Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) says the Black Lives Matter movement is being used as a “scapegoat” after five Dallas police officers were shot and killed during protests.
At a press conference convened Friday morning by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) following the shootings, Richmond referred to the CBC as the “conscience” and “intellectual capacity” of Congress as he used the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling of Louisiana and Philando Castile of Minnesota by police officers, and the killing of the Dallas police officers as reason to call for further gun control measures.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/07/08/rep-cedric-richmond-cant-use-black-lives-matter-scapegoat/%5B/quote%5D
Of course Cedric Richmond who was speaking for the Congressional Black Caucus is going to go with the “party” line.

This is the Congressional Black Caucus

[quote]In October 2009, the Socialist Party of America announced that at least 70 Congressional Democrats were members of its Caucus at that time—i.e., members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Most of those individuals belonged to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and/or the Congressional Black Caucus. To view a list of their names, click here.

As of April 2006, the CBC consisted of 5 officers and 38 additional members. All 43 were Democrats, and 22 of them were also members of the radical Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives.
Beginning in 1997, CPC worked closely with the newly launched “Progressive Challenge, a coalition of more than 100 leftist organizations that sought to unite their activities and objectives under a “multi-issue progressive agenda.” To view a list of many of the major groups that co-sponsored the Progressive Challenge, click here.

In October 2009, the Socialist Party of America announced that at least 70 Congressional Democrats were members of its Caucus at that time—i.e., members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Most of those individuals belonged to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and/or the Congressional Black Caucus. To view a list of their names, click here.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7126%5B/quote%5D

From there we need to look at these two groups.

Congressional Progressive Caucus

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) was founded in 1991 by Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist who had recently been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Sanders’ CPC co-founders included House members Ron Dellums, Lane Evans, Thomas Andrews, Peter DeFazio, and Maxine Waters. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) was also involved in CPC’s founding and in Caucus activities thereafter; IPS continues to advise CPC on various matters to this day.
Another key player in establishing CPC was the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has maintained a close alliance with the Caucus ever since. In 1997, DSA’s political director, Chris Riddiough, organized a meeting with CPC leaders to discuss how the two groups might be able to “unite our forces on a common agenda.” Among those who participated in the meeting were Bernie Sanders, labor leader Richard Trumka, professor Noam Chomsky, feminist Patricia Ireland, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Senator Paul Wellstone, journalist William Greider, and the socialist author Barbara Ehrenreich. As of March 2015, CPC consisted of 68 members of the House of Representatives—all of them leftist Democrats—and one U.S. Senator (Bernie Sanders, an Independent who caucused with the Democrats).
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6497

and the

[quote]Democratic Socialists of America

DSA helped establish the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in 1991 and continues to work closely with the latter to this day. Virtually every CPC member also belongs to DSA.

In 1998, WorldNetDaily (WND) published a two-part series of articles titled “Congress’ Red Army Caucus” (here and here), which exposed the close association between DSA and CPC. At that time, DSA hosted the CPC website. Shortly after the WND revelations, CPC established its own website under the auspices of Congress. Meanwhile, DSA scrubbed its own website to remove evidence of its ties to CPC. Among the items removed from the site were the lyrics to such songs as the following:

In 2008, most DSA members actively supported Barack Obama for U.S. President. Said the organization: “DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda.”

In October 2009, the Socialist Party of America announced that at least 70 Congressional Democrats were members of its Caucus at that time—i.e., members of DSA. Most of those individuals belonged to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and/or the Congressional Black Caucus. To view a list of their names, click here.

In the fall of 2011, DSA was a strong backer of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Said DSA:
“The Occupy Wall Street protests have invigorated the American Left in a way not seen in decades … So we have urged our members to take an active, supportive role in their local occupations, something many DSAers had already begun doing as individuals, because they believe that everyday people, the 99%, shouldn’t be made to pay for a crisis set off by an out-of-control financial sector and the ethically compromised politicians who have failed to rein it in.”

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6428

And finally we get to Black Lives Matter, who they are and who supports them.

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) was established as an online platform in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. Their objective was to stoke black rage and galvanize a protest movement in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic” who was tried for murder and manslaughter after he had shot and killed a black Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin in a highly publicized February 2012 altercation. Before long, “Black Lives Matter” became a rallying cry for writers, public speakers, celebrities, demonstrators, and even rioters who took up the cause of demanding an end to what BLM terms the “virulent anti-Black racism” that “permeates our society.” In 2014, BLM also adopted the slogan “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!,” which was first popularized by Dream Defenders and grew out of that year’s death of Michael Brown, a young black man in Ferguson, Missouri who was killed by a white police officer after he had tried to take the officer’s handgun during a confrontation. (In the immediate aftermath of that incident, numerous racial agitators circulated the false narrative that Brown had been shot after raising his hands in submission and pleading, “Don’t shoot.”)

Demanding that Americans “abandon the lie that the deep psychological wounds of slavery, racism and structural oppression are figments of the Black imagination,” BLM aims to force the country to become “uncomfortable about institutional racism.” Emphasizing the permanence and intransigence of American depredations, BLM maintains that the nation’s “corrupt democracy” was originally “built on Indigenous genocide and chattel slavery” and “continues to thrive on the brutal exploitation of people of color”; that “the ugly American traditions of patriarchy, classism, racism, and militarism” endure to this day; that “structural oppression” still “prevents so many from realizing their dreams”; and that blacks in the U.S. are routinely “de-humaniz[ed],” rendered “powerless at the hands of the state,” “deprived of [their] basic human rights and dignity,” and targeted for “extrajudicial killings … by police and vigilantes.” In sum, says BLM, black Americans are “collectively” subjected to “inhumane conditions” in a “white supremacist system.”

