To the surprise of absolutely nobody who has followed its trajectory for the past dozen years, Black Lives Matter was one of the main organizers of the invasion of Christian services and the intimidation of worshippers at Cities Church in Minnesota last Sunday. Disruption and intimidation are BLM’s modus operandi.
This likely illegal anti-ICE action had nothing to do with the betterment of the black condition, but neither does BLM.
Indeed, we have been conditioned to expect that wherever there is street agitprop, or outright malicious terrorization of people minding their own business, even those worshipping God, there will be BLM.
The organization was ostensibly devoted to improving the lives of black people by freeing them from a supposed “systemic racism,” or “systems of oppression.” But seeing them as just another militant group creating havoc for the “omnicause” — whether it is protesting against Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, the war in Gaza, the environment, the arrest of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro, etc. — is exactly what BLM merits.
Indeed, the worried looks on the worshippers as vandals broke into their sanctuary took us immediately back to the bullying we witnessed on a nightly basis during BLM’s insurrection in 2020.
More surprising was seeing Don Lemon — a former CNN commentator last seen or heard from when he unkindly and unchivalrously referred to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as “past her prime” — also involved in the intimidation of a religious community.
Lemon says he was “practicing journalism” when he accompanied the St. Paul protesters to Cities Church and videotaped the shameful denial of Americans’ freedom to worship there. But as commentator Jorge Bonilla and others have pointed out, Lemon took great care to provide cover for the rioters, whom he described as “resistance protesters.”
“They surprise people, catch them off guard, and hold them to account,” is how Lemon described the horrific scene that took place.
The Justice Department takes a different view. It will be investigating all involved in this assault for possible violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, commonly known as the FACE Act, or the KKK Act.
While left-wing politicians such as Attorney General Keith Ellison say that these acts will not apply here, the Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neill explains why DOJ Assistant Secretary Harmeet Dhillon will have a good case that they do.
This would include not just Lemon, but at least two local chapters of BLM, Black Lives Matter Minnesota and Black Lives Matter Twin Cities, which were among the main organizers of the interruption of services at St. Paul’s Cities Church, according to numerous news reports. It was BLM Minnesota that then posted a video of the protest.
The main organizer, moreover, was Nekima Levy Armstrong, who has been involved with BLM since the 2014 BLM riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and who, in February that year, participated in the BLM disturbance in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that she had already been arrested, posting her perp walk online. More are likely to come.
The prominence of local BLM chapters over what used to be the main national BLM organization, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, speaks to the diminishment of the latter due to its internecine fighting with other BLM groups. Its website on Wednesday did not carry a word about ICE or Venezuela.
BLM Grassroots and the Movement for Black Lives, also nationwide BLM groups, have remained in the ideological fight. Both, for example, protested the arrest of Maduro strenuously.
“Black Lives Matter Grassroots vehemently condemns the United States’ military strikes on Venezuela, the unlawful kidnapping of President Nicholás [sic] Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the threats against Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and the Venezuelan people,” said the Grassroots statement.
Why support Maduro? Because he is a fellow Marxist who has supported the BLM cause and, before he was arrested so he could face justice in New York, used to hobnob with other U.S.-based agitators, including antifa. Maduro, like other Marxist leaders from Havana to Beijing, simply supports creating mayhem on U.S. streets.
THE WHITE HOUSE’S FALSE START ON HOUSING
Organizing that mayhem seems now to fall to the local BLM chapters. Of course, these chapters also take part in the ideological struggle. BLM Oklahoma City, for example, signed a statement supporting the results of Maduro’s fraudulent election in 2024, which nobody in the free world recognized.
These local chapters don’t just bloviate. They put that ideology into practice, practicing what cultural Marxists like to call praxis — and what the DOJ is calling a crime punishable by law. Stay tuned.
