From my perspective, largely not. More of a cultural speedbump with a bunch of pale white people painting BLM on stuff in their neighborhoods and clapping themselves on the back over it and the BLM flag they hung in the window. Here’s why I think that:
Recently we got a measily $1.9m in funding for a civilian-led group to deal with non-violent conflict resolution instead of the police, but that feels like small potatoes compared to lifting up people of color living in poverty in poor neighborhoods, improving public schools in poverty-stricken areas so that people can actually get decent jobs, and cleaning up pollution in poorer neighborhoods, which tend to get pushed next to sooty highways, commercial rail tracks with poisonous cargo, and smoggy airports (not to mention food deserts).
I’d consider it a success if there was a massive push for better funding public schools and trade schools in poor areas, significant prison reform and in-prison job & budget training, significantly better social safety net programs for the bottom 35% of the population, and much, much tighter regulations on emissions and pollutants that make low income neighborhoods unhealthy to live in due to undesirable infrastructure nearby.
Currently, we aren’t doing much to ACTUALLY lift people out of the doldrums of poverty, in both direct and indirect ways. It’s frustrating to watch.
From my perspective, largely not. More of a cultural speedbump with a bunch of pale white people painting BLM on stuff in their neighborhoods and clapping themselves on the back over it and the BLM flag they hung in the window. Here’s why I think that:
Recently we got a measily $1.9m in funding for a civilian-led group to deal with non-violent conflict resolution instead of the police, but that feels like small potatoes compared to lifting up people of color living in poverty in poor neighborhoods, improving public schools in poverty-stricken areas so that people can actually get decent jobs, and cleaning up pollution in poorer neighborhoods, which tend to get pushed next to sooty highways, commercial rail tracks with poisonous cargo, and smoggy airports (not to mention food deserts).
I’d consider it a success if there was a massive push for better funding public schools and trade schools in poor areas, significant prison reform and in-prison job & budget training, significantly better social safety net programs for the bottom 35% of the population, and much, much tighter regulations on emissions and pollutants that make low income neighborhoods unhealthy to live in due to undesirable infrastructure nearby.
Currently, we aren’t doing much to ACTUALLY lift people out of the doldrums of poverty, in both direct and indirect ways. It’s frustrating to watch.