“The Young Turks” (TYT) have a bone to pick with CNN anchor Don Lemon. The candid online news show posted a video yesterday criticizing the reporter for questioning whether Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists were doing anything to eradicate police brutality outside of “yelling.”
On “CNN Tonight,” Lemon read some criticism the organization has received for disassociating themselves with all political parties. The group posted a message to Facebook on Sunday announcing that they are not affiliated with any party.
“The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control or contain black people’s efforts to liberate ourselves. True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party,” the group’s page read.
Lemon spoke with one of the Black Lives Matter movement’s lead organizers, Rashad Turner, and asked how he plans to bring about change without “being involved with the political or legislative process.” He added, “it doesn’t just happen from yelling.”
TYT’s Cenk Uygur and John ladarola disagreed with Lemon questioning BLM about their tactics. Uygur expressed that to bring attention to the problem, it’s necessary to “protest, yell, scream,” or do whatever will spread awareness to the fact that Black people are killed by police disproportionately. Ladarola added that BLM did prove to be involved in changing political practices when they outlined their policy demands with Campaign Zero.
“So Lemon is like ‘oh, you’re just yelling,’ and now you’ve fed into the same propaganda that everyone else is doing. I guess with Don, that’s not that surprising,” Uygur said.
The panel said that while radical right-wingers are supporting one another, liberal news networks such as CNN continue their attempts to discredit BLM.
“It is so annoying how the Tea Party starts up and immediately gets a level of respect that it has never earned. But Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, who are representing millions of people, who are not fake victims … immediately get destroyed by the media,” ladarola said.
Watch the full segment on the next page.
