Atlanta have distanced themselves from Mr. Pages organization and its appeals for money. A similarly named but unrelated organization, Black Lives Matter Atlanta, wrote on Facebook, This page will never seek donations. This is a grass-roots collective movement to fight for justice for the disenfranchised, and victims of police brutality.

The Greater Atlanta group stressed in a post in June that donations to it were not tax-deductible: We said it once, and we will say it again, BLMGA is no longer a nonprofit org, we are a social media grass roots org.

The authorities said that Mr. Page established a nonprofit organization in 2016 and opened a bank account for Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta Inc. in 2018 with himself as the only signatory. The balance in the account never exceeded $5,000 until May of this year, and at one point it was overdrawn by $12.42.

But then donations exploded.

Investigators found that Mr. Page used a debit card linked to the bank account to pay for food, entertainment, furniture and a home security system. On Aug. 21, the authorities said, he spent $112,000 of the donated money for the house in Toledo and an adjacent lot.

A friend, Ron Goolsby, told The Toledo Blade that he expected Mr. Page to be exonerated. Mr. Page had plans to turn the Toledo house into a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, Mr. Goolsby said. This is all going to be cleared up, for sure, he said.

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Man Spent Donations to Black Lives Matter on Himself, Prosecutors Say - The New York Times