BLAM
Page (Black
Lives
Also
Matter)
Last
Updated 21 April 2018
By
Leroy Titus
(
Email me at LeroyTitus@ChurchofSQRLS.com
)
This web sub-page is NOT thematically linked to
the root page, but the root page is at www.ChurchofSQRLS.com
… I am just sharing a friend’s web
account to publish this sub-page…
Purpose of this Web Sub-Page, Black Lives Also Matter
I,
the Leroy Titus, wish to assist the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement, with
some ideas. I make no claims to speak on
behalf of this organization; I just want to help, by mentioning a few basic
ideas. This first is to VERY slightly
change their name… They are (obviously)
free to accept or reject this idea; if accepted, no credit need be given to
me. I just want to make the full details
of my ideas easily accessible here, so that I can send a link (to here) with
the full details, without cluttering up too many emails (or posts to other web
sites) with excessive details.
Black
Lives
Also
Matter
(BLAM)
Instead of Simply BLM
Very
minor point first: BLM already stands for Bureau of Land Management, which (among some people at
least) carries negative connotations concerning a clunky and at times clueless
government bureaucracy. BLM could be
biased in favor of implementing a slight name change on that basis alone…
More
to the point, though, “BLM” as now labeled, invites groups to “steal the
thunder” of BLM, by stating the obvious cases (as if these critics were
geniuses), “White Lives Matter”, “Police Lives Matter”, even “Clown Lives
Matter” (see http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2016/10/06/clown-lives-matter-peace-walk-planned-tucson-creepy-clowns/91662296/
), etc. By the very simple trick of
inserting the “Also” to make “BLAM” out of “BLM”, the BLM movement can “steal
the thunder of the thunder stealers”!!!
We have already pre-acknowledged your point, we can say…
Police… Trying my best to be respectful here, let’s
call them LEOs for Law Enforcement Officers, for short… Have already, for decades, acted as if white
lives matter, clown lives matter, generic male lives matter, generic female
lives matter, Asian-American lives matter, etc.
They have NOT generally (judging by their actions) tended to believe
that the lives of blacks (black men especially) matter as much as other lives
matter. So we can say “BLAM”, with the
emphasis on “Also”, and make a very valid point, which cannot be denied by
well-meaning, well-informed Americans anywhere.
“White Lives Also Matter” sounds WAY far more pathetically obvious (the LEOs
already have known that for decades, as demonstrated by their actions), when
posed as a reaction to BLAM… So let’s go
to BLAM, not BLM, as a slight but significant improvement please… Just a suggestion, but a good one, in my
humble opinion…
PLUS,
last but not least, it makes a cool and intuitive logo on a toy gun as NOT used
as a protest symbol! Not used because we
might violate the laws of the land, but at least we can think about it… See below…
Toy
Guns as a (Not to be Used!) Powerful Protest Symbol
This
constitutes the most important points or suggestions that I have to make, here. But first, some VERY brief (I promise!)
introductory comments.
In high school debate
class or instructions,
I learned that “acknowledging the valid points of one’s opponents” makes one
more credible. So along those lines, I briefly
mention the “Ferguson effect”. See
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/10/07/ferguson-effect-savagely-beaten-cop-didnt-draw-gun-for-fear-of-media-uproar-says-chicago-police-chief/?ref=yfp
for a pointed recent example. For an
example WAY far on the other extreme of things, see http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/22/north-miami-pba-on-shooting-of-unarmed-b , wherein the worst
offence of the LEO’s victim (Charles
Kinsey) was
to try to protect a severely autistic young man.
Not to pick on the
obvious too terribly much, but… For the
BLM movement, good PR would dictate that we’d try and persuade people to hold
protests for the latter, not the former, kind of cases… If possible (if possible to steer protests
that are often very spontaneous), try NOT to hold (or support) protests that
highlight people like the above-referenced 28-year-old young man on PCP; try
and hold/support protests over the likes of Charles Kinsey. Enough said; sorry to waste your time on the
obvious, if that is the case (as I suspect it probably is). On, to more important things…
Toy guns are tightly
regulated, as they have been for decades now.
http://www.titleii.com/bardwell/fake_gun.reg.txt
will show you the federal regulation that prohibits
toy guns (AKA “replica firearms”). Some
have imagined that protesters (such as BLM-associated protesters) might choose
to try and “immunize” LEOs (police officers) to the sight of possible
firearms… So that LEOs (upon seeing a
toy gun held by a playing 12-year-old, or seeing a black man holding a wallet,
cell phone, or e-cigarette) might not immediately go into hysterical modes, and
shooting all black men in sight. If they
can get used to seeing black people handling toy guns (WITHOUT immediately
shooting them!), then maybe black people could live without constant fear. So some people have speculated, at least…
Others have speculated that a crowd of
LEO-baiters holding toy guns… Even at
the ends of fishing poles, say, to make it obvious that there’s no “shooting
stance” as we parade our toy cardboard guns…
The LEOs might immediately find their long-lusted-after excuse to
conduct an “ethnic cleansing”.
