Cornell Police Chief Apologizes for Saying “All Lives Matter”

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If you think the apology for saying "all lives matter" by Kathleen McCartney, President of Smith College, was an anomaly of some sort, the Chief of Police at Cornell not only apologized for saying "All lives matter," she declared that saying "All lives matter" was "disrespectful pushback."



So what could believing that "all lives matter" be pushing back against? Logically, only one thing. Saying that "All lives don't matter," which is exactly what the demonstrators have been demonstrating ever since the night they started burning down businesses in Ferguson.

The lives of the shop owners whose shops were burned down in Ferguson didn't matter. The lives of the 400 or so men and women in Chicago who are about to be murdered in 2015, becoming "mythical" victims of "mythical" crime, don't matter. The lives of the people having lunch that have nothing to do with their grievance, and yet are targeted as if, well, their lives don't matter.

Are they DOING anything to show they think "all lives matter?" Of course not. That's why they're so offended by the phrase because clearly, to them, all lives do NOT matter.

This is 1984 come to life. Thought police. Doublespeak.

"All lives matter" doesn't mean all lives matter. It's a term of disrespect.

It means if you're caught by the thought police, you must pick a side. If you dare to say "All lives matter" get the hell out. You're one of THEM.

I would never apologize for that if i was in some sort of high position.
Why would i. Its the truth. ALL lives matter.

You couldn't force me to apologize and if they tried to fire me I'd be taking out alot of them with inside knowledge and arrests done.

I know he probably had no choice but there has to be some brave police chief who looks in the mirror and smacks himself and says, "Wait a minute, I'm the cops. The ones threatening me are going down!"

a reply to: Jamie1

It's the idiots making issue out of such things with their incessant whining over rhetoric that have been swaying me away from their cause.

I just did a search on #alllivesmatter and didn't find anything disrespectful about it and very few attaching disrespectful comments to it. Maybe I am missing something. On the other hand I have found quite a bit of disrespectful things attached to the other hashtag though I am sure the origins are well meaning.

I agree that making an issue out of saying all lives matter is certainly making me dislike the group pushing such a thing.

a reply to: Jamie1

This is the continuation of stupidity perpetrated by the illogical conclusion that getting an education will help you become a critical thinker.

Who the # apologizes for that?

Grow some balls people.

a reply to: Jamie1

This is 1984 come to life. Thought police. Doublespeak.

I was thinking more 'Idiocracy' come to life.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: Jamie1

This is the continuation of stupidity perpetrated by the illogical conclusion that getting an education will help you become a critical thinker.

Who the # apologizes for that?

Grow some balls people.

OMG! You hit the nail on the head!

I was at Harvard not long ago, and some Harvard student was rambling on the stupidest, most illogical rant you could possibly imagine. If she had posted it here on ATS she would have been crucified by EVERYBODY. No facts. No logic. Nothing except a rant on how she KNEW the world was, and how it could be fixed just by everybody else doing something different - what she thought they should do different.

Then I asked her why she decided to go to Harvard. Ready for this? She said, "Because they teach us how to think."

I almost spit my beer across the table.

originally posted by: Jamie1
Source

If you think the apology for saying "all lives matter" by Kathleen McCartney, President of Smith College, was an anomaly of some sort, the Chief of Police at Cornell not only apologized for saying "All lives matter," she declared that saying "All lives matter" was "disrespectful pushback."

So what could believing that "all lives matter" be pushing back against? Logically, only one thing. Saying that "All lives don't matter," which is exactly what the demonstrators have been demonstrating ever since the night they started burning down businesses in Ferguson.

The lives of the shop owners whose shops were burned down in Ferguson didn't matter. The lives of the 400 or so men and women in Chicago who are about to be murdered in 2015, becoming "mythical" victims of "mythical" crime, don't matter. The lives of the people having lunch that have nothing to do with their grievance, and yet are targeted as if, well, their lives don't matter.

Are they DOING anything to show they think "all lives matter?" Of course not. That's why they're so offended by the phrase because clearly, to them, all lives do NOT matter.

