Bishop Aubrey Shines wrote an opinion article this week criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and pointing out the economic devastation that looting and rioting have caused in minority communities.

“BLM’s ‘justice’ has already gotten black children killed on the streets,” Shines, the chairman of Conservative Clergy of Color, wrote in a Fox Business op-ed titled “BLM brings economic stress to communities it claims to represent.”

Shines continued, “Its crusade to replace police authority with an anarchist mob has made it less safe in low-income neighborhoods than before George Floyd’s tragic death. But now we’re finally seeing the long-term consequences; the purging of business opportunities that will only drive minorities further away from prosperity and into the loving arms of government dependency.”

Shines drew attention to a news story from earlier this month in which a trucking company announced it could no longer deliver to cities where police budgets had been slashed out of concern for the safety of the truck drivers.

“My colleagues and I founded Conservative Clergy of Color because we were afraid something like this would happen if Black Lives Matter was the only voice in the room,” Shines wrote.

“These, friends, are the first tangible results from Black Lives Matter’s mad, anti-police crusade,” he said. “These are the first far-reaching consequences beyond the violence in cities this summer that has gone so long, it’s beginning to feel lethargic. These are the consequences that BLM’s leadership probably are fully aware of, but that the young misguided social justice warriors that make up their ranks haven’t stopped to think about.”

Defunding police, according to Shines, has “crippled” police departments across the country, and “we’re just now seeing the economic impact.”

“The worst part of this debacle is that minority communities, the very people BLM claims to represent, will suffer the most,” Shines wrote. “A weaker police force means less business in a community, and that’s less jobs to go around, including for minorities.”

Shines joins several other prominent black voices in media and politics, including Marcellus Wiley, Jason Whitlock, Niger Innis, Burgess Owens, and Carol Swain, who have spoken out against the Black Lives Matter movement.

Favorable opinions of the Black Lives Matter movement surged in polling following the death of George Floyd in late May. New polling out of Wisconsin shows that support for the movement is dropping.

Read original article: Washington Examiner