President Barack Obama spoke earlier today and condemned the recent acts of violence against police officers, saying that it undermines the cause of the Black Lives Matter movement. While President Obama’s statement cautioned the group’s rhetoric, a co-founder of the movement stressed once more that the group is not anti-police despite growing opinions from conservative pundits.
President Obama has been careful to endorse the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement but showed the most visible support of their efforts in the wake of the recent police-involved shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile among others. The president held a press conference in Spain where he addressed the matter of the ambush of police officers last Thursday in Dallas and how BLM should respond.
After issuing a statement from the White House on Friday, Obama followed the same track once more during the meeting in Spain. However, his message edged towards advising the movement’s leaders in a way that seemingly suggested the group supported what happened in Thursday’s vicious attack.
“If we paint police in broad brush, without recognizing the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric doesn’t recognize that then we’re going to lose allies in the reform cause,” Obama said. “In a movement like Black Lives Matter, there are always going to be people who say things that are stupid or are imprudent or are overgeneralized or are harsh.”
The president went on to then defend BLM, stating they were “well-meaning activists” and that outsiders cannot blame the movement for bad apples within the bunch that misconstrue its true aim of holding police accountable for the fatal encounters that have grown tremendously over the past few years.
BLM co-founder Alicia Garza was a guest on MSNBC’s All In program with Chris Hayes Friday and spoke against the actions of the sniper named Micah Xaiver Johnson, who allegedly acted alone in his assault in Dallas in where 12 officers were shot with five perishing from their wounds.
Garza explained to Hayes that BLM has never endorsed the vengeful killing of police officers and once again hammered home the group’s message that the harming of authorities is a condemnable offense. Garza also added that mourning the losses of the police officers in the Dallas attack does not mean that the BLM efforts will go silent.
Watch both President Barack Obama’s press conference in the clip below, along with BLM co-founder Alicia Garza’s MSNBC interview. Both clips are courtesy of the MSNBC network.
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Photo: screen cap
