Seacoast NAACP chapter chief: 'This type of (protest) is not sane'

Rogers Johnson, Seacoast NAACP president, condemned the protests targeting outside diners. Meanwhile, U.S. Sun reports Pittsburgh cops probing video that shows BLM activists tormenting diners. (Johnson photo/InsideSources; video screen capture/Facebook)

PORTSMOUTH - Saying it amounted to nothing less than extortion, the president of the Seacoast NAACP Chapter on Tuesday condemned the harassment of outdoor diners by Black Lives Matter protesters in several U.S. cities last week.

The protests, during which videos show diners being terrorized and driven from their tables in Washington D.C., New York and Pittsburgh, Pa., sparked an outcry on social media and prompted Rogers Johnson to decry the protests as counterproductive to having a dialogue.

"This type of (protest) is not sane," said Johnson, who was quick to point out there is a big difference between urban and rural BLM activism.

"There is a dichotomy between how urban BLM and rural BLM operate," said Johnson, who is chairman of the Governor's Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion and member of the Governor's Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency. "Local BLMs like in Manchester and Portsmouth are operated in a fashion to make differences with the social fabric of the country in a conversational, not confrontational setting. They act in a manner by which to promote a dialogue."

Johnson referenced civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. as illustrating his mantra of peaceful protest was far more productive than tactics of the current urban BLM model.

The Rochester Voice reached out to both Manchester and Seacoast chapters of BLM, but only the Seacoast chapter provided a statement, saying in part, "We are unaware of any situations like that happening so we are not able to speak to that nor is it our responsibility to speak to situations happening in another region of the country.

"However, we are more than happy to talk about the work that BLM Seacoast is doing, and specifically, our current school supply drive in which we have given out about 13 book bags full of school supplies so far to unprivileged youth in the Seacoast area."

The mayor of Washington, DC, has also ripped Black Lives Matter protesters caught on camera abusing white diners, urging any victims to call the cops on them, according to a story in the New York Post.

"What I saw in those videos was highly inappropriate," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a press conference on Aug. 26. "It was likely against the law if they were on private property."