I agree that it’s very offensive because as maarnayeri described so well, Eric Garner’s murder by Officer Daniel Pantaleo was a lynching. Eric Garner was suffocated to death because he was black, and so stepping in as non-black people and saying “We can’t breathe” is an offensive erasure which perpetuates the very antiblackness that killed Eric Garner and gets all of us black people killed every single day in this country. 

I really just wish that white and non-black POC “allies” would take the half a second necessary in rallies to think about the chants and how repeating some of them contextually is inappropriate and hurts black people more than the so-called “good intentions” behind them will ever help us. Solidarity requires, no demands, at least 2 seconds of reflection, but most non-black “allies” refuse to give us even that, which is more telling than anything.