#yblm

I’ll preface this with saying that if you expect to change anyone’s opinion, you must first lower your expectations.

Unfortunately, direct debate RARELY changes anyone’s mind. RARELY. Most of the time, it just gets people to dig their heels in more and refuse to listen and stick to their guns. The truth is, human beings HATE to lose face and look like they were wrong. This natural phobia often prevents even level-headed, intelligent individuals from coming to logical conclusions. 

So what you need to do first is just take a step back, breathe deep, and form a strategy. 

First of all, your goal is not to change your parents’ minds - the first step is EXPOSURE. You just need to get them to at least CONSIDER other avenues - get them to look at other sources. 

I can’t believe you’ve got me quoting My Big Fat Greek Wedding but there’s a lot of truth in the tactic of ‘you’ve gotta make it seem like it’s their own idea’. People are a lot more likely to change if they do it on their own, so you have to just give them the information and take your time and ask leading questions

Let’s start gentle:

THIS THREAD has a TON of examples and videos of police using violence and directly attacking media - who have every right to be at the protests! If you want to change the framing, you can make it easier for your parents - slide into their narrative! Ask questions instead of forcing your own opinions. ‘Wow, I think the tensions are making them act quite irrationally. Don’t they WANT the media to see what a good job they’re doing? Why would they hurt media reporters?’ 

Now, if you want to go further, here is a full list of some direct videos related to the brutality - and links to them!

Warning - some of these are more graphic than others. I’ve tried to provide descriptions as much as I remember the content. If you reblog, please tag appropriately!

. . .

A family trying to protect their store was attempting to flag down a police car driving by to get their help - the police turned around, came back.... and arrested them instead. 

This one just speaks for itself really.

Protesters kneeling and chanting DON’T SHOOT - and the subsequent firing on them immediately afterwards. 

Video of a side by side comparison of the full clip of police vehicles accelerating into unarmed civilians vs the one aired on television that decidedly CUTS that clip short to paint the police in a better light.

More general videos of police being completely unable to tolerate it when people are protesting without instigation - and immediately breaking the crowd violently and swinging at unarmed civilians. 

This is the couple that were recorded being violently pulled from their car. They were returning home and were right behind another car with a white couple - which was ignored by the 5+ officers who instead surrounded the couple’s car and began screaming at them to get out all the while clocking them inside the car. They tazed them several times before bodily dragging them from the car with no provocation.

Yes another example of excessive force - man approaches the line - immediately gets maced. He turns AWAY from the police, does not instigate and immediately gets a tear gas canister fired short-range at his HEAD. 

There are several videos of this but the clearest one is the virds-eye view where the protestors are once again NOT instigating - just holding the line. Police begin to suddenly fire tear gas canisters into the crowd.

Police have been targeting medical treatment areas and places where people stockpile water- and destroying water bottles! 

Not explicit violence but this is one of the MANY examples of police trapping people with no way to escape BEFORE curfew even takes effect and then effectively waiting until curfew hits and then doing mass arrests. 

People were protesting on the highway, not obstructing traffic, when police came at them and without warning or demands to disperse began to fire tear gas and flash bangs. They trapped them against a fence and continued to fire despite there being absolutely no way for the protesters to escape. 

Recent video that was on the news - the boy standing in the top right corner is a 16 year old. He is standing with his hands in his pockets not moving, and suddenly is shot by 3 different police officers unprompted.

Old video, time-stampted about 2 years ago, but nonetheless important - police taze and drag a disabled man from his vehicle even after he clearly offers himself to be cuffed and states clearly several times that he cannot get out because he’s paralyzed. 

Police fake kneeling for protestors, so the protestors approach and start clapping - and using this to their advantage, the police fire tear gas.

Sorry it took me so long to answer!

Absolutely not, I think the idea that valuing your life over protesting is somehow bad is ridiculous. 

The idea behind the protests is that there are MANY people - and they are not expected to work overtime to fight for the cause. Also, not everyone should be expected to fight in the same way! You deserve to be safe, and you deserve to make the choice NOT to go if that is what you think is best for your health. 

Going to protests is good if you are able-bodied, if you do not have anyone you live with who is high-risk, etc. But there is more than one way to protest. Educating and talking about it is a form of protest. Not being silent is a form of protest. Giving funds (again, IF you are able) is a form of protest. 

Alright, I’m gonna try to make this comprehensive for everyone so I’ll snowball a lot of info into a post. This is gonna be a LOT of graphics, so I apologize in advance.

To answer your question right away, short and simple - NO, DO NOT WEAR YOUR BINDER TO A PROTEST. 

