The Black Lives Matter chapter in Los Angeles has a stern demand for the National Rifle Association: Take down your “dangerous propaganda videos” now.
Several LA-based civil rights organizations, including Black Lives Matter, co-produced a video published Friday that imitates the NRA’s controversial recruitment video that has outraged gun owners and gun control advocates alike.
“When the NRA issues a public call to their constituents, inciting violence against people who are constitutionally fighting for their lives, we don’t take that lightly,” Funmilola Fagbamila, professor of Pan-African studies at Cal State Los Angeles, says in the response video.
The NRA ad, featuring conservative pundit Dana Loesch of TheBlaze, used footage of various protests and civil unrest seemingly to incite fear in conservatives. In the video, Loesch offers a shocking call to action.
“The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth,” she says grimly.
Many people, including newspaper editorial boards, gun advocates, gun safety activists and even dedicated NRA members, have called on the association to take down the ad, but Friday’s response is the first to satirize the recruitment video and recast it with a new message.
Like the NRA video, the Black Lives Matter version begins with Fagbamila speaking over dramatic music and scenes of unrest. But instead of riots and marches, the video cuts to activists at city council meetings and violent police arrests ― including footage of Philando Castile and Charleena Lyles, who were both fatally shot by police.
Fagbamila speaks against corrupt law enforcement officers and government, white supremacy and, finally, against President Donald Trump’s “law-and-order administration.”
She mimics Loesch’s rhetoric when she says that “the only option left is for black people to disrupt the systems that keep us oppressed and build the kinds of communities in which we want to live.”
Then, Fagbamila halts the video to address the NRA directly. She asks, “What’s with the aggressive fear-mongering video tactics?”
Standing in front of family members of victims of police violence without the sensational music, Fagbamila appeals to humanity. “We’re talking about our lives here,” she says.
“We know that we are not safe, but we are not scared either,” she continues, apparently referencing NRA’s sensationalized ad. “We demand that the NRA immediately remove their dangerous propaganda videos.”
The remainder of the video continues in silence, as the families of individuals killed by police are introduced on the screen.
Watch the full response to the NRA recruitment video above.
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