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#1: besmirched tea (Besmirched Tea) on May 6, 2021

Such a tragedy what these cops are allowed to get away with.
If they're that trigger-happy, they should just reenlist.

While I agree with you B.T., Jaslyn wasn't killed by police gunfire. She appears to have been collateral damage in a targeted hit on her father.

hers was still a life that mattered, regardless of the hand pulling the trigger.

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Kristen the artist!

thx Kristen. I wasn't satisfied at all with my portrait of Jaslyn. Yours is a piece of art.

I had to do it small, because all the photos of her were kind of low-res.

And thank you. :)

Thank you for this.

Good try.

Nice puzzle, and I'm glad for the opportunity to learn about this young girl who was yet another victim of gun violence.

That said, I somewhat agree with Joshua. It's hard not to see the requests as a thinly veiled diversion from George Floyd and from BLM's cause (at least as I understand it) in general. Not so much to say "look, these are better black people who were killed, and we should care even more about them" (as I think Joshua suggested might be the sentiment behind the requests) but rather to say "look, these are black people killed by other black people, so really whites don't bear any more responsibility than blacks - and maybe less - for not treating black lives as if they matter."

Now I don't presume to fully understand or feel everything behind BLM, but I can and do try, and I think BLM's focus is more about the racism and mistreatment that is ingrained in government and society, and which directly and disproportionately affects how black people are treated, notably by the police. Other violence against humans deserves awareness and mitigation, but not in a way that distracts from or diminishes another (frankly unrelated) cause such as BLM.

I may be wrong about the feelings behind Juli's requests, especially since I know essentially nothing about the person, but I've definitely observed such feelings in my white friends and family, and they often seem to manifest in faux righteous indignation about the violence visited upon black people by black people, and "why don't their lives matter?" It's only a slightly different flavor of the "all lives matter" argument against BLM, and is likewise rooted simply in good old fashioned racism.

Agree with others. These deaths are no doubt tragic, especially as black-on-black crime is one of the more insidious and pervasive outcomes of systemic racism, but as a white ally I feel the need to point out that titling some of these portraits "BLM" is disingenuous. Essentially, you're co-opting the words of the movement to criticize its intent and point blame elsewhere.

I don't like to "go all political" on a fun puzzle website, but I'm disappointed to see this act of artful misdirection here (pun unintentional).

I'm not going to change my title. Jaslyn's was a life that mattered, regardless of how she died. I couldn't care less about the ways in which the phrase Black Lives Matter has been politicized. I could say Urban Lives Matter, or Black Children's Lives Matter, but regardless, her life mattered.

Kristen I believe you made this puzzle with good intent and from a place of caring about this person who was tragically killed, and I like that you did it. It is Juli's intent that I was questioning; I don't get the impression that you were trying to make any kind of a deeper political point about BLM.

I was the one beginning these puzzles doing a portrait of George Floyd. Juli asked me to try David Dorn and Jaslyn Adams. So it became a small series. This discussions shows me as a german guy how deeply americans are divided in these days. Calm down and try to be again one of the greatest nations in the world. And to show you my opinion: The Trump years were the darkest in modern american history.

Well I do think that all lives matter! Nowadays that could be construed as politically incorrect, but I won't let that change my heart or how I feel about horrible acts amongst human beings.

Jota, it is obvious that all lives matter. But when white lives matter more than others something must change. Listen to Stevie Wonders "Black man" and you know what I mean.

I've just read the comments on Puzzle #34214. Well said!

Well I have to say that the fact that a group of people want to save the rain forest, doesn't mean to me that all forests are not worth saving, I will never burn fires in any of them or leave garbage behind, so I say all forest matter, and live by it. I don't have to belong or endorse a particular group to be who I am.

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