First of all, you don’t know how long you’re going to be out there. Hopefully you will be able to leave when you want to, but you need to be ready for anything. Binders literally compress your chest and make it harder to breathe - you need to be able to move fast (cardio) and you need to be able to breathe at full capacity if you are around or near tear gas. 

The other thing is about IDs - typically people expect you to have some sort of identification with you in case you get arrested or detained and you need to verify who you are/where you’re from. Whether your deadname is on it or your chosen name matters less to the police - they need to identify that it’s you. At the VERY least have an emergency contact phone number written down somewhere on your person.

The rest is basics: this is going to get long, sorry!

I’ll try to provide as many links back as possible but most of them are from this Twitter thread!

BASIC FIRST AID:

(note: the number for first aid in the US is 911)

(source)

Next about stuff to wear:

(source)

For eyewear specifically - NO CONTACTS! 

Get yourself an impact rated pair of goggles if possible.

(source)

Finally, the best you can do is to RECORD!

A lot of media outlets are reporting on this, but they cannot go everywhere. You can help out just by using your phone and recording what is happening. Vogue did an article about the legal side of recording things on your phone and how to record properly:

It’s better to have a burner phone with backup, but if you only have your own phone - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT SET UP SO THAT WHATEVER PHOTOS/VIDEOS YOU TAKE ARE AUTOSAVED TO GOOGLE DRIVE!! Anything that is in your phone can be erased. 

The police can legally unlock your phone if you have it set to face recognition or a pattern unlock. Set your unlock to a 6 digit passcode. 

Since I’ve opened up my askbox to people wanting to understand BLM better, I’ve consistently gotten a specific kind of message almost MORE often than any other kind:

‘Hello, I can’t do (insert activism or passive support here). Am I bad?’

I don’t know if most of the people sending me these messages are non-Black or not. I imagine a big pie slice of them are in fact white... So I’m going to answer assuming you’re white. 

1) Reward vs. Punishment - Parent Yourself Properly

Now I’ll say this - your anxiety is probably not directly your own fault. Many of us grew up being raised to fear failure. What this means, unfortunately, that we focus on failure way more than growth and success. We focus on it so much, in fact, that we prioritize our own failure and end up inevitably training ourselves to ignore every other avenue and self-punish uselessly instead of seeking alternate routes. 

When you are walking down the road and there is a fallen tree in your way, (read: if you cannot do something) the healthy response is not to lay down in the middle of the road and sob. The healthy response is to ask yourself ‘why is this tree here?’ or ‘can I go around the tree somehow?’ or even ‘while waiting for the tree to be removed, can I do an alternate activity like sitting by the tree and taking a break from all that walking?’

Things that will not help you feel better: Badmouthing yourself about not being able to move the tree. Feeling guilty about the tree being there. Etc... 

Learn to work with what you have instead of feeling bad about it. Stop expending so much energy to punish yourself. Contrary to popular belief, hitting yourself in the head repeatedly does not make you smarter. 

2) Your guilt should not be the focus here.

I know it’s difficult to stomach but the truth is, no matter how guilty you feel, how hard you panic... nothing will change. You will not be helping anyone MORE by spending hours chanting ‘am I a bad ally?’ under your blanket alone in your room. Again, you cannot self-punish yourself into usefulness.

You have to ask yourself - why did you send me a message focused entirely on seeking forgiveness for things I can’t absolve you of? You hyperfocused on something that isn’t directly affecting anyone. 

The reality is, plenty of people aren’t doing anything. You aren’t alone. There are people who are sleeping, or who are ill, or who just have other life things going on. The point of the movement is that there are MANY people, and the more that care about the issue the better.

EVERYTHING helps. Educating yourself helps. Just caring and knowing about it helps. Sometimes even liking a post helps. Taking a break also helps! If it’s helping to keep you healthy to be able to care about things another day - fine! That’s perfectly fine.

3) You aren’t getting overtime clout for caring more than 8 hours a day. 

I know some people write stuff like ‘if you ignore this/don’t retweet this you’re contributing to (bad thing).’ 

That is a hyperbole. And yes, it’s a tactic used often to guilt people into action.

The truth of the matter is, your activism isn’t - SHOULDN’T be - affected by its visibility. You shouldn’t care more about what people will think than you should care about the issues themselves. I know it’s hard, I know we all have that stupid ass voice in our heads that makes us care what people think - yes, that’s how we’re wired. We’re social creatures and we want approval from our peers. 

But at the end of the day, only YOU can truly know how much you did. If you have a chronic illness and all you managed to do was lay in bed and send good vibes and not look at twitter at all - that’s still just as valid as some instagram model with 10k followers posting photos of herself with a BLM sign.

