Hi everyone,

I just saw this on the BLM Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter

- - -

“He's my firstborn... I'm really deeply hurt & wounded. I don’t know what to do, I can't stop myself from crying... I was thinking it was my son who would bury me, but I'm the one burying my son.” -Dorcas Lyoya, mama of Patrick Lyoya
Donate here to support the Lyoya family's funeral costs:

- - -

I.e., it looks like another black man has been shot over something that is contested by pro-civil-rights activists.

How frequently does this happen? I stand by my assertion that BLM shouldn't stand by Obama or Biden or AOC; I think it is dangerous for a pro-black organization to support bad guys who (may) support human trafficking. No murder or other crime is fair, but the political power of an organization, which really does create huge effects on the nation and the police, sometimes in ways that are "carried by the GDP" and not easy to perceive or track, can save lives when it is "pure" and at a high level, not brought down by support for people who would support crimes that no civil rights activist should support, even as a claimed "compromise." The expected value of negative consequences for bad cops who kill others go up when advocacy organizations are powerful, influential, and scary; the average American supports BLM --> the odds of conviction go up, given jury composition, and even very immoral cops might sense that and be more inhibited, using whatever perception lens such a bad guy might use. My point is that 100% ethical BLM --> scary BLM, to bad guys --> fewer deaths; the mechanism that makes bad cops want to kill isn't simple, I assert; I believe it is based on complicated and hard to perceive economics forces that can be sort of predicted but not fully understood, like a sort of Rube Goldberg machine that no one can fully perceive. All advocacy organizations, including NAMI, should operate in a way that maximizes virtue and therefore protective and other power; ethical compromises and praise for bad guys is unwise.

Anyway, the killing is sad. I think the best way to look at sad things like this is partly through the lens of realism...the world should be perfectly in line with good ideals, but that is a goal, not present reality. Good-guy groups striving to be as good as they can be must work to improve their power, including by rooting out moral imperfections within them such as praise for bad guys like AOC. It is better for my personal interests, as a non-black victim, if attacks against BLM interests like this are gentle rather than lethal; one thing I would recommend, not that I have any power other than the power to suggest things, is that BLM also share stories about non-lethal tragedies against black people, such as improper detentions by police, so that people can learn and react to sad BLM events on a spectrum that allows watchers to react to a tragedy without feeling reservation about criticizing...I still want to criticize BLM, but it makes me feel a little bad that I feel like I'm saying "I told you so" when someone has died. I would rather say things like that in fixable tragedies...there might be other people who would withhold analytical ideas and feedback, from their valuable lenses, out of a desire to sound fully pleasing to everyone and like a "proper discloser of ideas." I am less sensitive to demands to sound polished and perfectly respectful; I like to solve problems, and am willing to share important ideas even when it might make me sound callous or like a jerk, which I am not, if it might help to save lives (including mine).

-Philip White (philipjwhite@yahoo.com)