When you look at the protests shaking America’s cities, you have to ask a simple question: whose interests are being served? Because in far too many cases, the issues paraded through the streets in Black neighborhoods are not the priorities of the people who actually live there. They are the pet causes of progressive activists, imported from the outside and imposed on communities that never asked for them.
Take Washington, D.C. as an example. Black residents have been vocal about wanting safer streets. Many welcomed the presence of additional police after years of shootings, robberies, and carjackings that made daily life unbearable. But when the cameras rolled, what did the world see? A sea of mostly white, progressive protesters railing against “police occupation.” The question is not whether they had a right to protest, but what business they had turning Black neighborhoods into backdrops for their own political theater.
This pattern is nothing new. In city after city, so-called “grassroots” movements are anything but. Professional signs, coordinated chants, free legal aid for those arrested, buses to shuttle in protesters — these things don’t just happen. They cost money. And that money often comes from wealthy interests far removed from the daily struggles of Black families.
Adam Swart of Crowds on Demand recently confirmed the existence of this hidden economy. His firm has made millions by renting out activists and assembling crowds for political causes. He openly described how billionaires funnel money through nonprofits and advocacy groups, creating “Russian doll networks” of influence where the true funders stay hidden. If you think the protest outside your window is a spontaneous uprising, think again — it might just be a corporate strategy meeting with better signage.
The tragic result is that authentic Black voices are drowned out. Real concerns — safe neighborhoods, functioning schools, jobs that sustain families — are buried under progressive talking points about defunding police, gender-neutral bathrooms, or climate action plans that have little to do with everyday survival. The activists fly home after the march; the residents are left behind to deal with the crime, the unemployment, and the failing infrastructure.
In 2023, Ward 8 D.C. Councilman Trayon White publicly called for the National Guard to help reduce crime in the city, even speaking with a Guard lieutenant about how such a deployment could work. He explained that the District’s lack of statehood was a barrier, since the mayor cannot activate the Guard directly. His colleague, Ward 5 Councilman Zachary Parker, held a safety meeting the same week, saying that violence required an “all-hands-on-deck” approach, though he preferred a plan short of Guard deployment. What’s striking is how even these Black elected voices were drowned out by the national narrative. At the very moment local leaders and residents were pleading for safety, the dominant story pushed by CNN and other mainstream media was one of “Defund the Police.” It was as if the lived reality and urgent concerns of D.C.’s Black community never happened. The fact that a Black councilman openly requested the National Guard — a reflection of the actual view of many residents — was ignored, erased, and forgotten in favor of talking points shaped outside the community.
And we need to be honest about what’s really happening: rich white people are using Black communities to push their sick anti-government agenda, while the communities themselves suffer. Black leaders remain silent, not because they don’t see the problem, but because the same money funding these manufactured protests is also funding their campaigns and organizations.
The game is cruel but predictable. Keep Black neighborhoods in peril. Allow crime to flourish. Drive down property values. Then swoop in as developers and buy land cheaply. Build more low-income housing, concentrate more poverty, and import more dysfunction. The cycle repeats itself, and each time, the community sinks deeper while someone else cashes out.
Thomas Sowell often reminded us that the true measure of a policy is not its intentions but its results. Judged by results, the progressive protests staged in Black neighborhoods are a disaster. They silence rather than empower. They divert attention from the problems that matter most. And they treat Black communities not as partners in shaping solutions but as convenient stages on which outsiders can act out their moral posturing.
We cannot afford to let our struggles be hijacked. If Black America is to move forward, it must do so by asserting its own priorities, not those imported from activist circles and billionaire-funded networks. The real issues — education, safety, economic opportunity, and family stability — must take precedence over outside agendas designed to advance careers, win elections, or check ideological boxes.
The bottom line is simple: the loudest voices in the protest do not always belong to the people most affected by the problem. And until we start listening to results instead of rhetoric, Black communities will continue to be treated as political props rather than respected as self-determining citizens