I will be harsh on one thing though - WHY do I have more of THIS message than I have of ‘hey, i wanna learn about ____’? Why are the majority of us seeking absolution instead of asking what we COULD do? 

You cannot change the reality of your situation - and no one will blame you for that! - but you CAN change how you view it and what you do from here on out. 

You CAN send me an ask of ‘hey, I cannot interact with media rn because I panic, but do you think there’s anything I can do that won’t trigger my anxiety but will still be helpful?’ 

You CAN send me an ask of ‘hi, lots of people are making me feel guilty for not participating more - do you know of any chill ways to support BLM that can help me feel involved in a non conflicting way?’

You CAN just quietly forgive yourself for not being super active and go to bed, take a rest, and make a silent promise that no one will know about that someday, when you DO have the energy, when you ARE feeling better, you will participate and support Black people and stand up to racism, and not be complicit. 

In order to tackle any problem we NEED to bring attention to it first.

If you have a leak inside your house and the plumber comes in, you’re not going to tell him “All Pipes Matter”. You’re going to point to the area that has an issue and say ‘it’s in the kitchen, please take a look!’ 

Additionally, you WANT the plumber to focus on the thing that’s broken, right? If your plumber went into the bathroom and started reinstalling the toilet again when there was nothing wrong, THAT would be counterproductive.

That is why we use the #BlackLivesMatter slogan. All Lives Matter CAN’T be true until you acknowledge that Black Lives Matter - but we NEED to focus on the problem that we have currently, the one that is causing the most damage!

My thoughts are that if people protest, then I hope they are taking all the measures they can to wear masks and avoid close contact with high-risk individuals. 

My thoughts are also that spraying chemical weapons that are known to cause respiratory issues in a pandemic that heavily impacts respiratory function is quite horrible. 

My thoughts are also that it’s ridiculously ironic that businesses and restaurants were rearing to open back up against to go at full capacity and absolutely didn’t give a shit about putting their workers at risk for the pandemic - but as soon as product damage was involved they closed back up again and limited their hours REAL quick. 

All Lives Matter DILUTES the message of Black Lives Matter. 

When there’s a problem, we focus on the problem. We say ‘this is what hurts, let’s fix it’.

You’re a teacher. You have 30 students. 

During lunch break, 2 of those students, Noah and Jessica come over to you. Noah points to Jessica’s scraped knee and says ‘Ashton pushed Jessica off of the swing and she fell and got hurt!’

Do you

A) Get a bandaid and fix Jessica’s knee and call over Ashton to tell him not to push kids off of swings

or

B) Lecture Noah about how ‘all students matter’ and how he shouldn’t single out Jessica and should instead help ALL of the students equally

I’m going to answer this and it probably won’t be a complete list - but lots of people have been adding to these posts in the comments, so please check those as well!

First of all, unlike in Hong Kong, the BLM movement is protesting not a single law but a system - or a set of systems, really - that are racist in nature. There isn’t a new bill being proposed, but there ARE a list of issues they are concerned with, and their main purpose is anti-racist advocacy. These protests are not only demanding a simple correction in the margin of a single law - they are attempting to bring public attention to a VERY big problem that will take a long time to fix.

The first one that you might be immediately aware of is the disproportionate killing of Black people by the police. This is a multi-faceted issue. It’s about people caring less about Black people when they suffer from police brutality and dismissing cases of it under the racist assumption that whatever happened must have been provoked. We see this constantly with people even pushing back against George Floyd’s death - just like they did with Trayvon Martin’s death, Tamir Rice’s death, Mike Brown’s death - “Well was he resisting arrest? He should have just complied. The officers probably had a good reason. Their job is hard.” (None of these things are cause for murder.)

You can actually read more on wikipedia, because I just realized they have a wikipedia page! Ha.

Advocacy means support - not a one time protest that ends when one case closes successfully, but instead a network of people dedicated to a recurring problem that will show up and serve as a way to amplify the voices of the victims and bring it to public attention. Because unfortunate as it is, this will not go away with One Good Protest. This is an ongoing effort.

A branch of this is of course legal reform - and an example of this is Campaign Zero, which aims to reform/defund the police forces in the states which are now completely out of control and in over their heads. 

I recommend you check out their website: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/

This is why you may have heard so many people calling to ‘abolish the police’ at protests. 

Now, many people have a kneejerk reaction of ‘abolish the police? There’ll be chaos!’ but in reply to that I have these set of graphics for you that I feel succinctly explain the reasoning behind these demanded reforms: