City won't remove Black Lives Matter banner despite police pleas

[sheshe2]

Wicked Local reports the local union published a letter Tuesday calling for Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone take down the banner that has hung since Aug. 19, 2015 and replace it with an “All Lives Matter” banner.

“The Somerville Police Employees Association and its members are deeply troubled that the city continues to display the Black Lives Matter banner above the main entrance of City Hall. It is inconceivable to us as it is demoralizing that our city would propagate its support for this movement while standing silent over the seemingly daily protest assassinations of innocent police officers around the country,” Somerville Police Union President Michael McGrath said in a July 19 letter to Curtatone.

But Curtatone said his support for police officers cannot preempt his commitment to addressing systemic racism locally and nationally.

“The city of Somerville stands against all violence and all injustice, which is why a Black Lives Matter banner hangs at City Hall and why a banner in honor of the slain officers is hanging at Somerville Police Headquarters where it would provide the most moral support to our officers—both on my order,” Curtatone told the Journal in a statement Wednesday. “Both banners will remain hanging.”

When the banner, which features the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a picture of the Prospect Hill monument, the city seal, and its sponsors, the City of Somerville and the Somerville Police Department, was placed over the main entrance to City Hall last summer, Curtatone called it a statement.


More with Video: http://www.wcvb.com/news/somerville-will-not-remove-black-lives-matter-banner-despite-police-pleas/40808016

Thank you, Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone~ Somerville, Mass

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Why are our police such babies?

Something has gone terribly wrong in police culture to make them so hyper-sensitive to criticism.

[philosslayer]

4. They need to get over their sense of entitlement

And paranoia.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Sometimes people speak truth

Even if they are liars and don't actually believe what they say.

[LiberalFighter]

24. Yep! It is the entitlement attitude. They want the focus all on them.

[Iggo]

6. Why do they have a problem with black lives mattering?

Seriously.

[RobinA]

22. Is This Your Response

when other groups complain of a hostile work environment?

[malaise]

2. Excellent

[sheshe2]

3. It just caught live on...

Channel 5 news as well!

[PatrickforO]

7. I was talking to a white guy the other month, and mentioned Black Lives Matter

He didn't even reply to my point. Rather, he said, "All lives matter," and that was basically the conversation from there.

I daresay many white people and certainly lots of the cops just don't seem to get it. Black lives matter isn't saying that white lives or cop lives don't matter. What they are saying is that black lives matter, because right now black lives are being snuffed out as if they did not matter. Even I get that and I'm an old white guy.

Sometimes I wonder if there's a certain deliberate obtuseness here...

[Chakab]

14. It's deliberate obtuseness. I don't believe for one second that anybody really

thinks that "black lives matter" is some sort of black supremacist rallying cry. They all seem to understand the contextual intention of the phraseology when using "blue lives matter" as a retort.

The "all lives matter" nonsense is designed to shut down the conversation because a lot of people either refuse to believe that black people and other marginalized groups receive worse treatment than the white majority in society, or they believe that the disparate treatment that black people receive from societal entities like law enforcement is deserved due to the inherent deficiencies of the black race.

There's also the issue of the general perception on the part of many white people that the fight against discrimination is a zero sum gain in which they lose ground whenever some other group is able to make societal advances with regards to social justice.

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20sommers.pdf

[padfun]

15. Tell him to live those words

Tell him that apparently all lives do NOT matter to them. It really means Black Lives Matter TOO.

But then, you are right in that there is a deliberate obtrusiveness so it probably wouldn't sink in.

[zipplewrath]

20. Save the Whales

Someone wrote the other day that "Save the Whales" doesn't mean "Screw the eagles".

I've said that BLM means Black Lives Matter "Too".

The point that they are intentionally missing is that there is at the very least the perception, and in reality the fact that their lives haven't seemed to matter.

[napkinz]

8. They just don't get it! Black Lives Matter because they HAVE NOT MATTERED ...

(trigger warning: graphic content)

[sheshe2]

17. Yes, it is important.

Thanks, napkinz.

[Stellar]

9. Yessss! Somebody that get's it!

Thanks to Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone !

[sheshe2]

16. I saw it live on channel 5...

Right after I posted this article!

[Stellar]

10. White folks have cellphones with cameras too, when more folks start posting videos of Whites being..

shot and killed with impunity, then they can say that 'all' lives matters. But too...there would be no need for ANY sign placements because things would be happening equally.

[The Wielding Truth]

13. Excellent point.

[awoke_in_2003]

23. I read an article here last week

from someone who said that they don't discuss race with white people anymore. It posited that the problem with white people (BTW, I'm white) is we don't tend to think of ourselves as part of the whole, we think of ourselves as the individual. Were white people being killed by the police at the pace that black people are, we would tend to think that they deserved it. Unless it is happened to the person, then it doesn't affect them.

[Sentath]

11. Maybe he could have offered to switch them out?

I wonder how that would have gone over?

[mountain grammy]

12. That this banner offends them, is the reason it should remain..

What could possibly offensive about this message?

[Orrex]

18. They're too fragile to endure a banner with a positive message

But we're supposed to believe that they have the wherewithal to deal credibly with actual threatening situations?

[Fla Dem]

19. Couldn't get this billboard removed "Islam Bloody Islam"

Not far from where I live. It's disgusting.

[link:http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/islam-billboard-in-st-augustine-beach-draws-international-criticism/128479744|

[niyad]

21. "seemingly daily protest assassinations of innocent police officers around the country,"

unlike the seemingly daily assassinations committed by the police???