Black Lives Matter Rallies Are Peaceful Despite Trump Claiming Otherwise
Written by SOURCE on September 5, 2020
Gil Scott-Heron said the revolution wouldn’t be televised. So, it’s only right that most of the information pushed to the media regarding Black Lives Matter protests by the Trump administration is inaccurate.
A new report tracking political violence in the United States revealed that more than 93% of Black Lives Matter protests involved no serious harm to people or damage to property. This report comes from Princeton University’s Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project goes on the claim that the government is taking a “heavy-handed approach” by using force “more often than not” despite findings showing that this is unnecessary.
Most of the reported violence at Black Lives Matter rallies have not come in the form of mob activity. Almost all of these incidents have come from single, armed agitators who are targeting the protestors—not the police. This violence includes multiple car-ramming attacks.
These findings are in direct opposition to the claims President Trump and his administration have been making to media outlets. These officials have been making their rounds through right-wing sources describing the protestors as violent “domestic terrorists.” Yet, in reality, the media only tends to show the small percent of demonstrations that get out of hand.
“There have been some violent demonstrations, and those tend to get a lot of media coverage,” Acled’s director of research & innovation, Dr. Roudabeh Kishi, explained to The Guardian. “But if you were to look at all the demonstrations happening, it’s overwhelmingly peaceful.”
This force was not limited to protestors. Research also documented incidents when journalists covering the uprisings were met with force from the police. Additionally, there were several non-state factions and people who have taken it upon themselves to try to regulate the protests through their own violent means. The study found that these individuals were “sometimes linked to hate groups like the KKK.”
As expected, violent interventions didn’t make the protests more peaceful. In fact, it only “only aggravated unrest” with the number of violent acts rising from nearly 10% “after federal agents arrived on the scene.”
