Stanford hosts BLM co-founder, who advocates defunding police
A BLM co-founder spoke at Stanford University on "systemic racism" after multiple student groups campus departments sponsored her.
During the appearance, the speaker said that tax-dollars need to be divested from police.
Opal Tometi, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter organization, spoke at Stanford University during a virtual event in which she discussed “fighting systemic racism.”
The event was presented as a dinner with Tometi and sponsored by Stanford in Government, the Stanford Speakers Bureau, Black Community Center, Women’s Community Center, Nigerian Students’ Association, Black Student Union, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Senior Class Presidents, Junior Class Presidents, the Stanford Solidarity Fund, and the Center for Ethics in Society.
According to the Stanford Daily, Tometi spoke on tax-dollars from police and reinvesting those dollars into social programs directed toward communal efforts.
Tometi suggested defunding the police and using the money for something “that actually keep us safe and keep us healthy, because we know that the safest communities are the communities that have the most resources. Our communities don’t end up being the safest because we don’t have the resources because they were divested from us.”
[RELATED: ‘Trained Marxists’ BLM founders say Trump admin is ‘white supremacist’]
As a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Tometi called the BLM organization a part of “a long history of freedom struggle.”
Tometi later called to change institutions “across the board,” from health care to the criminal justice system so that Black Americans have “a dignified existence in whatever institution that they find themselves in.” In order for these goals to be attained, she said that people must become “unwavering and unapologetic” in what they seek.
Tometi said when police carry lethal weapons, it creates “the type of disparate, violence against Black people at the hands of the police, people who are supposedly supposed to protect and serve.”
One student attendee, Gabby Crooks told the Stanford Daily that she was happy to hear Tometi after a “stress-filled week” due to the election: “It was refreshing to hear from an experienced organizer dedicated to the things that matter, especially given the racial climate this country has weathered this past year.”
Stanford College Republicans President Stephen Sills told Campus Reform that Antifa has “ravaged African-American communities across the country.”
“It is laughable that Opal Tometi would go as far as to suggest that BLM is part of a larger tradition of human rights struggles. Over the course of the summer, BLM and domestic terrorist group Antifa have ravaged African-American communities across the country, resulting in the deaths of individuals such as Black retired police Captain David-Dorn, as well as the looting and burning of hundreds of black-owned businesses,” Sills said.
Sills also said that BLM is completely removed from ”the low-income Black-Americans they attempt to represent:” “Many Black Americans may never recover from the physical and emotional harm Black Lives Matter has caused. Moreover, for BLM to advocate the abolition of the police shows their complete removal from the low-income Black-Americans they attempt to represent, many [of] whom want an increased, not decreased, law enforcement presence in their communities.”
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