When Wichita, Kansas supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement participated in a First Step Cook Out last Sunday, the event was heralded by locals for bringing 200 police together with the black community to discuss race issues over a meal.

Social media posts from First Steps Community Cookout – which included food, dancing, basketball and other events – showed police from several departments engaging with the city’s black youth, with one particular post of dancing Wichita Police Officer Aaron Moses receiving more than 3 million views in the days that followed, KSN reports.

“I hit the ‘Whip and the Nae Nae,’ I got some lessons on that,” Moses told the news site, adding that he also learned other valuable lessons at the cookout.

“I will never grow up and know what it’s like not to trust a police officer and I think once you realize that, it’s a pretty profound thing that affects the way you do everything,” he said.

“I will never know what it’s like to grow up in a minority community, but I can try my hardest to serve them the best I can.”

The event, which occurred the same day as a deadly police attack on Baton Rouge police officers, was aimed at bridging the gap between local police and a black community that often feels ignored, and it did exactly that, NPR reports.

According to The Wichita Eagle:

At one table, three men — a black man, a Hispanic man and a white man — sat down with burgers next to police Lt. Travis Rakestraw to share their ideas.

It was the first time since 1992 that Jarvis Scott, the black man, said he’d sat down with a police officer, and the other two said it was their first time ever sitting down with an officer.

But Black Lives Matter isn’t about bridging gaps or coming to a mutual understanding and respect with police, and national Black Lives Matter organizers apparently felt compelled to set the record straight.

While thousands of folks across the country praised the barbecue, Black Lives Matter DC posted to Twitter July 20 to make sure everyone understands that “THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL
#BlackLivesMatter CHAPTER!

“THIS IS NOT IN LINE WITH OUR PRINCIPLES,” BlackLivesMatter DC tweeted.

Patrisse Cullors also told KWCH that “the group of people who had a BBQ with the police are not affiliated with BlackLivesMatter.”

“We don’t sit on panels with law enforcement, and we don’t have BBQ’s or cookouts with law enforcement,” she said. “We feel the best method at this point in history is by holding police accountable by organizing and advocating for police accountability.”

The DC chapter also posted a series of messages to Twitter defending its position against the cookout.

Black leaders in Wichita who helped organize the barbecue, meanwhile, are pointing out that they never claimed to be affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter movement.

“It’s not about who’s credit, who has this organization, who has that organization, whether or not we stand in line with their principles and different things like that,” Wichita organizer Djuan Wash told KWCH, adding that the focus in Wichita is saving black lives. “We never once said we were a Black Lives Matter organization.”

“I was very shocked, first of all I think what we had here in Wichita was a phenomenal event,” said Pastor Herman Hicks of the Greater Pentecostal Church of God in Christ told KSN. “I was pretty shocked, pretty stunned.”

He added, “You gotta sometimes put down the picket sign, you gotta sometimes put down the protest you are doing and sit down and talk to individuals who are able to make the changes that we so desperately need in our community.”

“What’s good for Wichita, Kansas may not be the same thing that’s good for Washington D.C., those people aren’t here in Wichita,” said organizer A.J. Bohannon. “They don’t know the pulse, and the temperature of this community, and the ways they interact with their police officers and elected officials is not the same way we have to, or chose to interact here in Wichita.”

That was especially apparent last week when a self-professed “black radical farmer” affiliated with the official Black Lives Matter chapter in Oakland, California rejected the police chief’s offer to hold a similar community event there.

While Wichita’s black leaders aimed to bring the area’s youth together with police to gain understanding, Oakland BLM leaders seemed to keep more in line with the national movement.

BLM Bay Area officials hauled students aged 2 to 12 from an Oakland summer camp to protest police brutality at city hall last week with homemade signs and chants like “no Justice, no Peace, no racist police!”

“Barbecues aren’t going to stop the brutality that black folks are facing,” Oakland BLM leader Karissa Lewis told Fox 2. “A barbecue is definitely not going to stop this blockade.

“And as a radical black farmer from East Oakland – I eat pigs, I don’t eat with them,” she said.