Oct 2023. Blues Vol 39 No. 10

GUEST COMENTARY Joe

GUEST COMENTARY Joe Gamaldi BLM Going Belly Up 14 The BLUES A recent article published by Fox News highlighted the epic free fall of Black Lives Matter. The article laid out in detail how the donations to Black Lives Matter are down 88% in 2023. This news comes on the heels of a recent Pew Research poll, which stated only 8% of people believe that Black Lives Matter has been effective in making the lives of Black Americans better. The crime numbers support the polling data in jaw dropping fashion. During the height of their fundraising, and supporting far left, woke ideology, including the revolving door criminal justice system, the homicide rate for black men has skyrocketed to 12 times the homicide rate of everyone else. You read that right, 12 times the homicide rate! So where did all the money they raised during the height of the 2020 riots go??? Well, it doesn’t take a detective to do a Google search and find the goods. There are articles upon articles highlighting the building of real estate empires, lavish purchases, six figure salaries for friends and families, IRS filings gone awry, the list goes on and on. I encourage you to take a look because there are just too many articles to include here. The truth is Black Lives Matter is a bunch of charlatans and one of the greatest scams perpetuated on the American people. They raised money under the guise of helping Black Americans but yet can’t provide any proof, or statistical data, of making black American’s lives better. Truth be told there were not many groups who called them out on the fact that they only made loud arguments about police officers and our profession, NOT factual ones. But I am proud to say the Fraternal Order of Police did. The FOP participated in numerous national interviews on this topic, podcasts, we did social media posts across all platforms, and a host of other content calling them out for their harmful, hateful, and threatening rhetoric. We called them out for the damage they have done to our profession, our communities, and our country. We continued to talk about it, and others took notice. Outlets began running more stories on the topics of where the money was going and whether this JOE GAMALDI, NATIONAL FOP VICE PRESIDENT organization had done anything positive at all. When you combine all the negative attention that Black Lives Matter received, it is isn’t difficult to look at the numbers I cited above, to show Americans are sick and tired of inflammatory rhetoric with no facts. They are sick of the yelling in the megaphone with nothing to say. The American people want facts, they want substance, they want passions and one of the places they are coming for it, is the Fraternal Order of Police. Just another reason why we are the number one voice for law enforcement in this country and it’s not even close. As always, be safe out there!

The BLUES 15