I apologize for writing so much, I'm clearly long winded.

People don't care about the movement cause they picked the wrong guy to start it about. I'm sure every other day a person more deserving than Brown get injured or killed, but it's hardly noticed. I get that his story was in the national news so good intentioned advocates tried to capitalize on the moment and act. I don't identify with Brown, it's impossible for me to, it's not that he was a criminal, it's that he was a violent criminal, something that supports of this movement seem to forget. If he was just a guy who robbed that conscience store by saying he had a gun or something and then he was gunned down I could understand that maybe he wasn't a bad guy and just a stupid kid, but he attacked the store owner and it's all on camera. I hated his parents getting tons of publicity, his Mother claiming he was such a nice boy and he'd never harm anyone, but she has admitted to never seeing the tape of the robbery because she just couldn't believe it, pretending your child is an angel is not a luxury you get to have when people are being hurt and businesses destroyed in his name where there is clearly video evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying that him being killed was justified, I honestly don't know what really happened, based on what I have read it seems that he attacked the officer in the police car, but regardless, the movement as I seem to understand is mostly focused on a bad person which alienates many potential allies.

I actually feel bad that I haven't cared more about the other news stories about black men and youths being killed, but the reason is that I'm just too burned out of all the Ferguson stuff, it made me angry that people were making a martyr out of someone who was undeserving and not only that they were pretending like his obvious flaws didn't exist and any who spoke to the contrary is a racist or something.

I don't know when the "black lives matter" movement started, I only became aware of it with the Ferguson stuff, so it easily could have been around much longer than that. I find this case to be exactly the opposite of the Martin murder, I know that people claim he was a bad kid and some unflattering pictures of him have surfaced, but he was a kid who was being stalked by a man with a gun, he had every right to defend himself when confronted, Zimmerman was 100% in the wrong as he was told specifically by the police to not pursue him. Zimmerman's verdict was a travesty of justice, but to some degree I blame the Martin "supporters" for his Acquittal, they instantly painted Martin as being a super innocent boy who was murdered in cold blood by a man who just wanted to kill, they disputed any evidence that Zimmerman was attacked, so when it became clear that he was it made many people including the jury pool say oh well this side is clearly lying about this fact what else are they lying about. If they had been honest with the reality of the situation and simply said that a strange man was following him, he confronted him with a gun, so not knowing Zimmerman's intentions he acted in selfdefense he did the best course of action and defended himself, many many people would understand that and sympathize. I'm a 31 year old man, but growing up the fear of strangers was firmly put in place, in situation like that of Martin's I would have assumed that his intentions were to kidnap/rape/murder me, and would have responded exactly the same way that he did.

TLDR: Black Lives Matters and other many other supporters of these injustices against black people, actions concerning the character of those they are advocating for have done more to alienate me from the cause than encourage my support.