Wichita Police Chief, Gordon Ramsay, says he has been working with Black Lives Matter leaders, and a protest that was planned for Sunday is being canceled.
Instead, the police department is hosting a cookout at McAdams Park. Black Lives Matter leaders are calling it the First Steps BBQ.
Wichita Does It Right
Peace officers.
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9 comments:
It's an interesting first step, but BLM will have to walk away from their racism and assault on free speech before anything useful can ensue.
Eric Hines
I don't know about them needing to abandon racism as a precondition for progress. That sounds to me like an ultimate goal rather than a first step. Maybe we get started with the idea that we can sit down and talk together while we eat, and only hope that someday we'll do so as brothers.
Doing that--that's the BBQ, the first step.
But how do you talk with racists?
How do you talk with those who don't accept your right to speak?
Eric Hines
You have to appeal to something bigger than that which divides you, in an environment in which it's possible to make that appeal. Christianity sometimes works in this context. It's harder when you don't even have that.
America used to work in some contexts, as Reagan was reminding us in the recent video. It's harder now, when we don't have a common set of cultural touchstones.
In any case, I mostly wanted to note something very positive about the police's response here. I take it to be important to be critical as a citizen, rather than blindly supportive, but I also think they deserve to be praised when they really get something right. This was well done, and in the best traditions.
Oh, I'm absolutely on the side of the cops on this move, for cynical and for positive reasons.
But how do you appeal to someone who denies your right to speak, and so to appeal?
Now the move is on BLM: they have to make concrete, believable moves in the direction I've suggested above.
Eric Hines
For these BLM leaders to attend the cookout, instead of denouncing it, is a step. It's not a huge step, but it is hopeful.
This isn't the leadership of the BLM. Much like the Tea Party, there are no centralized national leaders, only social media leaders and who funds the sub groups. Local groups of black people may have their own hierarchies and are attaching themselves to the Twitter movement, but that doesn't mean they are connected, strongly or weakly, to Nation of Islam, Jackson/Sharpton, or Black Panther.
Also, Nation of Islam and Black Panther associations outlined in context to Dallas.
You can't name Lucifer, Grim, so you have difficulties figuring out where the enemy is and how to fight them.
You consider my methods unhinged, but as it turns out, they're far more accurate and far closer to the truth, then what you yourself can admit to know about BLivesM.
You know, Ymar, you might also benefit from a cookout. Go outside, breathe fresh air, maybe have a beer.
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