May 3, 2017. Louisville Black Lives Matter/Stand-Up Sunday has called for a boycott and picket of Dino’s Food Mart and Tony’s, located catty-corner from each other at the intersection of Twenty-Fifth and West Broadway. The reasons for the boycott are complex, but at root have to do with a profound lack of respect on the part of the owner for the predominantly Black residents of the neighborhood.

West Louisville, like so many similar communities in the United States, is a food and shopping desert, leaving locals with little choice of where to shop. The owners of the Dino’s/Tony’s emporiums take this situation as a license for disrespect, particularly for Black kids. Since the call for the boycott and request for picketers came from the local BLM leadership, I had no qualms about showing up and offering my support. It is a local action that is gratifyingly real. Standing in front of the offending store, holding up a Black Lives Matter sign, chanting “No Respect, No Business,” with other picketers had a visible effect. People who might otherwise have bought gas or snacks, read our fliers and drove off. Unlike the Congressional hooligans who just repealed the ACA, folks in the neighborhood are responsive.

The hardest thing about this sort of picketing is that I get disproportionate credit. Black folk drive by and honk their horns, give me the thumbs up, thank me–a white guy participating in a Black-led protest in a Black neighborhood, just for being there. When this is the hardest thing about an experience–getting too much gratitude for too little effort–well, I’m not going to complain.

I will report what I wish I had said to a thirty-something white guy who pulled up in his SUV, rolled down his window, and responded to my Black Lives Matter sign, saying: “All Lives Matter, Dude.”

I smiled wryly, shaking my head, and waved him on. I wish that I had said what I have so often thought: “When…, then.” That is, “When it is finally true that Black lives matter in America, then it will be possible that all lives really will matter.” Until then, it is demonstrable that they don’t.

The pseudo-universalism that pretends to worry that uncompromising support for Black lives somehow diminishes justice for all would be laughable were it not so mean-spirited. So when I say Black Lives Matter, what I mean is this: If you want justice for all, then come on out and stand up for Black lives.