My ancestors were slaves. I am not ashamed of that because that didn’t deter my family from pursuing the American Dream of freedom. Neither did it make us distrust democracy, capitalism or the rule of law. We view them as rungs on a ladder.

All we ever asked America, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put was, to “be true to what is said on paper” – that my people be treated with dignity and given a fair shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, just like everybody else.

That hasn’t always been the case, and today’s radical justice conversations are long overdue. Black families have been slowly making progress. Unemployment was near historic lows for African-Americans. But the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers struck an open nerve,producing a visceral outcry like none in our lifetimes.

Two forces emerged: a Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Lives Matter organization. The movement is raw and organic, born of genuine exasperation and frustration and focused on justice. The organization is a strident left-wing political agenda wrapped in the language of the newly "woke." It's critically important that the two forces be separated. They are very different.

The organization was founded in 2013 following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer. It has emerged as strident, Marxist and internationally organized. It now calls itself the Black Lives Matter Global Network.

The movement is the primary slogan that most well-meaning people flash when they want to identify with the struggle. It is the movement that we see on !-shirts and hats. The movement reminds us thLives Matter movement and ere is still work that needs to be done in America.

The organization is now home to political hitchhikers of all stripes who've attached to it tangential causes that includes transgender rights, radical environmentalism and various socialist and communist prescriptions. Meanwhile, anarchists-many of them white-are cynically expropriating African-American angst to commit violence and wide-scale theft in the name of African Americans.

After Chicago's Magnificent Mile was looted, BLM Chicago called the actions "taking reparations from corporations." Former New York President Hawk Newsom has said "we will burn down this system" if the country doesn't give BLM what it wants, adding: "And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally." Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a BLM supporter, rationalized looting as parents feeding their children, a Ia Jean Valjean.

It infuriates me as a black man, a father and a minister, that radicals are inciting or condoning riots in my name and in the name of our struggle. Breaking into department stores or throwing objects at and murdering police officers, many of whom are black or brown, isn't a protest against racial injustice; it's criminality.

All are welcome to join the broader Black Lives Matter movement, but no one has a right to distort its core message. It's rooted in America's Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution, not parlor communism. It posits that America will never reach its true potential - its God-given promise of universal dignity-until all of us are treated equally under the law. We aren't there yet.

Too many Black Americans have come to fear police officers, and too many are prosecuted and jailed for offenses that the white and the wealthy are able to skirt. Too many young Americans are sidetracked in schools by what President George W. Bush called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

In my view, the Black Lives Matter movement should also encourage marriage wherever possible and provide greater assistance to pregnant women of color so they can more easily choose life.

If the Black Lives Matter organization wants to be part of the healing process in America, it must clearly renounce looting and violence as a means to an end. It must separate itself from anti-American dogmas. It must not attempt to undermine the rule of law and everything we as Americans stand for.

Faulkner is a former NFL player with the New York Jets, and a Harlem pastor. He is now the executive director of the Philadelphia Council of Clergy.