One could try such (dangerous!)
experiments, by trying to work within the limits of the laws. http://www.titleii.com/bardwell/fake_gun.reg.txt
specifies gun-barrel-end bright-orange-colored plugs,
and/or bright-orange-colored stripes to be placed around the muzzle-end (to
mark the toy gun as merely a toy). The
regulation even specifies the precise shade of orange to be used. I for one do NOT recommend trying this… I know that the law enforcement establishment
will often do what the law enforcement establishment wants to do, whatever the
facts and the letter of the law may be.
Find a few off-color specs of dirt that settled into the bright-orange
paint, as it cured, and it’s off to jail with the likes of us! Or more likely, the LEO simply says “I feared
for my life”, and it’s the end of the story (as well as the end of lives of a
black person or three or seventy).
So I do not advocate ANY use of “toy
guns”! PLEASE do NOT do the things
listed below!
‘1)
Do not search the internet for “cheap toy guns”. Most of them are too expensive (for passing
out many-many of them to large crowds, and to have them confiscated by
LEOs). If, though, there’s a source out
there of $0.25-or-so-each (in high volumes) Styrofoam or cardboard “handguns”,
please email me (at LeroyTitus@ChurchofSQRLS.com
), and I will post a link, and tell people to NOT buy these toy handguns!
‘2) Do NOT be inspired by Vietnam-war-era protesters
who stuck flowers in the barrels of National Guard troops! So do NOT look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Power_(photograph)
or http://flower.dreamhomesforu.com/flowers-gun-barrel-city/
for inspiration! And most of all,
certainly do NOT make two printouts of the below (or other BLM or BLAM-inspired
“flowers”)! Do NOT print them out, cut
them out, and then glue them to both sides of a shaped cut-out made of poster
board, cardboard, or plywood! Do NOT
couple such things with toy handguns, for LEO-baiting or anything else!
‘3) Do NOT print out the two below mirror images
to likewise be glued 2-sided and coupled with the above flower image!
‘4) Do NOT go and get yourself a simple, cheap
5-to-7-feet-long stick, rod, or pole, and 2 to 4 feet of string, and tie the
toy-gun-plus-flower assembly to the end of the string!
‘5) Do NOT (especially not en mass) dangle said
dangerous implement of destruction in front of LEOs! They might feel threatened, and therefor
fully justified in shooting you dead!
‘6) Do NOT fabricate or distribute such items (as
above) to be placed under the windshields (on the dashboards) of cars, or
anywhere else, for demonstrations, or for ANY other purpose!
Political,
Philosophical, Theological, etc., Implications of Toy Guns as a (Not to be
Used!) Powerful Protest Symbol
God, cosmic karma, the dynamics of
human social and political behavior, or whatever you personally might choose to
call it, often dictates that good comes out of bad. It just happens, it’s part of the redemptive
fabric of the Universe. Hitler and the
NAZIs started WW II, and millions suffered and died. But when Americans learned of the fully
horrible aspects of NAZI racism, and the sufferings and deaths caused,
Americans were forced to take a long, hard look in the mirror, about how we
fought that war with a segregated military, and had our own long and deep roots
of racism and injustice. One of the good
things to come out of the undeniable evils of WW II was that America was forced
to start fixing the hypocrisy of American racists condemning Nazi racists (OK,
in fairness the disease was the same, but the American flavor was less
severe). But we don’t want to start WW
III just because a few good things might come of it! There are FAR better ways to “get better”!
“Inoculating” (immunizing) LEOs to the
sight of blacks bearing items vaguely resembling handguns (“LEO-baiting”) is an
evil that invites massacres of black people, so it is NOT a good idea! We must do what LEOs (our masters) tell us to
do! Baiting our masters not only LOOKS
bad, it sounds VERY bad! So I encourage
us all to practice patience and restraint, and content ourselves with merely
meekly asking, “Please, please, PLEASE don’t shoot too many of us!”
Email
me at LeroyTitus@ChurchofSQRLS.com
with comments, suggestions, etc., if desired.
If you do NOT want me to publish your name, email address, and/or
comments, please indicate this in your email.
Otherwise, I may or may not publish your comments (or link to your web
site), as I chose. For your reference,
the BLM web site is at blacklivesmatter.com
, but (sorry!) I can’t get this link to work; there’s something funky about the
site address. Just “Google” blacklivesmatter.com and it will go right
there … My content has NOT been blessed
by BLM in ANY way!