Remember All Lives Matter?
It began as a rejoinder, invented to strip power from the Black Lives Matter rally cry born after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager killed on his walk home from a convenience store.
As a phrase, Black Lives Matter was almost immediately twisted by critics to imply things it didn’t imply — that Black lives matter more than other lives, for starters. The twisting was convenient, because it steered the public discourse away from what Black Lives Matter invited the nation to reckon with, which was the continual deaths of Black Americans like Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City and George Floyd in Minneapolis.
All Lives Matter became a way to shut out and shut down that conversation.
It became a frequent chant at Donald Trump rallies, starting with his 2016 run for the presidency. “You’re going to hear it once,” Trump told Black Lives Matter demonstrators at a Virgina rally in February 2016. “All lives matter.”
In 2020, Trump supporters could be heard chanting “all lives matter” at rallies from Washington to Nevada and beyond. The phrase faded a bit by 2024, but its staying power remains undeniable — as a rally cry, as a hashtag, as a bumper sticker, as an ethos.
Taken at face value, All Lives Matter is hard to argue with. All lives do matter. All lives should matter. All lives do deserve our attention and protection and honor and wonder and grace. It’s why I’m opposed to the death penalty.
What I would like to say, now that the rallies are over and the All Lives Matter chants have quieted and Donald Trump has been, once again, elected president, is this:
Show us.
Show us that all lives matter. Show us that you believe every life is worth protecting. Show us that you believe every life is worth honoring. Show us with your policies. Show us with your appointments. Show us with your executive orders.
Because so far it’s hard to look around and discern that all lives matter.
It’s hard to read about a 281-page spreadsheet that the United States Agency for International Development just sent to Congress, listing which foreign aid projects are about to be terminated — including funds to combat malaria, one of the deadliest diseases on the planet — and conclude that all lives matter.
It’s hard to read about the Pentagon purging military heroes from Defense Department websites and social media pages because those heroes weren’t white men and conclude that all lives matter.
It’s hard to read about the Agriculture Department canceling $1 billion in federal spending to supply school lunches, fill food banks and support local farmers and conclude that all lives matter.
It’s hard to read about all the ways that eliminating the Department of Education will harm children with physical, mental and learning disabilities and conclude that all lives matter.
It’s hard to read the ongoing play-by-play of the text messages inadvertently sent to Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg — extremely sensitive text messages that outlined the timeline of a pending military attack in Yemen — and conclude that all lives, especially service members’ lives, matter.
“It’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said to intelligence officials at a hearing two days after the text leak went public.
Intelligence officials will quibble about the word “classified,” about whether the texts were truly a “war plan,” about semantics that aim to distract us from the gravity of the situation.
But Leon Panetta, former defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had this to say on PBS NewsHour:
“There are very serious consequences to leaking information about a potential military attack. If that information is leaked to an adversary, not only does it jeopardize very important intelligence resources that are being used to be able to determine military plans, but, in addition to that, that kind of leak would give a potential adversary an advantage of being able to strike first and going after whatever weapons, whatever naval vessels were going to be used for the attack.
“So it could cost lives of our men and women in uniform if that information was leaked,” he continued. “That’s the danger here. And, furthermore, it weakens our national security, very frankly, if we cannot protect that kind of sensitive information.”
If your rally cry is all lives matter, there’s no time like the present to start leading like they do.
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