I'm white, I've been to BLM protests. I wouldn't say I'm an "activist", but I've met plenty of people who were and I risked arrest with those people following the Eric Garner verdict in NYC. And I was not even close to being the only white person in that crowd, or at any of the other protests I went to.
I grew up in a neighborhood where a massive portion of the NYPD lives on their off time. A lot of my friends are from police families and they're shocked that I got involved in all that business. They poke fun at me a lot, but I know deep down from their tone that they're fairly repulsed by the fact that I was protesting their uncle or cousin or whatever. Funny thing is I have family who work with the cops too. They're just as baffled by...well, my existence. I don't really argue. How could I? They're not thinking of how society actually works, they're thinking about Thanksgiving with Uncle Bob.
When I hear the far-right to talk about how evil BLM is and how they're all a bunch of white hating racists and shit I have to laugh. I know the reality is more complex then that. If they just hated white people they wouldn't have pulled me onto the walkway on the Brooklyn bridge so I wouldn't get arrested, they wouldn't have involved me in their conversations, they wouldn't have even let me march with them.
I don't hate cops either, another accusation that gets leveled at me a lot. I'd be lying if I said I particularly "like" the institution itself, but no I don't hate cops as individuals. Well, maybe some of them. I think everybody's trying to do the right thing but a lot of people buy into horrible shit without realizing it. I never did any of this because I just "hate cops". Fact is I know a lot of people (often people of color) who have been abused by police, who have been profiled, who have been harassed and exploited by the justice system. I've got my conservative friends out in the suburbs who are isolated from this, and who don't realize it, but I know that the world isn't that simple. That we're living in a society that crushes a lot of people under its boot heels. What white America has been ignoring however is that this isn't just about black people and white cops, or even just about police shootings. It's an entire system of oppression and exploitation, it's a system of control and widespread surveillance and what amounts to a giant racket being run by the Fed and city governments alike.
When I saw what happened to Eric Garner I saw an echo of the things that people I knew in college who were involved in Occupy described. The way that our society preys on the poor and marginalized and goes out of its way to silence any argument to the contrary. I saw the same thing happen in Ferguson when heavily armed SWAT teams responded to public anger by pointing live fire weapons at protesters with their hands up.
This always went beyond race to me. That's only one visible manifestation of all this. My generation as a whole has been fucked over by pretty much every major institution in this country. Wall street, the government, the courts, and (yes) the cops all conspired to make us the first generation to have a lower standard of living then our parents and to beat us into submission if we argue.
The far-right ignores all this. It ignores how all of these things are connected. It can't understand why people like me support BLM. It falls back on sensationalism and fear mongering to try to scare us into going in the opposite direction. But what they don't realize is that the struggles of poor people of color have more overlap with the struggles of this generation of white kids than the media likes to admit.
When Zachary Hammond was killed by police it was BLM activists mourning him, it wasn't the supposed champions of the white race.
The Breitbart set is going to ignore all of these things however. Fact is America is changing and they don't like that. They want to turn the clock back 50 years. And if in my life I've helped move that clock just a little bit forward instead I'll die happier than them. I care about people. If that pisses off cops and conservatives that's not a problem to me.