This is 1984 come to life. Thought police. Doublespeak.

"All lives matter" doesn't mean all lives matter. It's a term of disrespect.

It means if you're caught by the thought police, you must pick a side. If you dare to say "All lives matter" get the hell out. You're one of THEM.

Just uh... For the record - many of the fires in Fergusson and elsewhere were started by U/C Cops... Look into it.

To remain on topic though,

I'm pretty appalled that either of these individuals would apologize for the statement that 'All Lives Matter' - regardless of the proposed affiliations that come from it. I don't care what side of the tracks you stand on, black white, 'all', police - doesn't matter - LIVES DO Matter.

It's ignorant to 'flame' people in this position because a comment like this doesn't serve your black/white/police agenda - this comment serves everyone's agenda, even if it isn't the one immediately in front of you. It still applies to you.

Police are mad because 'All lives matter' implies that they shouldn't be shooting people.
Blacks are mad because 'All lives matter' takes the focus off of the black community - but this isn't about race. It's about lives.
Whites are mad because 'All lives matter' detracts focus from the 'White lives matter' agenda.

Let's get back on track here folks - discrediting or defaming someone for stating that - literally, "ALL LIVES MATTER", is a poor display of acceptance on everyone's part. We need to get off of our damn soap boxes and walk together. Cops hand-in-hand with blacks And whites AND latinos AND asians - everyone. Sorry if I missed someone's creed in that

a reply to: Jamie1

I have no faith in the education system whatsoever and if thats what type of crap the best and brightest of this generation are spewing out im moving to a rock and building a house under it in the mountains.

Splash two.

This is part of a concerted effort.

I knew it.

All planned.

a reply to: Jamie1

The semantic contortions are obscuring the root issues. I believe this may be the intent. Hard to be sure how PR activity is being introduced. In any case, semantics should not be of primary importance. MLK didn't say too much. Just enough. Protests he led never reflected the hate and anger of the oppressors back at them. They feed off of it.

"Black lives matter" isn't a well thought out motto because it's an incomplete thought. It invites these replies because "All lives matter." is a more complete concept in an absolute sense. "Blue lives matter" is similarly half-baked.

As it goes in a hyper-connected world. I wouldn't get too wrapped up in the failings of the motto. Not every motto can be crafted by PR firms with six figure contracts.

Get over it.

originally posted by: DigitalJedi805
Police are mad because 'All lives matter' implies that they shouldn't be shooting people.
Blacks are mad because 'All lives matter' takes the focus off of the black community - but this isn't about race. It's about lives.
Whites are mad because 'All lives matter' detracts focus from the 'White lives matter' agenda.

Let's get back on track here folks - discrediting or defaming someone for stating that - literally, "ALL LIVES MATTER", is a poor display of acceptance on everyone's part. We need to get off of our damn soap boxes and walk together. Cops hand-in-hand with blacks And whites AND latinos AND asians - everyone. Sorry if I missed someone's creed in that

The only "police" I've seen that have come out against "All lives matter" is the chief of police from Cornell University, Cathy Zoner.

Cathy Zoner, aka "KZ" Zoner, not only apologized for saying "all lives matter," she said the term was a "disrespectful pushback."

Do these people like Zoner really think that protests like harassing people at lunch demonstrate in any way they think all lives matter? What they demonstrate repeatedly is that no, they do not believe that all lives matter.

a reply to: Jamie1

Yes, all lives matter; by proxy that includes black lives matter. The perceived and potentially actual disrespect/downplaying/demeaning/belittling is for a perceived and potentially actual cause of oppression and injustice is attempted to be pointed out via a 'movement' such as 'hey, the world is a crazy place, we know its not perfect, but you guys like to make your world as perfect as possible, there are good and bad people of every race as well as racists of every race, but there are good black people so just remember that we are people too and that we care about our lives, our lives matter, and it is possible you have unjustly killed some of our good people (interesting part of argument, the whole nature of the innocence stuff in the cases that caused this, I wont speak on the first one, the second one, the choking case, is obvious manslaughter and the guy who was killed was an innocent man who did not deserve to die), so we want to be good, we want to be treated as a sovereign citizens, not treated badly by every cop, we want as much natural respect as every natural american gives one another etc...' stuff like this, and then for the collective white people who take offense to this and feel threatened or confused or proud say "dasss racist!! Alllivesmatter, how greedy and short sighted of you collective black people, to think that only your lives matter, this is why we dont like you".

