It’s a trend many find disturbing — protesters going directly to the homes of public officials.
Thursday night, the Black Future Project vandalized the home of Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore and plastered signs laced with obscenities on his garage, windows, and front door.
“I’m very concerned,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, the president of the LA Urban Policy Roundtable. “I know that I’ve participated in a number of protests and demonstrations during my time. They’ve always been in a public place, in front of a public facility.”
Hutchinson says protesting at police headquarters or other public buildings is a sacred right, but taking that protest to a personal residence crosses the line.
“The optics don’t look good,” he said. “I know the general public values privacy, they value their home, they value their personal space.”
The Black Future Project, which is separate from Black Lives Matter, formed a few months ago. It’s the same group which posted a video on their Instagram page earlier this month, showing them protesting outside the home of a LA County Sheriff’s deputy accused of shooting and killing 18-year-old Andres Guardado.
“Is it going to turn people off? Is it going to hurt our cause? Is it going to alienate a wide body of the general public, people that might be sympathetic to the issue?”
Those are questions Hutchinson has when he sees protests at personal homes, including one by Black Lives Matter in March.
That’s when they went to the home of LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey and knocked on her front door in the predawn hours, demanding a meeting.
Instead they were met by Lacey’s husband with a gun.
While Black Lives Matter protests have been relatively peaceful, Hutchinson argues protests at private homes could easily backfire when people end up sympathizing with the public official who’s targeted in a non-public place.
Source: NBC Los Angeles
Be First to Comment