'Parents are more worried about sending kids to school than a Black Lives Matter protests': Ex-GOP Congressman
Former Republican Congressman David Jolly (FL) joined MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday to discuss the latest "big lie" from the GOP, that Black Lives Matter protesters are all violent.
According to an analysis last fall reviewing the George Floyd protests, the Washington Post found that "96.3 percent of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7 percent of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police."
In fact, the only places where people died during BLM protests have been as a result of white opponents.
A database created by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a non-profit group working with Princeton researchers, revealed that in 2020, "the overwhelming majority of the more than 9.000 Black Lives Matter demonstrationsthat took place across the US after the killing of George Floyd have been peaceful," a Guardian report said.
"News reports at the height of demonstrations over Floyd's killing cited dozens of deaths in connection with protests, butmany of those turned out to be examples of deadly crimes carried out in the vicinity of protests, rather than directly related to the demonstrations themselves, the researchers concluded. ACLED's dataset only focuses on political violence," said the report.
"If Republicans were serious about doing something about violence in the United States today, instead of approaching restrictions on the right to assembly and right to speech, they would be approaching issues around access to firearms," said Jolly. "Parents are more worried today about sending their kids to a white suburban high school than they are letting kids participate in a Black Lives Matter protest. That's the reality of where we are in the country today. Yet, Republicans are trying to define this around issues of protests and assembly, and largely around racial overtones to each of those freedoms of expression."
He went on to say that where he sees the breakdown in progress is "in congress. There's a lot of faith lost. First and foremost to the Republican Party, but then to a greater audience, people who want government not to lie to us multiple times over issues of greatest import where voters are today."
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