This is a harsh example, and I welcome argument, but from the perspective of the blacks, who feel like mass injustice is bestowed upon them in varying extreme and subtle ways, who feel oppressed, it would be like the Jews in Hitlers Germany to band together and hold up cardboard #Jewishlivesmatter on the walls of their concentration camps and the Nazis coming down and getting upset, correcting them that #AllLivesMatter, and this is just another reason why Jews are wrong and bad.

The way I see it, there are good people, and bad people. When bad people do bad things to good people, the nature of law, of justice, is to do something bad to the bad person. When good people are in a 'brotherhood' with good people and bad people, and are not united by their absolute goodness, but by something else, like a job, than true justice will not be served to the bad person, because. And not limited to, are there scientific justifications between the relations of degrees of stress and difficulty and danger of a job; and the degree a person doing that job is justified in erring up to killing a certain amount of people? I suppose police work is a rare case in all the work, that deals with, individuals/squads of individuals, spending all their time (varying degrees of 'all their time') seeking to interact with the most dangerous and potentially most dangerous individuals on earth. How many mistakes should they be allowed to make? And how good is the system for determining whether it was a mistake or a 'mistake'?

This is pretty much pure ethics, the nature of intent. If I see your baby in a stroller, and I have a gun, and I am 20 yards away, and I see a dog off a leash foaming at the mouth running towards your baby, and I try to shoot the dog, but I shoot your baby, what would be the appropriate way to respond to this situation? What if after I shot the baby, the dogs owner came running up saying "what have you done!? my dog would have never harmed the baby, it is trained to protect children, it just gets very excited and protective when it sees one alone", and then has lots of proof and evidence this is the case? What if the lady didnt come up and say that but after I was deemed innocent, it was discovered that I had lots of movies on my computer of baby snuff films, and personal art works depicting my joy in killing babies? Human nature is one of the most complex things we are aware of existing, a single person living a healthy productive life is difficult enough, a true miracle in itself, and it happens often enough, but is civil societies ideal for all people to live healthy productive lives, and if not, why wouldnt it be? Is your argument something along the lines, of a few bad apples existing, so no point worrying about the bunch?

Should a person be allowed to be racist, and to what degree? If a percentage of white people hated black people severely, what are the maximum ways in which you can think they should be allowed to publicly express themselves and interfere with public and private life?

In my opinion all of this, besides the extreme nature of americas history, blacks history, and the attempt to smooth things over moving forward, this is pretty much entirely about the chokehold case. Should a person be cut slack for accidently killing a person, when their job is to 'deal with dangerous people', how many people should a person be able to accidently kill before they are punished? How can you judge a persons intent from their actions, and does it matter what a persons intent is if their actions, which in all forseeable powers, could have been acted on much differently, yield in the death of a severely innocent person?

Of course the main problem is the nature of economy, education, sociology, philosophy, freedom.

What is the goal of the average human to accomplish with their life? What is the goal of the average good human to accomplish with their life? I believe generally throughout time there has been a relative and general link between all good average people, and good great people, and that is to desire peace, and comfort, and family, and productive work, and enjoyable downtime and hobby. The simple things, everyone needs to eat, everyone needs a home and clothing and water, everyone needs an education, and everyone needs a job. Seems simple enough, what are the real things getting in the way of making that a reality? I would argue its not so much that good/bad people are lazy and bad so they dont want to live an honest and good and natural life, but that it is the institutional system that is established in such a way, as to make seem the achievement of such simple and natural and smooth life, for the majority approaching totality, of youth and young adult and all generations of certain socioeconomic backgrounds hopeless and difficult, dismaying.

originally posted by: Jamie1

Do these people like Zoner really think that protests like harassing people at lunch demonstrate in any way they think all lives matter? What they demonstrate repeatedly is that no, they do not believe that all lives matter.

