Two years later, some black media leaders in Cleveland are criticizing the destructive influence of #BLM

The photo of me above is from the Republican National Convention in 2016, when the RNC came to my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Black Lives Matter was a nascent movement at the time, considered fringe by many. BLM wasn’t a Twitter hashtag, a T-shirt, or a corporate slogan.

Let’s just say things have changed since then, especially after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. That summer, BLM rioters set upon Cleveland, and it became clear that the movement was attracting a lot of bandwagon supporters looking to build their woke bona fides with protest pictures on social media, as well as opportunists looking to enrich themselves. By 2020, I was also a co-host on Cleveland’s FCB Radio, a black-owned media company. The view of the protests from inside Black Cleveland was much different than the views of white progressives posting “blackout” photos on Facebook, strategically tagged with #BLM.

Earlier this summer, FCB’s founder and CEO, Darvio Morrow, released a YouTube series on the 2020 BLM riots, the second of which is titled “BLM Aftermath: Cleveland.” I interviewed Darvio about the video and his perspective on BLM as it exists in 2022.

1. Like me, you were an early and vocal supporter of Black Lives Matter. Let’s talk about that. First, do you have personal experience with police overreach or misbehaving cops? What about the Cleveland police specifically?

I was always a supporter of Black Lives Matter the sentiment. I started having questions about Black Lives Matter the political organization when their website talked about wanting the destruction of the nuclear family. Here is an organization that’s supposed to be advocating for black people and they’re pushing for something that’s not in their interests. Then as more things started to come out about them funneling their donations to partisan candidates and using funds to enrich themselves as well, that’s when it was clear to me that the organization was something completely different than the movement.

2. A lot of early supporters’ feelings changed as BLM became a hashtag and a corporate motto. Was that true for you? How do you feel about BLM now vs. its inception?

I feel like the movement was hijacked. It stopped being about improving the lives of black people and more about an unholy alliance between white corporations who wanted to be able to silence legitimate criticism by virtue signaling, and the leaders of the BLM organization who used that to enrich themselves. None of that has anything to do with the people they’re supposed to be serving. It went from a genuine movement to one big Ponzi scheme.

3. Do you think the 2020 protests in Cleveland accomplished anything? Was the damage to the city and the lawlessness worth it?

I don’t think the 2020 riots in Cleveland accomplished anything. In fact I think it showed how uninterested the rioters were in accomplishing anything. As we documented in the video, Cleveland had a black mayor and black police chief who was willing to sit down and find solutions and they kept running into brick walls, because a lot of the people at the table were not interested in solutions. As former mayor Frank Jackson told me, “their agenda is just to tear it up.”

4. BLM seems to have attracted a lot of opportunists hoping to hijack the movement for money and clout. Have you witnessed that in Cleveland and beyond?

Absolutely I’ve witnessed it. We saw people connected to that movement in Cleveland use it to push issue 24, which is now the law of the land in Cleveland. Issue 24 took control of not only discipline but also policies and procedures out of the hands of the chief of police (again, a black man) and gave it to an unelected, unaccountable board with no oversight. And then they wonder why the homicide rate keeps going up and police keep leaving. I believe in police accountability, but I don’t support making it harder for the good cops to do their jobs, which is what that law has done.

5. When did you decide to create this video? Who was involved and what do you hope to accomplish?

What I hope to accomplish is just to show people that there are folks out here who are taking our legitimate concerns and “tragedy pimping” it, as the former mayor said, to enrich themselves. If you notice, in the video we fully acknowledge that many of the concerns that the community has are legitimate. The problem is that there are people who are either not really trying to fix them or are offering up “solutions” that would make things worse. The project was a collaboration between FCB Productions and the Capital Research Center.

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Now, I’m sure some white progressives will come into my comments section to say I “just don’t get it” because I’m just a white girl from the lily-white Midwest. To which I say: no, you’re thinking of California, which is only 6% black, or perhaps Oregon, which is 1%. The city of Cleveland is nearly 50% black and has long been an important center of black culture. Where do you think Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and “Midwest rap” came from? For day 8 of my song challenge, here is a lesser-known song from Cleveland’s most famous rap act.