Two years later, some black media leaders in Cleveland are criticizing the destructive influence of #BLM

“In perhaps one of the greatest messaging coups of all time, the Black Lives Movement Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) took the true statement that black lives matter and used it to create chaos and destroy the livelihoods of the very people it was professing to help.”

I supported BLM before it was cool.

The photo of me above is from the Republican National Convention in 2016, when the RNC came to my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Black Lives Matter was a nascent movement at the time, considered fringe by many. BLM wasn’t a Twitter hashtag, a T-shirt, or a corporate slogan.

Let’s just say things have changed since then, especially after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. That summer, BLM rioters set upon Cleveland, and it became clear that the movement was attracting a lot of bandwagon supporters looking to build their woke bona fides with protest pictures on social media, as well as opportunists looking to enrich themselves. By 2020, I was also a co-host on Cleveland’s FCB Radio, a black-owned media company. The view of the protests from inside Black Cleveland was much different than the views of…