This is the same logic as "Hitler said he was a Christian, so Christians are bad".

And as you mentioned in that thread is seems like such a bad idea as to have been planned by the opposition to make the movement look bad. It doesnt matter if that is the case or not, because bad actions are bad actions, the peaceful positive people that are moved to want positive outlook and inlook and interhuman relationships are not attached to the bad actions of bad people, there are only good and bad people.

I don't understand being offended by apologies. The movement is specific, black people are standing up to racist cops (don't pretend there aren't any) and a racist judicial system. If you don't perceive those two things as existing then this movement isn't for you. If you have a problem with keeping things specifically focused on black people, this movement is for you. If you know that those two things exist and you've been a supporter, participant or ally and now you're getting mad at the demand for specific focus... maybe it doesn't matter to you as much as you thought it did and perhaps this movement isn't for you any longer. There are other anti-police violence movements. They want to be the ones to solve the aspect of this problem that has affected them.

Protest and resistance is kind of like art, we're all trying to make it a group project but we all have different visions... we shouldn't be offended by what some people envision just respectfully walk away like you would a friend or colleague. "You want to do it this way and I want to do it that way... I guess we will work separately on it." How hard is that?

a reply to: Kali74

Oh, I see. So if I'm peacefully eating my breakfast and a bunch of people bust in a ruin my day because only their lives matter, not mine, despite the fact that I've never done anything to them in any way. I should just get up and walk away?

I should just let them ruin my life and day because it doesn't matter. How if they had busted in throwing pipe bombs or shooting guns? Should I just let them maim or kill me to demonstrate in their protest art that only their lives matter, not mine? It could easily have been that situation too as the cops in New York are finding out.

All live do matter, and while I respect that people do have a right to protest, I also have a right to go about my business unmolested.

There is the concept of the social contract that many liberals harp on and on about. Like or not the business of law and order is part of that social contract, and you are now beginning to reap the rewards of all these lovely little laws you are so fond of. We have to respect that at some level we are a society of laws in order to not live our lives in chaos like we are witnessing, and to a greater degree, people have to agree to the social contract in order for those laws to have any meaning and generally keep the social order. When the laws (passed by government I might add) begin to be too constrictive you begin to see the idiocy that led to the Michael Garner incident which should never have been necessary in the first place.

And in order to have a lawful, orderly society, we have police who are tasked with enforcement, and this is also part of the social contract. When you have a strong social contract with the society, you won't have a police force asked to enforce laws in dangerous ways because most people either won't be breaking stupid laws at the drop of a hat or they'll mostly agree to the laws they should follow. But obviously, we have reached a breaking point here, and if you think it's just blacks who are suffering for this, you haven't been paying much attention.

originally posted by: Kali74
I don't understand being offended by apologies. The movement is specific, black people are standing up to racist cops (don't pretend there aren't any) and a racist judicial system. If you don't perceive those two things as existing then this movement isn't for you. If you have a problem with keeping things specifically focused on black people, this movement is for you. If you know that those two things exist and you've been a supporter, participant or ally and now you're getting mad at the demand for specific focus... maybe it doesn't matter to you as much as you thought it did and perhaps this movement isn't for you any longer. There are other anti-police violence movements. They want to be the ones to solve the aspect of this problem that has affected them.

Protest and resistance is kind of like art, we're all trying to make it a group project but we all have different visions... we shouldn't be offended by what some people envision just respectfully walk away like you would a friend or colleague. "You want to do it this way and I want to do it that way... I guess we will work separately on it." How hard is that?

I'm not offended or angered by apologies. I'm not offended or angered by any "movement."

I'm illustrating that the movement you're referring to, by being angered by the "all lives matter" statement, and calling it disrespectful and pushback, is demonstrating that they truly don't believe that all lives matter.

