Black Lives Matter 101

Even before the Dallas rally at which five policemen were killed, BLM community organizers were highly visible on the college lecture circuit and the group itself is increasingly active in formulating curricula from kindergarten to college:

• “For the second consecutive year, the University of Notre Dame is offering a class on ‘white privilege’ — designed to teach students about ‘oppression’ — and earlier this week hosted a Black Lives Matter event that touted transfeminism over Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and referred to police as a ‘big enemy'”, Alexandra DeSanctis, a Notre Dame student wrote in a dispatch for The College Fix.
• “The Black Lives Matter Movement provides a robust model for thinking about educational inequities, the complexities of intersectional identities (gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and so on) and the challenges of addressing the complex issues of diversity, inclusion, and access within academic contexts,” Ohio State University announced when heralding its Black Lives Matter in the Classroom Symposium (Campus-wide Event) on April 1, 2016. It was not an April Fools’ joke.
• “Central Park School for Children in Durham, North Carolina has enrolled grade-school students in a ‘Black Lives March and Rally’ scheduled for March 17, 2016,” Robert Mihaly wrote in a column which appeared in The Daily Caller. “The teachers can opt-in or opt-out their classes, but parents have not been given a choice.”
• This year, the Milwaukee Public Schools proudly announced a partnership with BLM “to develop a cultural studies curriculum and provide staff training on restorative practices to improve student attendance, academics, graduation rates and school culture through facilitation of meaningful dialogue and support on issues surrounding race and trauma faced in communities and schools.”

At least one notable Milwaukee public official is, to say the least, a bit more skeptical of BLM.  “Black Lives Matter, which I have renamed ‘Black Lies’ L-I-E-S Matter, it’s nothing more than an astroturf operation,” Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke told the American Journalism Center’s Alex Nitzberg.  “It’s just the latest shallow disguised, confederation if you will, of community organizers and leftists that specialize in fostering disorganization and rebellion in ghettos and other struggling areas throughout the United States of America.” The American Journalism Center is an internship program run jointly by Accuracy in Media and its sister group, Accuracy in Academia.

Sheriff Clarke may be onto something. He is certainly in a position to know.

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