After national and local protests over the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other recent victims of police violence, Black residents of Bloomington and Monroe county were victimized in three separate and escalating incidents of harassment and violence in the first week of July. Bloomingtonians responded by holding demonstrations in front of the Monroe County courthouse and at the People's Park. At these demonstrations, the people called for city and county officials to be accountable for racial violence that takes place on their watch.
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In a fairly standard move, the City Council and Mayor’s office denounced those incidents using platitudes of support and sadness. BLM B-town and the community put pressure on them at the demonstrations and in an online campaign to participate in an anti-racist policy training that BLM B-town had created for elected officials. The creation of this training was born from a request for help from City Council members. BLM B-town also extended the offer of anti-racist policy training to the Monroe County Council and Monroe County Commissioners after conversations with certain County Councilors indicated the need for such a training for them as well. 
Due to this pressure, the City Council and the Mayor’s Office have expressed commitments to participate in “some sort” of anti-racist policy training to make Bloomington safe, civil, and just. The problem is that since the rise of #BlackLivesMatter as a movement, there has been an explosion of opportunists, eager to profit by offering “anti-racism workshops” which give politicians a gold star but yield no substantive change in terms of how officials approach policy-making. The burgeoning anti-racist training industry operates like “degree mill” online universities that offer cut-rate credentials, but no actual education. Many of the police guilty of the recent murders of unarmed Black people had taken these types of “workshops.” We need our city officials to participate in real, anti-racist training, not a perfunctory “workshop” that produces no substantive changes. This is why BLM B-town created our workshop: to address local needs and locate changes in current policies. 
This is another concern: Bloomington has a habit of hiring or working with outside consultants who are unfamiliar with our community. Last year, after repeatedly failing to deal with active white supremacist recruiters operating in its own Farmers’ Market, the City contracted with an Ohio firm to conduct an assessment of racial injustices in Bloomington. The report generated by this assessment (written by a former mayor of Rochester, New York, who visited Bloomington only three times) underplayed the problem, refusing to point to clear and admitted problems with racist policy-making by our community’s legislators. As outsiders, the authors of this report had no investment in seeing Bloomington remediate its racist ways. In fact, their motivation may have been the opposite: if things stay bad, they can come back in another five years to do another study on our dime. 
As Bloomingtonians, we have an obligation to ensure our elected officials are trained in anti-racist policy-making that specifically targets local issues from the perspective of progressive Black community members. This means the training should be focused on specific policies made by our legislative bodies that have caused disproportionate harm to our BIPOC communities. It should come from people who live here and are thus motivated to hold Bloomington city officials accountable. Black, other marginalized Bloomingtonians, & BLM B-town as an organization are not interested in giving our elected officials a participation trophy for anti-racism in exchange for a check: we need our city officials to stop passing regressive laws and making regressive decisions that oppress and harm us. 
As was mentioned earlier, thanks to the efforts of community members who pressured the Bloomington City Council, Monroe County Council, and the Mayor of Bloomington to “Take the Training” proposed by BLM B-town (a proposal submitted via email with supporting documents), officials from each of these bodies have come out with statements affirming that they do, in fact, want and need this SORT of anti-racist training. None of these bodies has moved from talk to action with BLM B-town, however.

County Councillors contacted us, stating that all members (save Marty Hawk whose recent, racist, baseless attacks against Black activists make it clear where she stands) were interested, but they have yet to confirm or schedule their training. The City Council, after soliciting a proposal for an anti-racist policy training course from BLM B-town, have since resorted to inappropriate and time-wasting demands. One white City Councilor segregated one of our BLM B-town Core Council members for an almost two-hour conversation, insinuating that the rest of the Core Council was perhaps not qualified to be leading such a training. It was at best a racist tactic of divide and conquer, at worst a white supremacist attempt at the suppression of our collective voice. 

