In response to Matt Lavine's letter: "Back the Blue" rally is really a Black Lives Matter protest", Mr. Lavine intentionally conflates and insinuates the "Back to Blue" rally's is a refusal to stand up against racism and support the BLM's organization because they state “all lives matter.”

I find his conclusion an incredible stretch of imagination. It seems he is looking for bad intent where none exists. He contradicts himself later with the statement: “How could I take issue with honoring first responders? I don’t. My support of Black Lives Matter has very little to do with individual police or individuals at all.”

First he takes issue with the Rally, then says he doesn’t have an issue? A mixed message indeed.

Mr. Lavine also states: "Looking further at the explicitly stated goals and purposes of the movement’s creators, Garza, Tometi, and Cullors, we see that Black Lives Matter is “a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements."

Ms. Garza, Tometi, and Cullors are less concerned with racism than they are instilling Socialism/communism in America. Ms. Cullor has publicly stated on YouTube and in print that she and Ms. Garza are "Trained Marxists". They are motivated in their purpose to guide BLM's message and methods based on a political ideology that has brought nothing but death and suffering in every country that practiced it.

In 2015 Ms. Tomei was photographed embracing Maduro at the Afro-descendants Summit in Harlem after he was presented an award. Considering the well-documented abuses and starvation the citizens Venezuela are suffering under his oppressive regime, it staggers the mind how Ms. Tometi could applaud Maduro, who, like his socialist predecessor, Chavez, have both exploited their people to enrich themselves while the people starved in the streets.

Upon Fidel Castro's death, BLM expressed the following: "As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!"

That BLM would praise the dictator-for-life Castro is ironic. Despite the so-called promise of equality under his rule, racism was and is still alive and well in Cuba. Castro’s former right-hand henchman of his revolution, Che, of whom to some still wear his image as a fashion statement, clearly expressed his contempt for Blacks, women, and LGBT individuals in his writings.

Racism and discrimination is genuine concern that needs to be addressed. But the BLM founders have played a "bait and switch" tactic to promote their true Marxist’s agenda to transform America into yet another failed Socialist nation like those they have endorsed in the past.

Ron Shirtz

Rensselaer Falls