Darnell Moore of #BlackLivesMatter, Speaks Out Against NY Mayor Bill de Blasio's Call To Pause Protests

Story/Video by Huffington Post
Written by Emily Tess Katz

The #BlackLivesMatter contingency isn't pleased that Mayor Bill de Blasio (NY-D.) has requested they suspend their protests.

De Blasio asked that protestors pause their demonstrations until the funerals for the two policemen murdered in Brooklyn this past weekend have passed, but the #BlackLiveMatters campaign is set on exercising their first amendment right to protest. They argue that timing is a non-issue and that they still plan to express their voice in the wake of non-indictments for Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

"To protest is a first amendment right," Darnell Moore, a #BlackLivesMatter activist, told HuffPost Live on Tuesday. "Particularly peaceful protest that has an aim -- the aim of responding to the types of practices that deaden lives disproportionately of black folk in our country."

These protests are what is keeping the conversation about the police murders of Garner, Brown and countless others alive in America, Moore explained.

"These actions have produced a lot of conversations across the country, really raised the consciousness of a lot of folk," he said. "It's about the transformation of a system -- it isn't about the demonizing of individuals, and I think that's really important."

To halt protests would arguably be a way of halting solidarity with the families of the victims, he suggested.

"It is important to just acknowledge the moment that we're in," he asserted. "It's one where we should have deep empathy for the families of the slain."