The Mayor's office, in response to our proposal, has introduced a series of bureaucratic gate-keeping measures that reproduce exactly the sorts of racist policy our training is meant to address. These gatekeeping measures include “qualifications checks” performed through an undisclosed process with NO transparency other than a verbal assurance that of course the process will be “fair.” This amounts to a nearly entirely white government body attempting to set the terms of how Black-activist, anti-racist trainers are to be vetted. This results in a system where those who need to learn how to become anti-racists get to decide who is “Black” enough & qualified enough to teach them how to become anti-racists. This is the cycle of oppression and white supremacy being played out within this selection process. 

In addition to displaying a profound disrespect for the time of Black educators who are offering to provide a much-needed service to our city officials, the process itself is evidence of the sort of policies Bloomington and Monroe County need to dismantle. Furthermore, it is clear that none of these bodies actually read our proposal, given that the questions they asked of us could simply have been resolved by reading said proposal and the accompanying emails around the proposal; or by doing a quick google search and reading through BLM’s website. It seems as if the city and county are interested in the idea of being anti-racist, but don’t want to do the hard work of learning how to actually be an anti-racist.
We should mention that the County Commissioners have yet to respond to our requests. Additionally, we must note last year’s scandal involving a former County Commissioner. It was BLM B-town that pointed out the racism in the sexual harassment of an employee contracted by the county, a Brown Saudi American male who has harassed by a white female County Commissioner. When that story broke, all three of the current County Commissioners issued statements in support of their now-former colleague, despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence against her. Those County Commissioners showed clear racial bias in their statements about the 2019 situation, and when called to task for it, refused to address the racial inequality of the individuals involved.

Given all we have outlined here concerning the inability of our elected officials to commit to BLM B-town’s anti-racist policy training, despite the public claims by many to need and want such training, BLM B-town is asking our community members for help in holding our local officials accountable.

If you believe that your city and county elected officials need further direction in crafting anti-racist policies, demand they commit to anti-racist policy training that is:
* Specific to Bloomington and Monroe County
* Directed by members of the Bloomington and Monroe County community
* Focused specifically on anti-racist policy-making rather than general "implicit bias" training
* Carries a component of local accountability
* Is led by diverse Black progressives from the community
* Rooted in the #Black Lives Matter ethos of dismantling anti-Black white supremacy

Please help us hold them accountable and get them to “Take the Training!”

