Talk to people from the Women’s March, and SLO Police Chief Deanna Cantrell was a hero. Talk to people from the Black Lives Matter marches, and she wasn’t. (It’s hard to imagine the Women’s March getting teargased.)
Can police reach beyond their own identity to imagine someone else’s? The chilling version is white Kenosha, Wisconsin, cops in armored personnel carriers telling a group of white assault-rifle-carrying “militia”—including Kyle Rittenhouse—”We appreciate you guys, we really do,” shortly before Rittenhouse guns down BLM protesters. More chilling still, with Rittenhouse identified by witnesses as the shooter, they let him walk away.
James Papp
SLO
This article appears in Sep 3-13, 2020.
There are clearly two sides to this debate. For those who pay attention to the details, all lives matter equally, and the concept that our society is systematically racist is preposterous. But worse, the organization “Black Lives Matter” has as one of its goals the destruction of the nuclear family and capitalism, with a guaranteed income program for Black citizens who chose not to work, and is run by two Marxist leaders.
For the police to put themselves in the shoes of a Marxist organization bent on destroying the nuclear family and the economic system which has created more wealth and freedom than any other, is nonsense. I don’t want our police to be sympathetic to any movement which seeks, by threats and intimidation, to upend Western society.