I'm going to drop this here...

[JDPriestly]

117. It's the finger-pointing that separates people. POC have very legitimate reasons to complain,

but broadbrushing others based on the color of their skin is no more right when POC do it than when white people do it.

Finger-pointing at a people because of the color of their skin (and that is just one of the criteria that is used to point fingers and divide without considering uniting factors like values and goals) divides by skin color. It makes it difficult to work together to solve problems.

A lot of white people have worked hard to help solve the very problems that POC are pointing fingers about. And the problem in the white community is not all white people but the white people who point fingers and wield power directed indiscriminately at POC.

Pointing fingers at people based on characteristics other than the relevant characteristics of conduct, of action, of good will, of service, of advocating for, all the good things that people do for each other in society on many issues including race, but especially pointing fingers and telling people to shut up and preventing people from participating and speaking their turn based on race -- there is the problem.

If the young people from BLM had simply asked, they most probably would have been given a generous time slot at the various events that they have crashed. The people running the programs, the people who came to the programs, it can be assumed, support their call for action and change. Bernie has certainly proved that.

We have to work together to get the change we all need and that Black people need the most. Anything that discourages us from working together is counterproductive, and should be discouraged in its turn.

My grandson visited me this week. He is very young. It is my job to teach him based on my experience how to live in peace with others, how to respect and love others. If he acts up in my presence, I have to talk to him about how to behave correctly. I have to let him know that his misbehavior will not be accepted. And I have to do that without displaying the same behavior he may in a moment of tiredness or quick anger display.

Similarly, it is my job to point out to this new generation just how important it is to treat your allies, your friends well, to respect them and to work with them to find solutions to problems.

Acting up and acting out do not improve tense situations. The officers who beat Black people up and kill them are acting out. To change their behavior, we all have to act rationally and demand that they no longer have positions of authority.

We have to institute no tolerance for acts of wanton violence in our police forces. One mistake and an officer is fired. That is the only way to change the situation.

Until very recently, police officers in California, enjoyed a lot of privacy with regard to their work records. That is changing here, and it has to change across the country.

But if People of Color focus on the indiscriminate silencing and targeting of white people just based on race, the changes will not happen because every great milestone in changing the laws and culture about race relations has occurred when people of good will, regardless of race, work together. It isn't black people against white people or vice versa. It is people of conscience against people who do not care.

So I will continue to express my disagreement with the tactics that the BLM used in silencing their white friends. It is downright stupid and counterproductive. I do not give in to my grandson's inevitable temper tantrums. They don't help him. And they don't help me.

And, yes, I will compare the outbursts of older children and even of myself when I am tired and do not control myself to the outbursts of BLM at friendly events that were aimed to destroy the opportunities of friendly speakers to say their piece.

No way does that further the BLM movement.

And I add that I heartily support the goals of the BLM movement, just not SOME of the strategies they have applied. Certain of their strategies are no more effective than my grandson's throwing broccoli at me. Understandable but counterproductive. And worst of all, childish.