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Shortly after Charlottesville, Virginia, became the site of deadly violence, Texas A&M University canceled a previously scheduled White Lives Matter rally, citing concerns that the event would turn violent. The University of Florida soon refused to allow a similar white supremacist event, followed by Michigan State and Louisiana State, with other colleges facing the same issue.

This raises a problem known in First Amendment law as the hecklers veto. If speech that may lead to violence is banned, anyone can get anything censored by generating a sufficient threat of potential violence in response. But before pursuing the free speech issue, let me consider the speech that is at issue.

A good place to start is the slogan of the canceled rally: White Lives Matter. This is true, of course, but why say that? Obviously it is meant as a response to Black Lives Matter, which was followed by All Lives Matter and now White Lives Matter. If one takes these three slogans simply as independent moral propositions, they are fully consistent with each other and are all true. But consider them now in sequence and in context.

Black Lives Matter was a response to a series of killings of black boys and men under circumstances that led many to question whether black lives were taken as seriously as white lives. The clear message was Black Lives Matter too. No one suggested that only black lives matter. On the contrary, black lives matter precisely because all lives matter.

But if all lives matter, whats wrong with the slogan All Lives Matter? It appears to be true, relevant, and morally important.

The problem lies in the sequence. Black Lives Matter (Too) already assumes that all lives matter, so it makes no sense to respond that All Lives Matter. Instead, a response of All Lives Matter implicitly misinterprets or misrepresents Black Lives Matter as Only Black Lives Matter. At best, this misses the point. At worst, All Lives Matter willfully deflects attention from black lives just when we are being reminded that they matter.

Now we have White Lives Matter. This would be a reasonable response to Only Black Lives Matter or Not All Lives Matter. But following Black Lives Matter (Too) and All Lives Matter, why respond with White Lives Matter, which has not been questioned? In this context and sequence, the most obvious interpretation of White Lives Matter is Only White Lives Matter, which contradicts the previous slogans and thus adds something new.

Only White Lives Matter is the ideology of white supremacy, including Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and Vanguard America, whose slogan is Blood and Soil. These are the people who organized the armed rally in Charlottesville.

But we should not permit our concern about white supremacists to blind us to another, and perhaps more common, reading of White Lives Matter. For many, this is a claim that white lives matter too.

Many white people perceive themselves to be living in a world where groups of all sorts get affirmative action while white lives and struggles are ignored or dismissed. Some, without denying that black lives matter, may be sympathetic to, or at least interested in, White Lives Matter (Too). Banning a White Lives Matter rally reinforces their sense of group victimization.

So how should colleges respond to plans for a White Lives Matter rally? They can of course deny or cancel any event that is intended to be violent. But if the threat of violence arises from the possibility of potentially violent counterdemonstrators, then to cancel the event is to give in to a hecklers veto.

Once it becomes clear that speech can be silenced by a sufficient show of likely violence, moreover, there may be threats to all sorts of speech deemed objectionable. The hecklers veto may come back to haunt in unexpected scenarios. Ultimately, white supremacists may be among the most successful in shutting down events they dislike by mustering credible threats of violence.

Maintaining both physical safety and intellectual freedom for all may be the top challenge of the coming academic year. Regardless of who the heckler may be, the hecklers veto must not prevail. Colleges must ensure they have plans, procedures, and sufficient security to protect controversial speech and those who wish to hear it. We cannot permit threats of force and fears of violence to dictate what can be said on college campuses.

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White Lives Matter after Charlottesville - HuffPost

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Posted: Aug 16, 2017 12:01 AM

Liberal business executives are leaping like lemmings from President Donald Trump's manufacturing advisory council. Good riddance.

These silly string-spined CEOs have sided with social justice agitators, Beltway media enablers and Democratic resistance knuckleheads who believe Trump was wrong to condemn violence and hatred on all sides of the political spectrum. Never mind that of the four people arrested after the violent outbreak in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend, two were identified with the white nationalist movement and the other two were left-wing "antifa" counterprotesters.

One of those radical leftists is the man identified as having reportedly punched a female reporter for the D.C.-based newspaper, The Hill. But since that doesn't fit the national media narrative of journalists allegedly being victimized by right-wing incitements to violence, mum's the word from corporate media executives and the rest of the preening CEOs.

Merck CEO Kenneth C. Frazier claimed he stepped down from the Trump business panel because he felt "a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism." But Frazier, who served on President Obama's Export Council, felt no equivalent responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism when the White House invited leaders from the violence-inciting Black Lives Matter movement for a forum on policing in July 2016.

The invitation was a grievous affront to law enforcement officers and their families across the country outraged at the deadly ambushes committed against cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge that summer, along with several other forgotten cop-killings fueled by BLM-linked hate and vengeance. Who remembers the slaying of Kentucky state trooper Joseph Ponder by BLM marcher and "Hands up, don't shoot" slogan-spreader Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks in September 2015? At least 11 police have been shot dead and at least nine more wounded by BLM protesters, activists and/or supporters to date.

One of the surviving policemen in the Baton Rouge massacre filed suit last month against BLM and laid out the case against its leaders, who "not only, incited the violence against police in retaliation for the death of black men shot by police, but also did nothing to dissuade the ongoing violence and injury to police. In fact, they justified the violence as necessary to the movement and war."

The permanently disabled cop's lawsuit recounts escalating riots, arson and plundering after the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray in Ferguson, Missouri, through the ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and leading up to the Obama administration's embrace of BLM's leaders. After the meeting, BLM leader DeRay McKesson responded to questions about his movement's culpability for inciting violence by asserting that his "people take to the streets as a last resort. ... So when I think about anything that happens when people are in the street, I always start by saying, 'People should not have had to have been there in the first place.'"

