On Friday night, radical Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists held a Black National Convention, which aimed to “reach and engage four million Black voters across the US, build infrastructure of Black political engagement that transcends the 2020 election season, and create and ratify a policy platform for the first 100 days of the next administration.”
Tens of thousands participated Friday in the virtual 2020 Black National Convention (BNC) hosted by the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition that includes dozens of radical organizations including Black Lives Matter (BLM).
The live stream was the first national political convention for black Americans in nearly 50 years and was intended to create “a vision for Black Lives before the biggest election of our time, and long after,” according to M4BL’s website.
Friday’s broadcast included policy proposals on issues such as voter suppression, reproductive rights, housing insecurity, public education inequality, and inter-communal violence, according to its agenda which was shared exclusively with the Associated Press.
Organized by the radical defund-the-police-promoting Electoral Justice Project (EJP), a project of M4BL that focuses on electoral strategy, the 2020 BNC focused on organizing black political power through the political process in order to ensure community demands are met.
“The uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and countless other murders from police and vigilante violence along with the alarming Black death rate due to COVID-19 has exposed what we can no longer hide—America does not value Black lives,” said M4BL organizer and political strategist Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project (EJP). “But we also know that rising up and taking action is how Black communities have secured our rights and dignity throughout this nation’s divided history.”
The event paid tribute to the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, which introduced a national black agenda. The convention hosted prominent radical black leaders including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale.
“It’s time to build a BLACK united front” read one M4BL tweet, which included a video promoting the convention.
The convention featured keynote speakers such as Patrisse Cullors, the self-proclaimed Marxist and Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder; Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement; and Phillp Agnew, co-founder of Dream Defenders, a radical Israel-boycott-promoting and anti-police organization.
In 2016, the M4BL coalition released its radical “Vision for Black Lives” policy platform, which included early proposals for defunding the police. The convention sought to ratify a new agenda, updating much of the original platform with new proposals including some that could eventually abolish the criminal justice system entirely.
As Breitbart News previously reported, after a year-long process of convening local and national groups and only three months prior to the 2016 presidential election, the M4BL group released its radical platform which states, “We recognize that some of the demands in this document will not happen today. But we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation.”
Arguing that “Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system,” the platform lays out “six core planks” concerning criminal justice, reparations, investment and divestment, economic justice, community control, and political power.
BLM — not a civil rights movement:
BLM “is not a civil rights movement,” civil rights pioneer Clarence Henderson told Fox Business Network’s Making Money with Charles Payne on Thursday, adding that the group is composed of Marxists seeking to “tear down the fabric of America.”
Henderson, who spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC) Wednesday night, added that America has made “great progress” since he took part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, claiming today’s efforts only stoke racism.
Describing Hollywood, the media, and universities as dangerous sources of falsehoods concerning what the U.S. is all about, Henderson emphasized that America has a legal system based on due process which works to carry out the necessary change.
Henderson also questioned protester motives in a country that has become much like a court of public opinion.
“My question is: what are you trying to achieve?” Because we have the law of the land now,” he stated.
In his RNC remarks, Henderson touted the progress America’s black communities have made under Trump, arguing that the president has achieved more for black Americans in four years than Joe Biden has in 50.
Breitbart News will cover the revised platform that will guide BLM and over 100 black activist groups.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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