Nothing they have done has indicated they believe all lives matter. And THEIR offense at the phrase "all lives matter" and their apologies for even daring to say the words "all lives matter" are evidence this is true.

It will be very hard for them to garner the support they want, or the results they want, with this approach. They are going to have difficulty getting people to care about their lives, when they don't demonstrate they care about anybody but themselves.

a reply to: Jamie1

Sure you're not offended.

I'm illustrating that the movement you're referring to, by being angered by the "all lives matter" statement, and calling it disrespectful and pushback, is demonstrating that they truly don't believe that all lives matter.

That is your perception, mine obviously differs.

a reply to: ketsuko

All you're doing is whining about five minutes of discomfort, interruption etc then you jump the shark to pipe bombs and extreme violence while completely ignoring the fact that they risk experiencing interruption, discomfort and actual violence every time they step out of the house.

a reply to: ImaFungi

Awesome post! I love your analogy about the dog and the baby in the stroller.

On a practical level, I think the "movement" screwed up by claiming the brand "black lives matter." If they would have taken the brand "All lives matter" from the start, then they could have done this:

1) All lives matter. We all agree on that.

This would have established rapport and alignment, agreement.

2) Once people agree all lives matter, they could logically say, "Well if all lives matter, black lives matter."

From here they can make all the arguments they're making about the police, etc.

3) They now have formed consensus and agreement that all lives matter, and black lives matter, and the police are guilty of not believing black lives matter.

Instead, by putting the stake in the ground first with an exclusionary brand, "black lives matter," they left the door open for the police to take the "all lives matter" brand.

Nothing about morals or ethics, it just is what it is.

When the police took the "all lives matter" brand, which is clearly a better brand in terms of PR, the "black lives matter" made the matter worse by attacking the "all lives matter" brand. Strategically, they would have been much better off at that point agreeing with the police that all lives matter, and merging their messages, hand in hand, with those saying "all lives matter."

They could have turned the situation totally in the favor if they would have agreed with the police that "all lives matter," and that must mean you believe black lives matter too, and so therefore will YOU please stand by us and help us make sure that all people's lives, black and white, matter going forward.

In fact, in the cases with the apologies, they began by saying ALL LIVES MATTER. The people who sent these emails believe all lives matter.

But those who were offended by the "all lives matter" brand were so offended that they told the ones saying "all lives matter" that they had to change it to be aligned with 'their" movement.

Instead of saying, "whoa... wait a minute. I believe all lives do matter..." they apologized, and accused the "all lives matter" camp of being the bad guys.

The real people in the "all lives matter" camp we're advocating for themselves, just like the people in the "black lives matter" camp were advocating for themselves. To expect the "all lives matter" camp to NOT say "all lives matter" out of "respect" for their camp is their right, but is perceived as being self-indulgent based on the context.

Using your analogy of Jews and Nazis, I'm guessing that the Nazi's would have had a huge public backlash if the came out with "all lives matter" in response to the Jews "Jewslivesmatter." Perception and context are important.

In politics this is usually referred to claiming the "high road." The "black lives matter" camp didn't claim the high road in terms of public perception.

The point of this OP is that my perception is that the people in the "black lives matter" camp are not doing anything to demonstrate that they believe "all lives matter." That's worse than not saying it. Burning buildings of black store owners, burning cars, and disrupting the lunch of people who were not part of the problem isn't showing me that they believe "all lives matter."

That's why in the other thread I theorized that their actions are so counter-productive that it's almost like a designed false-flag to produce public backlash AGAINST their "movement," not for it.

Remember, like the elections, public opinion isn't about those entrenched in either camp. It's about swaying the undecideds in the middle. Railing against the "all lives matter" hashtag, burning businesses, and harassing innocent people eating lunch is SHOVING the undecideds away, to attracting them. How could it not?

Nobody wants their business burned down. Nobody wants harassed. Everybody believes "all lives matter" - except the protesters.