So it just takes a "handful" of people to take away from the overall peaceful protests (the rioters were in the right though but that's for another discussion) and he doesn't congratulate the peaceful people, yet 300 people get arrested in the Dakota pipeline protests and Obama says they are "making their voices heard". Not criminals or thugs...but it's different...yeah ok
If you listened to the entire speech he expressed his solidarity with the concerns of the ppl protesting. Again, from the same speech
"But if we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant -- and that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped.
We're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids, and we think they're important. And they shouldn't be living in poverty and violence.
That's how I feel. I think there are a lot of good-meaning people around the country that feel that way. But that kind of political mobilization I think we haven't seen in quite some time. And what I've tried to do is to promote those ideas that would make a difference. But I think we all understand that the politics of that are tough because it's easy to ignore those problems or to treat them just as a law and order issue, as opposed to a broader social issue.
That was a really long answer, but I felt pretty strongly about it."
How does this not align with the concern's of the ppl on the ground?
I've criticized Obama for his consistency before. Mainly for playing both sides during times of conflict in order to make everyone happy. All he does is piss off everyone when he tries to make everyone happy.