As the long-overdue national recognition that Black lives matter increases, so, too, does the backlash of anti-Black violence. Bloomington, despite its progressive aspirations, is not immune.
Though the violence Black Bloomingtonians face is often less virulent (and less visible) than in other parts of the nation, our city still propagates an insidious neoliberal racism that keeps our police overfunded, our schools segregated, and our farmers’ market full of dangerous racists. Combined with more explicit calls to violence coming from national leaders, including the President, we are seeing an escalation in violence even here. The City of Bloomington and Monroe County at large are showing, if nothing else, a high level of tolerance for white supremacy that continues to foster violence against Black bodies. Many progressives in our community pride themselves on tolerance.
But, when it comes to white supremacy, we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves: how much hate should we tolerate?
In the last week, there have been three racist incidences that have taken place in or around Bloomington. These incidents show an escalation of violence, and law enforcement’s complicity in that system of violence.
-July 1, 2020: Black IU football players on a boat at Lake Monroe are racially profiled by the white occupants of another boat at the lake, and by responding DNR Officers. (https://www.idsnews.com/…/arrest-at-lake-monroe-spurs-iu-fo…)
-July 3, 2020: Darwin “Dee” Davis, Jr., a lifelong Bloomingtonian and Bloomington South basketball star, is profiled while walking in his own neighborhood. He was stopped by an off-duty Lawrence County police officer, and forced to produce ID for “walking while Black.” Davis recorded and then recounted the experience on his Twitter Feed. (https://twitter.com/DeeDavisX/status/1279107572092620801).
-July 4, 2020: Vauhxx Rush Booker of the Bloomington Human Rights Commission is assaulted in an obvious hate crime at Lake Monroe. Mr. Booker was physically assaulted by no fewer than five white men who expressed an intention to lynch him. They jumped him from behind, pinned him to a tree, beat him, and repeatedly called for someone to get a noose, all while yelling racial slurs. Video footage shows Mr. Booker’s white friends pleading with the men to let Booker go. Friends of the would-be lynch mob also stepped in, begging them to stop what they were doing. White allies recording the incident were themselves assaulted for daring to record the event. 911 dispatchers sent DNR officers to Lake Monroe. DNR declined to arrest Booker’s assailants, claiming the Prosecutor’s office had told them “there was no immediate need to arrest anyone, and that the officers would simply file a report.”(https://www.facebook.com/vauhxx/posts/10222147157086001)
Bloomington: what level of white supremacy are YOU willing to tolerate? In just the last week, Black Bloomingtonians have been threatened and harassed on three separate occasions. Each time, this mistreatment of Black people was either co-signed or perpetrated by local law enforcement. This sends a clear message that in the City of Bloomington, and in Monroe County, anti-Black violence up to--and possibly including--public lynchings is acceptable.
In two of these situations, there were people who were willing to intervene where law enforcement did not. There were people who were NOT willing to tolerate this level of violence. This is a principle of community defense in action.
These recent examples make it absolutely clear that Bloomington and Monroe County do not need more police. Police do not make BIPOC and other marginalized people safer. What Bloomington and Monroe County need are more community members who will not allow this sort of violence to happen, and who will hold the authorities accountable for their support and tolerance of white supremacy.
In line with our overall commitment to de-policing our communities, and in light of the past week’s events, BLM-Btown demands that:
1). The attack on Mr. Booker must be immediately investigated as a hate crime.
2). The officers involved in all three of these incidents must be investigated and disciplined before their prejudice and negligence threatens the lives and safety of more Black people.
3). Monroe County must commit to investigating its relationship with the DNR, as they have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to support anti-Black violence on Lake Monroe.
4). The City and County must commit to a freeze on all law enforcement hires, effective immediately.
5). Both the City and the County must commit to specific training in dismantling white supremacy in their policy and funding decisions to disrupt their long history of damage to BIPOC communities.
This is just the beginning of the kinds of actions the city and county we call home must take to demonstrate that they value the health, the safety, and the lives of their Black residents. If Bloomington wants to claim the label of “Safe and Civil,” our City needs to make this a reality for Black Bloomingtonians as well.
Core Council, BLM-Btown

​BLM Bloomington Core Council will be in discussion about the intersection of Covid19 death rates for Black folks & the recent public lynchings and murders of Black people. As well as discussing, what we should be doing during this time of crisis, Black Joy in spite of Black death. Revolution, dismantling the police force & more. We also hope to provide an educational place to work from for fueling the movement. This is a continuation of our efforts to promote anti-racist work & educate people on how to become an anti-racist.

June 6th 2020 at 3:00 pm on Facebook Live
Our protest will be about 90 mins

Visit the link for the event on Sat. www.facebook.com/blacklivesmatterbtown/posts/3865770443464840

The event will be recorded and put out on all of our socials & website.

IF you would like to submit questions or discussion topics PLEASE email BLM before Sat we will vet the questions & try to answer as many as we can.
Email: blacklivesmatterbtown@gmail.com

​Hello all currently BLM B-town is not planning an in person event or march due to COVID19 concerns. TO BE CLEAR we are NOT organizing the June 5th event! We encourage those in Bloomington who are healthy & wish to protest to attend the protests in Indy, Louisville & Minneapolis!
We are working on a virtual event around the continued murder of unarmed Black folks, Covid19 Black Death & the interconnected issues of state sponsored Black Death BUT we need a little bit of time to make that happen.
Additionally we are doing a supply drive for Dignity Bags & accepting donations to go to our drive and to give to our comrades protesting the murders & lynchings of Black Folks.
Supply Dive
https://www.facebook.com/events/261150398298454/
BLM Donations
https://www.facebook.com/events/941120276359279/

