Some conservatives are going to boycott Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream because of the support for Black Lives Matter and the following statement: (enhancement mine)
Black lives matter.
They matter because they are children, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.
They matter because the injustices they face steal from all of us —
white people and people of color alike. They steal our very humanity.
Systemic and institutionalized racism are the defining civil rights
and social justice issues of our time. We’ve come to understand that to
be silent about the violence and threats to the lives and well-being of
Black people is to be complicit in that violence and those threats.
We ask you to join us in not being complicit.
There is good news: the first step in overcoming systemic racism and
injustice is to simply understand and admit that there is a problem.
It’s trying to understand the perspective of others whose experiences
are different from our own. To not just listen, but to truly understand
those whose struggle for justice is real, and not yet complete.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina
NAACP, said it best when reacting to the recent police shooting in
Charlotte, NC. He said, “Our objective is simple: to ensure
justice-loving people act toward justice, with all evidence, and that we
stand together and act from a place of power and love, rather than out
of fear and anger.”
It’s been hard to watch the list of unarmed Black Americans killed by
law enforcement officers grow longer and longer. We understand that
numerous Black Americans and white Americans have profoundly different
experiences and outcomes with law enforcement and the criminal justice
system. That’s why it’s become clear to us at Ben & Jerry’s that we
have a moral obligation to take a stand now for justice and for Black
lives.
We want to be clear: we believe that saying Black lives matter is not
to say that the lives of those who serve in the law enforcement
community don’t. We respect and value the commitment to our communities
that those in law enforcement make, and we respect the value of every
one of their lives.
But we do believe that — whether Black, brown, white, or blue — our
nation and our very way of life is dependent on the principle of all
people being served equal justice under the law. And it’s clear, the
effects of the criminal justice system are not color blind.
We do not place the blame for this on individual officers. Rather, we
believe it is due to the systemic racism built into the fabric of our
institutions at every level, disadvantaging and discriminating against
people of color in ways that go beyond individual intent to
discriminate. For this reason, we are not pointing fingers at
individuals; we are instead urging us to come together to better our
society and institutions so that we may finally fulfill the founding
promise of this country: to be a country with dignity and justice for
all.
All lives do matter. But all lives will not matter until Black lives matter.
We ask people to be open to understanding these issues, and not to
reflexively retreat to our current beliefs. Change happens when people
are willing to listen and hear the struggles of their neighbor, putting
aside preconceived notions and truly seeking to understand and grow.
We’ll be working hard on that, and ask you to as well.
— Your friends at Ben & Jerry’s
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/69322/conservatives-call-for-boycott-of-ben-jerry-over-its-support-for-black-lives-matter-movement
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