WHY NOT "BLUE LIVES MATTER"?

This isn't about the good cops. This isn't about those who don't haven't had a pile of brutality and excessive force complaints filed against them. We need good cops to maintain order in our society. Of course the lives of police matter, but the police aren't being murdered at alarming rates.

• When someone says "#MeToo", do you say "Some Men Are Good"?
• When its Nurses week, do you say "Doctors Matter Too"?
• When it's Gay Pride, do you say "Straight Pride"?

This shouldn't be about the police vs. the Black community. The police have sworn to protect all citizens, so you should be able to be a police officer, or a regular civilian, and see that these injustices aren't fair.

WHAT HAS RIOTING EVER ACCOMPLISHED?

The Boston Tea Party - a riot we're all proud of. Rioting as a form of political dissent has been around longer than the United States has been a country. In 1773, colonists rioted and destroyed tea in protest of British occupation, taxes, and The Boston Massacre (the first person to be killed at the Boston Massacre was an unarmed Black man, Crispus Attucks). The tensions that erupted from The Boston Massacre, and Boston Tea Party, among other events fueled the American Revolution. Without rioting, we'd all still be under British colonial rule.

During the BLM Protest, the Military Police were stationed on the very spot where the occupying British troops opened fire during the Boston Massacre. Oh the irony.

Bloody Sunday - In 1965 protesters in Alabama marched from Selma to Montgomery because a Black civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, had been killed by a white police officer. The Alabama governor was against desegregation and the police blocked the procession, beating and teargassing the protestors who continued forward. Months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

MLK's Assassination - In 1968 Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist and Nobel peace prize recipient, was assassinated in Tennessee. Riots and looting ensued in more than 100 cities around the country. Seven days later the Fair Housing Act was made law.

Stonewall Riots - In 1969 police raided a gay club in New York, the Stonewall Inn. At that time, it was illegal to be gay, and the LGBT+ community had been continually targeted by the police. This time, the oppressed fought back. The rioting led to the formation of many gay rights organizations. The following year, America's first ever gay pride parade marched through New York, beginning at the Stonewall Inn. In 2015, the Supreme Court finally ruled that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states.

WHAT ABOUT THE LOOTING?

When years of peaceful protests haven't changed anything, what other options are there? The BLM movement has been peacefully protesting since 2013. Colin Kaepernick has been blacklisted from the NFL since 2016 for his peaceful protest.

Am I encouraging violence? No, of course not. But I understand how we got here. As a small business owner, I am of course sympathetic to people whose small businesses have suffered another blow during this pandemic. But if I have a choice between my business getting looted and my friends getting killed, I'd let you burn down my business every single time.

WHEN WILL THE PROTESTS STOP?

The police who killed George Floyd have been arrested and charged. But the protests continue. Why? American has a problem with police brutality.

• In 2019, there were only 27 days that the police did not kill someone.
• In 99% of killings by police from 2013-2019, the officers were not charged with any crime.
• Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police even though they are 1.3 times less likely to be armed.
• In 2019, 24% of people killed by police were Black, even though they are only 13% of the population.

The NAACP is asking for two things. One is for the United Nations to classify the mistreatment of Black people in the U.S. as a human rights violation by police. The second is for federal police reform with the following:

• A ban on the use of knee holds and chokeholds as an acceptable practice for police officers.
• The Use of Force Continuum for any police department in the country must ensure that there are at least 6 levels of steps, with clear rules on escalation.
• Each State’s Open Records Act must ensure officer misconduct information and disciplinary histories are not shielded from the public.
• Recertification credentials may be denied for police officers if determined that their use of deadly force was unwarranted by federal guidelines.
• Implementation of Citizen’s Review Boards in municipalities to hold police departments accountable and build public confidence.

"BUT I'M NOT A RACIST!"

Good! Now what? Just being not racist doesn't change anything. Doing nothing means nothing will change. So how can you help the Black community? First, education. When I started learning about White Fragility a few years back it opened my eyes a lot. Yes, racism can be uncomfortable to talk about, and it's hard to examine yourself and see how you fit in. No one is perfect, not even me or you. But opening your eyes to micro-aggressions will make you less likely to make those mistakes again. If you're not learning anything about yourself through this process, you're not helping to create positive change.

This isn't a one time thing either. For me personally, I grew up learning that everyone is equal and should be treated that way. But that black and white version of things led me to fall into the trap that racism didn't happen anymore, especially not here in the North. I assumed that because I have friends from all different backgrounds and ethnicities that I couldn't be part of the problem. I assumed that because Boston is such a liberal city those issues didn't exist here. But the more I educated myself, the more I realized just how very wrong I was. It's a growing process for those of us with white privilege to examine ourselves and what we need to do to fix this very, very broken societal structure.