BLM is closely allied with numerous groups that are fronts for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a Marxist-Leninist entity that calls for the overthrow of capitalism. Economist and investigative journalist James Simpson has identified some of these FRSO fronts that are tied to BLM:

National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA): seeks to develop “women-of-color leaders” to help domestic workers—who are disproportionately female and nonwhite—gain political power and promote “concrete change”; gave money to CASA de Maryland and the Institute for Policy Studies in 2013; has received funding from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Oak Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation.

People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER): promotes “social change” by empowering “those people who are most affected by the problems of society”—specifically, “low-income and working class people, people of color, women, queer and transgender people”—to “lead a movement of millions to eradicate those problems”; evolved from the now-defunct revolutionary communist group STORM; has received funding from the Akonadi Foundation, the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, the Hill-Snowden Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.
Right to the City Alliance (RTTC): a nationwide network that opposes inner-city “gentrification” that displaces “low-income people, people of color, marginalized LGBTQ communities, and youths of color from their historic urban neighborhoods”; has received funding from the Akonadi Foundation, the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Margerite Casey Foundation, the Soros Funds, the Surdna Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL): strives to “lay the groundwork for a strong social justice movement by supporting the development of a new generation of organizers rooted in a systemic change analysis—especially people of color, young women, queer and transgender youth, and low-income people”; claims to have trained 679 organizers in 2013; has been funded by the Heinz Foundation, the Akonadi Foundation, the Hill-Snowden Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI): “educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice”; has been funded by the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Soros Funds.

Advancement Project (AP): describes itself as a “civil rights law, policy, and communications ‘action tank’ that advances universal opportunity and a just democracy for those left behind in America,” meaning nonwhite minorities; has been funded by the California Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Soros Funds, the Tides Foundation, and the Vanguard Public Foundation.

Movement Strategy Center (MSC): dedicated to “transformative movement building” and “equitable distribution of resources”; has been funded by the Akonadi Foundation, the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the California Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Soros Funds, the Surdna Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.
Dignity and Power Now (DPN): claims to seek “dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families, and communities”

Labor/Community Strategy Center (LCSC): works to “build consciousness, leadership, and organization among those who face discrimination and societal attack—people of color, women, immigrants, workers, LGBT people, youth”; is headed by Eric Mann, a former Weather Underground leader who exhorts followers to become “anti-racist, anti-imperialist” activists.

Black Left Unity Network: a Marxist-Leninist organization that supports a variety of communist causes
Black Workers for Justice: “believes that African American workers need self-organization to help empower ourselves at the workplace, in communities and throughout the whole of U.S. society to organize, educate, mobilize and struggle for power, justice, self-determination and human rights for African Americans, other oppressed nationalities, women and all working class people”
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ): “a national alliance of U.S.-based grassroots organizing groups organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people and communities of color”
Causa Justa/Just Cause: a Black/Latino solidarity organization that aims to build a “multi-racial, multi-generational movement … for fundamental change”
Hands Up United: works for the “liberation of oppressed Black, Brown, and poor people through education, art, civil disobedience, advocacy, and agriculture”
Intelligent Mischief: an African-American organization that “design[s] projects that critique the current status quo and re-imagines the possibilities”
Organization for Black Struggle (OBS): seeks to “build a movement that fights for political empowerment, economic justice and the cultural dignity of the African-American community, especially the Black working class”; is affiliated with the Communist Party USA; is allied with Black Workers for Justice and the Advancement Project.
Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee (RSCC): is dedicated to “uniting revolutionary-minded youth and students throughout the CUNY system in NYC”
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ): a “national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice”; quotes BLM co-founder Alicia Garza’s assertion that “We need you defecting from White supremacy and changing the narrative of White supremacy by breaking White silence.”
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE): seeks to “reduce and eliminate structural barriers to social and economic opportunities for poor and economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color”; is led by Anthony Thigpenn, a former Black Panther and board member of the Apollo Alliance.

As evidenced by these numerous ties between FRSO and BLM, Black Lives Matter is in essence a project of FRSO. All three of BLM’s co-founders have been employed by, or affiliated with, one or more of FRSO’s aforementioned front groups at various times.

In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially endorsed BLM by approving a resolution that condemned “the unacceptable epidemic of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of police”; stated that the American Dream “is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy”; demanded the “demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities”; and asserted that “without systemic reform this state of [black] unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation.”

On September 16, 2015, BLM activists Brittney Packnett, DeRay McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, Phillip Agnew, and Jamye Wooten met at the White House with President Obama as well as senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and other administration officials. For Packnett, it was her seventh visit to the Obama White House. Afterward, Packnett told reporters that the president personally supported the BLM movement. “He offered us a lot of encouragement with his background as a community organizer, and told us that even incremental changes were progress,” she stated. “He didn’t want us to get discouraged. He said, ‘Keep speaking truth to power.’”

In October 2015, Obama publicly articulated his support for BLM’s agenda by saying: “I think the reason that the organizers [of BLM] used the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that’s happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”

In a December 2015 interview on National Public Radio, Obama described Black Lives Matter as a positive force on policing in America, notwithstanding the violence and incendiary rhetoric exhibited by many of its members. Noting that “sometimes progress is a little uncomfortable,” the president claimed that BLM was doing the vital work of shining “sunlight” on the fact that “there’s no black family that hasn’t had a conversation around the kitchen table about driving while black and being profiled or being stopped” by police. “You know,” he elaborated, “during that process there’s going to be some noise and some discomfort, but I m absolutely confident that over the long term, it leads to a fair, more just, healthier America.”

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7876