
The Black Lives Matter movement has grown in response to the continued killing of Black people by police officers and the flag’s use has grown alongside as a blue lives matter backlash movement spread.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for police to take that stance.” “It very much puts police on the side of an ideology that might be very, very exclusionary and dangerous to significant groups in the United States who deserve their protection,” Meyn says.

The blue line represents the division between societal chaos and order, with cops at the center holding back the forces of evil.Įven without the newfound political connotations, the idea that the police are the only thing standing in the way of society decay, can be unhelpful, according to Ion Meyn, a criminal justice professor at the UW-Madison Law School “Pedestrian Bridge Conservative Flag Activist in Minnesota with Thin Blue Line flag in front” By Tony Webster via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 But the phrase “thin blue line,” has been around for nearly a century. The flag, a black and white American flag with one blue stripe, gained prominence after the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo. Among the throngs of angry QAnon followers, militia members and other various flavors of Trump supporters were off-duty cops from across the country. Police officers were brutalized by people carrying the thin blue line pro-police flag who in some cases used the flag poles themselves as a weapon, videos showed. In the mayhem, one Capitol police officer was killed and dozens more were injured. Capitol - spurred on by the president’s rhetoric, tweets and orders to alter the election results by carrying out a coup attempt. 6, a crowd of violent insurrectionists descended on the U.S. Behind Trump, hanging from two construction cranes, was a massive pro-police thin blue line flag. Yet during this appearance, Trump, the 45th President of the United States, was not standing in front of an American flag. Trump arrived in southern Wisconsin two months after a white Kenosha cop had shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, seven times in the back, sparking a renewed round of protests for racial justice in Wisconsin and across the country. You can’t do the smallest thing to give us safety, never mind comfort.In late October, then-President Donald Trump - in the midst of a scorched Earth re-election campaign that touted a pro-law enforcement message and painted him as the candidate of “law and order,” - appeared at a rally in Waukesha. “If you can’t hear us about your pretty little decal on your chest, how are you going to hear us about getting murdered? How do you hear about Black is a capital B.


She questioned what other rules the police association is telling its members to disobey if they are fighting back over the wearing of patches. “They don’t even understand the history of it or what it represents, what it represents to people outside of the police, that’s really the problem with it.” “The reason why the thin blue line is negative, is because when police are actually engaging with people who they have more power over, because of society, they are rubbing it in our faces,” said Nwofor. Article contentĪdora Nwofor, president of Black Lives Matter YYC, said she viewed the symbol as hate speech given the history of policing in Canada being used against minority communities. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
