The Black Lives Matter movement has always been about addressing the relationship between the police and minority communities, and never about being just anti-police, according Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
“[W]e must stop this divisiveness between police and the communities they serve. That’s what the Black Lives Matter protests have been about,” said said Friday in an interview on MSNBC, referring to earlier remarks by Dallas Chief of Police David Brown.
“That’s what the policing protests have been about, they have never been anti-police, they’ve been about protecting black people and there’s proper policing in our communities and today, people who are involved in that action, people like myself who have been involved in this from the civil rights law front absolutely condemned what happened last night,” she added.
Her remarks come on the heels of a series of deadly shootings in Dallas late Thursday evening, which claimed the lives of five police officers. The attacks, which were reportedly carried out by a single shooter, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, took place shortly after an anti-police brutality demonstration had concluded.
Johnson, who reportedly claimed he wanted to kill white people, particularly law enforcement agents, in retaliation for the recent deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, was eventually cornered by the authorities and killed.
But even before the shooter’s name and motives were known, several critics had already pointed fingers at the Black Lives Matter movement, and suggested its supporters had either carried out or incited the attacks.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been dogged by sharp criticism for months due to the controversial and often violent anti-police rhetoric from some of its supporters.
“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” a group of activists chanted during a 2015 protest in New York City.
Following the slayings in Dallas, criticism for Black Lives Matter hardened, as many voices in media, including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, condemned the movement for being dangerously anti-police.
“Black Lives Matter,” the Fox host said Friday, “inflames rather than illuminates. It is essentially a ‘hate America’ group.”
Limbaugh said elsewhere, “They’re a terrorist group. They’re quickly becoming a terrorist group committing hate crimes.”
Ifill rejected these and similar characterizations Friday.
“It’s so tragic, it’s so awful, it’s so sickening, but we, insist that it not in any way be associated with or in any way connected with those who have been engaged in the exercise of their constitutional rights who have believed in peaceful protests,” she said. “This shooting, you know, he doesn’t believe what the protesters believe. They have been seeking transformation through the exercise of their constitutional rights. We see transformation through the use of the rule of law. This shooter does not believe in that and should not be associated with that.”
“I know we don’t feel calm. I know we all feel upset for the whole variety of reasons, but, our feelings of emotion should drive us to want to make real change happen. We can’t go on this way,” she added. “We need real change to happen and we can’t allow the actions of one disturbed person to overtake what has to be a rational and considered conversation about how we go forward in this country in terms of law enforcement and safety in our communities.”
