"Movement for Black Lives" will unite the country by holding virtual convention... for their own agenda

A virtual convention is being organized for thousands of black activists in support of Black Lives Matter. The goal is to produce a list of demands for the new administration. The new political agenda will piggyback off of the mass protests following the death of George Floyd. The 2020 Black National Convention on August 28 will be held virtually with a live broadcast.

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The Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives is in charge of organizing the virtual convention with a coalition of more than 150 organizations. This follows the 2016 “Vision for Black Lives” platform created to improve lives in Black America with a focus then on mass incarceration, among other policies.

The convention is being organized by the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 organizations. In 2016, the coalition released its “Vision for Black Lives” platform, which called for public divestment from mass incarceration and for adoption of policies that can improve conditions in Black America.

“What this convention will do is create a Black liberation agenda that is not a duplication of the Vision for Black Lives, but really is rooted as a set of demands for progress,” said Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project.

At the end of the convention, participants will ratify a revised platform that will serve as a set of demands for the first 100 days of a new presidential administration, Byrd said. Participants also will have access to model state and local legislation.

“What we have the opportunity to do now, as this 50-state rebellion has provided the conditions for change, is to say, ‘You need to take action right this minute,’” Byrd said. “We’re going to set the benchmarks for what we believe progress is and make those known locally and federally.”

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These plans tell me two things: 1. Democrats fully expect Joe Biden to win the 2020 presidential election. The black organizations are banding together to push Corn Pop’s friend, Joe, all the way over the cliff with a leftist agenda on social justice policy. Think Joe is twisting like a pretzel over hot button subjects like bringing down Confederate monuments and historically important figures now? Just wait until these folks deliver an agenda full of demands to him.

The second thing this tells me is that President Trump will continue to be unworthy of acknowledgment of his successful agenda of reforming the criminal justice system. The leftists leading the Black Lives Matter movement are not interested in reform, they are interested in burning the system down, at the expense of law enforcement departments and public safety measures. The irony is that Trump is working to make the system more equitable while Status Quo Joe worked for 40 years in elected office and produced crime bills that only served to produce the mass incarcerations that are now pointed to as a measure of racial inequality.

The Movement for Black Lives is striking while the iron is hot. Black Lives Matter is finding a lot of public support right now, as well as financial support. Originally, the Black National Convention was scheduled to be held in Detroit, “the nation’s Blackest major city”, but the coronavirus pandemic changed those plans. The first-ever Black Lives Matter convention was held in Cleveland in 2015.

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There will be a smaller “Peoples Convention” on Aug. 6 and 7 held virtually which will include hundreds of delegates from Black-led advocacy groups. It will serve as a platform committee-style meeting. Defund the police is still at the top of the list of priorities, with this part of the agenda having been on the first agenda of the first convention in 2015.

Other platform demands, such as ending cash bail, reducing pretrial detention and scrapping discriminatory risk-assessment tools used in criminal courts, have become official policy in a handful of local criminal justice systems around the U.S.

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which organizes in 15 states, said the 2020 Black National Convention will deepen the solutions to systemic racism and create more alignment within the movement.

“We’re in this stage now where we’re getting more specific about how all of this is connected to our local organizing,” Albright said. “The hope is that, when people leave the convention, they leave with greater clarity, more resources, connectivity and energy.”

The coalition behind the convention includes Color of Change, BYP100, Dream Defenders and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which has 16 official chapters nationwide.

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The Black Lives Matter coalition talks a big game for independence from either political party, but, c’mon, with over 90% of African-Americans voting in the Democrat’s largest voting block, that claim is hard to take seriously. They say they are building “an alternative container for all of us to connect, outside of the white gaze, to say this is what we want for our communities.”

The virtual convention falls on the same day that Al “Tawana Brawley” Sharpton will hold a march on D.C. in honor of George Floyd and others who have died in police custody. I’m sure anything organized by a career race-baiter will move the country in the right direction and encourage unity. (sarcasm) The Black National Convention will broadcast after the march. Organizers point to the urgency of organizing their demands and delivering them to the presidential candidates before the November election because of the current atmosphere of political protests in the streets of cities across the country.

“What we have the opportunity to do now, as this 50-state rebellion has provided the conditions for change, is to say, ‘You need to take action right this minute,’” Byrd said. “We’re going to set the benchmarks for what we believe progress is and make those known locally and federally.”

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No doubt this virtual convention is expected to rival the two major parties’ national convention this summer. In the heat of August, amidst a national march on Washington, D.C. led by Al Sharpton, I fail to see this as a unifying action. They want a “50-state rebellion”, as they say, and that doesn’t scream unity to me.

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