As the lawyers for the Baton Rouge cop, who must remain anonymous to protect his family, properly concluded: "These statements were a ratification and justification of the violence."

But instead of recriminations, the militants of BLM enjoy continued praise and coddling from corporate America. Tech execs from Netflix, YouTube and Google all donated to McKesson's failed mayoral bid in Baltimore. Business execs have been coughing up untold hundreds of millions of dollars to BLM and related causes, funneled through left-wing nonprofits such as the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy.

On Tuesday, Walmart executive Doug McMillon wagged his finger at Trump, urging "elected officials to do their part to promote a more just, tolerant and diverse society."

This from the head of a retail giant that only recently stopped selling racially divisive, anti-cop taunting, violence-glamorizing T-shirts that bragged: "Bulletproof: Black Lives Matter."

And the disavowal double standards beat goes on.

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Where Is the Corporate Disavowal of Black Lives Matter ...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Hundreds gathered for a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally at the West Virginia State Capitol Sunday.

The rally was organized by the group Call to Action for Racial Equality and attracted approximately 400 people.

"We came out just to gather and make it clear that people do care about racial justice in West Virginia, and people really will show up and get to work on the things that matter," Takeiya Smith tells WSAZ, a college student and co-organizer of the rally. "We were planning this two months ago, and we got such a huge outpouring of support after Charlottesville, saying enough is enough. We're ready to show up."

According to officials with the Office of the Secretary Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, an estimated 400 people turned out for the event. In a press release, officials said the rally "proved peaceful and concluded without incident."

There were no counter-protesters that showed up, but several dozen armed people who call themselves "Three Percenters" were present. They came from several different states and remained outside the rally to "protect free speech" and everyone at the rally.

The same group was in Charlottesville last weekend.

"We were pretty much humiliated and called every name in the book, as if we were apart of another group, which we were not," Bill Baistor from Maryland tells WSAZ. Baistor was one of the men who came to the rally in West Virginia and says he was also in Charlottesville during the chaos.

"We were pepper-sprayed. We were cussed at," he says. "When all we were doing was just protecting both groups' freedom, whether they liked what they were saying or not... Without the First Amendment, you're going to lose everything, and it starts there."

There was a skirmish after the rally ended between a group who was guarding the Stonewall Jackson statue on the other side of the capitol complex and an opposing group. Several dozen police officers moved in quickly and formed a line between the groups. The rally was not about the statue removal but came one week after calls for the statue to come down.

No arrests were made at the rally or during any of the activity that followed, according to police.

"The Black Lives Matter movement in West Virginia has been alive and well for over a year now, and you haven't heard of any incidents of us being violent," Smith says. "I'm proud of the people that I stand with."

Capitol Police, West Virginia State Police, Charleston Police, Charleston Fire, and the West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center were all on hand.

"We work very well with these public safety partners, and these kinds of collaborations serve to make that relationship more successful going forward," stated Capitol Police Director Kevin Foreman.

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Black Lives Matter rally promotes equality, remains peaceful - WSAZ-TV

Colin Kaepernick while playing with the San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images

BY: Conor Beck August 20, 2017 11:51 am

Items related to NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest and his other efforts to call attention to police brutality will be displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History.

The collection will be part of a Black Lives Matter collection,a source told USA Today.

"The National Museum of African American History and Culture has nearly 40,000 items in our collection," Damion Thomas, the Washington museums sports curator, said in an email."The Colin Kaepernick collection is in line with the museum's larger collecting efforts to document the varied areas of society that have been impacted by the Black Lives Matter movement."

Thomas previously said that Kaepernick items to be included are a game-worn jersey, shoes, and a picture donated by sociologist Harry Edwards. He said they would be displayed within "one or two years."

The museum has previously come under criticism for political bias by making only a passing reference to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was appointed by a Republican and is one of the high court's more conservative members.

Kaepernick, who made it to the Super Bowl in the 2012 season with the San Francisco 49ers, has drawn national attention since 2016 for kneeling during the playing of the national anthem and for his outspoken political opinions. He is currently a free agent.

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Kaepernick Items to be Included in Black Lives Matter Collection at Smithsonian - Washington Free Beacon

Items belonging to Colin Kaepernick will be part of the Black Lives Matter collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"The National Museum of African American History and Culture has nearly 40,000 items in our collection," Damion Thomas, the Washington museum's sports curator, told USA Today Sports. "The Colin Kaepernick collection is in line with the museum's larger collecting efforts to document the varied areas of society that have been impacted by the Black Lives Matter movement."

Justin Britt, who is white, put his arm on Michael Bennett's shoulder as Bennett sat during the national anthem on Friday night. Bennett had called for a white player to join the protest that seeks to call attention to social injustice.

Week 2 of the NFL's preseason featured the continuation of protests during the national anthem started by Colin Kaepernick last season.

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Thomas had previously told USA Today Sports that items would include a game-worn jersey and shoes.

Kaepernick, as a member of the San Francisco 49ers, kneeled during the playing of the national anthem throughout the 2016 season. The free-agent quarterback said he was protesting racial inequality and social injustice in the country.

Kaepernick was joined by several teammates and inspired players across the league to protest the national anthem, spurring a nationwide debate about the role of athletes on social issues.

Kaepernick was released by the Niners during the offseason. Several NFL players have stated that he is being freezed out of the league for his stance.

The museum, situated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opened to the public in 2016 as the 19th and newest museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Among the museum's featured sports items is a track warm-up suit that belonged to gold medalist Tommie Smith, who with teammate John Carlos famously raised black-gloved fists into the air during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

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Colin Kaepernick items to be part of Smithsonian's Black Lives Matter collection - ESPN