Due to the recent outbreak of the Covid19 and the growing concerns around it we are Re-Launching our Necessity Drive to ensure that our local social service organizations are fully stocked with items they will need to help those in the most vulnerable populations in our town.  Items of particular need are Soaps, Hand Sanitizer & Face Masks.
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​Please look to giving however you can, we have 3 ways to donate.
1. is by Online Bulk Shopping that you can send directly to BLM via our Amazon Prime Wish Lists separated out into supply need categories. While some prefer not to shop at Amazon we also have other Bulk Online Stores to shop from to drop off to BLM at our drop off locations TBA
2. BUY IN BULK LOCALLY and again drop off to BLM at our drop off locations TBA.
3. Shop by each organizations Wish-List and bring those items DIRECTLY to them during their open hours.   ​

BLM B-town was asked several questions about the Bridge Initiative Report and only a few selections of our answers were provided in the article and the context of them was somewhat skewed. So, below is our complete and uncut answers to the questions about the report. We feel you should see and know what BLM B-town is saying about all of these issues without the lens the media put forth.
Here is the article: (click here) 
 
Here are our answers: 
​Questions regarding the Divided Community Project report sent to BLM B-town by Emily Ernsberger from the HT
Here is the Report mentioned in the questions  BRIDGE REPORT 
1) Overall, how do you feel about the report? Do you feel the issues laid out in the subsection "Visibility of African Americans in Bloomington/Loss of African American history in Bloomington" are accurate? Other sections?

1. We agree that the city has repeatedly failed to engage Bloomington’s Black communities in any meaningful way. Anti-Black language, behavior, and people in power are an obstacle to successful engagement between the city and its Black residents. Those who do engage or are asked to the table face a lot of undue scrutiny, doubt, and hazing.When the rest of us hear those stories, it is a reminder that the structures of leadership in Bloomington are designed and maintained as “white spaces.”  
2. Subsection III.B.1 of the report contains an error. The person listed as “The Chair of the Affordable Housing Commission, an activist who was one of the co-founders of the local Black Lives Matters group,” was not, in fact, a co-founder of the local BLM organization in Bloomington. The founder of the local BLM chapter is a Black Woman. Had the authors of the report consulted BLM B-Town, we would have happily helped them avoid this embarrassing inaccuracy.

2) What, if anything, do you feel like is missing? While this report is a brief overview of a lot of topics, do you think anything egregious was left out?

1. The simple fact of the matter is that Black leaders both inside and outside of city government have been talking about the issues addressed in this report for years now and have not been believed. For example, local leaders, especially those of us in BLM B-town, have been talking about a myriad of problems with white liberalism in Bloomington for a long time and have been brushed aside by city officials. It is a slap in the face and wanton mismanagement of city resources to hire an “expert” from New York to tell them what we’ve been saying for years. 
2. Because this report relied on an outside expert rather than local knowledge, it was unable to locate and name the issues appropriately. The City of Bloomington is a white liberal haven that continually props up anti-Black behaviors, policies, and actions while claiming to be progressive. The mayor, the city council, and the full administration of the city espouse liberal progressive beliefs but then consistently enact/uphold policies counter to its stated commitments to diversity and inclusion.

3) What are your views on the suggestion of a task force to cover the race issues laid out in the report? Would any of you be interested in joining one, were it formed?

1. BLM has called for similar task forces many times, including 2017 when the city purchased the BearCat Military Assault vehicle. 
2. During last summer’s uproar about the Market, BLM informed Mayor Hamilton, city workers, Marcia Veldmen, vendors, city council members, and other activists that the Farmer’s Market had never been a safe place for Black people. We asked them to do a longitudinal study of the racial diversity to help explain the fact that the market is disproportionately white and why there was little outreach to the black community, despite the market’s close proximity  (within one block) to two historically black churches. 
3. Additionally, we called for a civilian-based task force with the power of law/policy making to have oversight of the City of Bloomington Police Dept to ensure they were not using the BearCat Military Assault vehicle disproportionately against marginalized people or in protest situations, as well as to attempt to stop BPD’s racially biased practices  (See also: UU Racial Task Force’s longitudinal study of BPD arrests). Additionally, we’ve called for the Commission on the Status of Black Males to be turned into the Commission on the Status of Black People to better study all of the Black community, or to have parity by creating commissions for Black women and non-binary Black folks.

