“Black Lives Matter” — the official organization led by founder Patrisse Cullors — fired back at the Democratic National Committee and its convention over the weekend, registering disappointment that the group did not fully embrace the movement’s goals and calling the convention’s focus on racial justice “lip service.”
POLITICO reports that Cullors, especially, is disappointed that the DNC did not go further to address racial injustice, even though both 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), addressed the matter in their acceptance speeches.
“It’s been unfortunate to not see the Democratic Party fully align themselves with the powerful work this movement has been doing,” Cullors told the outlet.
Biden and Harris, as well as other DNC attendees, were more than willing to endorse the idea behind the “Black Lives Matter” movement, but the organization has consistently refused to endorse the official BLM organization, likely because the “Black Lives Matter” group has a radical platform that goes far beyond the Democratic Party’s official policy positions on most issues.
The official Black Lives Matter organization, of course, calls for radical change: dismantling “cisgender privilege,” disrupting the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” an abolition of law enforcement and prisons, and a near-fully socialist government.
Biden, during the Democratic National Convention last week, worked to position himself as a moderate, often co-opting traditional Republican themes, and bringing moderate Republican supporters on stage for keynote speeches.
That is an insult, racial justice activists say.
“It took seven years for Democrats to articulate that Black lives matter. Now, the country is watching to see if and how they will close the gap between symbolism and substance,” another co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement told POLITICO.
In the background, things got especially heated. Biden’s team reportedly instructed his allies, affiliated with the far-left Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, to rein in Cullors and other members of the party’s progressive coalition who were trying to make radical changes to the DNC’s agenda. In particular, Biden wanted progressives to abandon Cullors’ “BREATHE” Act, which would have, according to Fox News, eliminated federal funding for most law enforcement programs, abolished jails and most forms of punishment for criminal behavior, and ended immigration enforcement.
Biden, more generally, has refused to support “anti-racism” polices that gained momentum following George Floyd’s death while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department. Despite the Trump administration’s insistence, Biden has distanced himself from the progressive movement to “defund” and disband police departments in most major cities, though he has not explicitly condemned violence in cities like Portland, Seattle, and Chicago.
In a bizarre exchange with ABC News on Friday, Biden claimed that while he does not want to defund the police, President Donald Trump, by contrast, does.