Black Lives Matter under pressure after Dallas
Political momentum for movement could be lost by nationwide backlash
The deadly shootings during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas could create unwelcome tensions and potential roadblocks for civil rights activists, who had started to regain broad national momentum with protests that followed police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota this week.
Five police officers died and seven officers and two civilians were injured Thursday after 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, a former army reservist, targeted police in downtown Dallas, authorities said. Johnson told police during a standoff that he was angry “with white people” and wanted to kill white officers, according to Dallas police, who said he specifically mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Dallas shootings engendered broad sympathy for police officers, and may have shifted the focus of national attention, at least for the moment, away from the shootings of black men by police.
They also prompted politicians across the spectrum to call for an end to all such violence, and to use the latest tragedy to promote a national dialogue on race and the role of law enforcement.
On Friday, Black Lives Matter released a statement distancing itself from Johnson, calling the police deaths “a tragedy” but saying it would not back down from its demands for police reform.
“There are some who would use these events to stifle a movement for change and quicken the demise of a vibrant discourse on the human rights of Black Americans.
“We should reject all of this,” said the statement, posted online by the Black Lives Matter Network at its website, BlackLivesMatter.com.
Police have said that before he was killed, Johnson said he was not affiliated with any group. On his Facebook profile, Johnson, who was black, had either liked or joined Black Panther Party-related groups, including one called the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named for the black power group’s co-founder.
Diamond Reynolds, the Minnesota woman whose viral Facebook video of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, bleeding during the aftermath of a deadly police shooting spurred national protests, said at a Friday news conference that the Dallas shootings were “bigger than all of us.”
“I want justice for everyone, every- one around the world,” she said. While she cited the police deaths, she also named black Americans who had died in racially tinged incidents such as Trayvon Martin in Florida and Sandra Bland in Texas.
“This thing that happened in Dallas, it was not because” of her boyfriend’s death and her activism, or to this week’s police shooting of 37year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., she said.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, who on Thursday had called the police shooting of Castile an example of racism, said at a Friday news conference that he would not walk back his comments that the shooting would not have happened if Castile and Reynolds were white.
“I stand by what I said yesterday,” he said.
Some national activists and political leaders are pivoting away from earlier calls against racism and a string of police killings of black men, while others, such as U.S. President Barack Obama, have attempted to speak forcefully on killings by police and of police.
Obama, who cut short an official visit to Spain this weekend to go to Dallas, called the shooting “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”
“We mourn the police officers killed . . . beside peaceful protesters seeking justice” for Sterling and Castile, NAACP president Cornell Brooks tweeted Friday.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had called Sterling’s death a “legal lynching,” described the Dallas killings as a “terrorist attack.” On Friday, he said he was travelling to Minnesota to meet the Castile family.
Rev. Al Sharpton, who had announced plans to travel to Baton Rouge to meet with Sterling’s family, said Friday he would be appearing with the mother of Eric Garner on Saturday in Harlem, N.Y., to call for an end to violence against police and nonviolent protests. Garner’s 2014 death after a police officer’s choke hold in Staten Island, N.Y., prompted demonstrations nationwide.
“Police should not be the target. Bad policing should be the target,” Sharpton tweeted.
DeRay McKesson, a BLM activist in Baltimore, said he was confident the protesters would keep their resolve.
“The people across the movement remain focused on ending violence. The movement has been and will continue to be about ending violence,” McKesson said.
Some are comparing the protest climate to that after the death of Garner, who died after he was suspected of illegally selling cigarettes in New York and whose dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became a widespread protest chant.
Demonstrations spread nationally after a grand jury said it would not indict the officer who put Garner in a choke hold.
On Dec. 20, 2014, just weeks after the decision, a 28-year-old man shot and killed two off-duty police officers in Brooklyn.
The shooting by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, who committed suicide, was seen as revenge for the nonindictment and for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Afterward, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said the killings were a “direct spinoff” of protests and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called for activists to “suspend demonstrations.”