1. Pelosi's words are being dismissed as a gaffe, a sign of verbally ineptness or lack of thought. But there's something more interesting and important at work about not understanding what Black Lives Matter means.
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1384624338683502592
2. Atherton is persuasive here that what Pelosi was doing was echoing the language civil rights movement used when talking about those martyred for a cause.
https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1384628317588885509
3. It's easy to see Pelosi's logic here. The language of sacrifice & martyrdom was how the civil rights movement steeled itself in the face of violence. Floyd energized a new civil rights movement. But the horror of Floyd's murder is that he wasn't a martyr but a ordinary person
4. The radical claim of Black Lives Matter is that all Black lives matter, not just the heroes & the martyrs. This is in the face of a white supremacy where it's all too easy for any Black life, not just the heroes & martyrs, to face state violence. Pelosi's words obscured that
5. Pelosi's attempt at a false consolation point to a fissure between the Democratic leadership and the social movements that continue to press for change. More thoughts on this (and other things) here: jeetheer.substack.com/p/how-not-to-m…
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