4) Specifically regarding the farmers' market, there were many comments made at the Farmers' Market Advisory Council meetings this summer and on social media indicating that people of color never went to the market because they didn't feel safe. In the report, it is written that "many of the people with whom Mr. Johnson spoke, especially people of color, firmly dispelled this idea" and were instead not interested due to price and products. Do you feel this finding is correct? Or that both notions are? Other thoughts?

1. This is a false dichotomy. Yes, the higher cost of produce at the Market compared to grocery stores may be one factor in why Black people & other people of color wouldn’t attend the Market. This does not preclude the possibility that safety concerns are relevant. We suggest that Mr. Johnson’s results were skewed by the ambiguity of the term “safe.” Our own conversations with Black Bloomintgonians suggest that the Market has been and continues to be a space where we are made to feel unwelcome due to the paucity of vendors of color. That doesn’t mean they think violence might erupt at the Market, but rather, Black folks are subjected to macro/micro aggressions and put in positions to face racist indignities just to buy veggies. This too is a definition of an  “unsafe” market experience. Had the city or its hired expert consulted BLM, we would have been happy to provide guidance in this matter.
2. Further, subsection III.B.4 of the report contradicts Mr. Johnson’s assertion. The report cites “community leaders of color” as reporting that “when any one [person of color] is harmed, regardless of whether it was connected to discrimination, other people of color may also feel less safe” and notes the unrecognized but “disproportionate impact of such acts of violence on minority communities.” This too seems to invalidate Mr. Johnson’s supposed refutation of safety concerns while again highlighting the marginalization of the expertise of local leaders of color..
3. Finally, since Schooner Creek Farms’ numerous connections to violent white supremacist organizations and acts of terrorism were revealed, the threat of physical and/or mortal violence at the Market became clear to the entire city if not to Mr. Johnson.

5) Is there anything else you'd like to add regarding the report/farmers market/etc?

1. Back on Aug 8th, BLM B-town submitted a letter to the press and to the City of Bloomington addressing the presence of white supremacists in our Market. We called on the City to take immediate action by adopting a strong and decisive stance against violent white supremacists at city-run events. We gave suggestions, pointed to all the research that had been done to uncover the white supremacists and asked the city to stand up for marginalized people in Bloomington. The city has yet to fully act in any meaningful way. Instead, it has forced the people of Bloomington (and marginalized communities in particular) to carry the burden.They have increased police and surveillance presence, further marginalizing already-marginalized people with oppressive police culture. We urge the city to review our letter, visit our resource list about how “more police does not make us safer,” and do what is best for the most marginalized people in our community rather than pandering to white centrists and liberals. And, finally, to listen to the black voices who are telling you that things are not alright. They never have been.
2. Links:

More Police Does Not Make Us Safer Resource List https://blm.btown-in.org/more-police-does-not-make-us-safer.html
BLM Aug 8th 2019 Letter about the Farmer’s Market
https://blm.btown-in.org/blm-b-town-blog/letter-to-the-city-regarding-the-farmers-market-and-nazi-farmers-of-schooner-creek-farm

After our wonderfully successful event on Oct 26th at the Monroe Public Library we wanna say thanks to all those who helped make it possible and those who showed up to watch live. Please enjoy the whole uncut event below. Please share this video.  
Click the link below: 
http://catstv.net/m.php?q=7506

Featured on the panels and talks:
BLM Core Council Members
Michelle Moyd
Stephanie Powers-Carter
Byron Turner
Leah McRath
Brandon Drake
Stephanie Soloman
Jennifer Crossley
Tiffany Quash
Christie Popp
Sofia McDowell
Janae Cummings
Ken Shan
Don Griffin
Matt Flaherty
Daniel Bigham



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