I was kind of ticked off when I saw Black Lives Matter protests commandeering Bernie Sanders’s microphone. Why were these folks attacking the candidate who came closest to their concerns? They were obnoxious.
And they were right. The success of a political action should be measured largely by what it accomplishes, and BLM, it seems, accomplished what it set out to do: make Sanders’ focus on racial issues that need to be addressed. Think Progress writes:
After activists from the Black Lives Matter movement repeatedly disrupted speeches by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over the past few weeks, the popular and populist presidential candidate released a comprehensive racial justice platform and hired a young racial justice activist as his national press secretary.
The platform, which has won praise from several prominent voices in the Black Lives Matter movement, focuses on different forms of violence against people of color in the United States: physical violence from law enforcement and extremist vigilantes, the political violence of voter suppression, the legal violence of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, and the economic violence of crushing poverty. Sanders lays out several proposals to address each form of violence, from passing “ban the box” laws to prevent hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, to outlawing for-profit prisons, to restoring the gutted protections in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A few weeks ago, Bernie Sanders didn’t quite get it. Like most of us, he’s a well-intentioned liberal, opposed to injustice and dedicated to making the world a better place for the less fortunate. But he didn’t understand the meaning of “black lives matter.”
When first approached by protesters at Netroots Nation, he said, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.” As true as this statement is, it misses the point. Bernie got a little cranky. After all, he fought for civil rights back in the 1960s. Black lives don’t matter in America, certainly not as much as white lives. And Bernie Sanders, with his focus on economic fairness, wasn’t addressing that fact. As Vox states, BLM activists hadn’t felt
that Sanders — and, just as importantly, his supporters — [we]re keeping racial justice front and center. Sanders has become a progressive hero for his economic populism, but at the beginning of his campaign he talked about racial inequality, if at all, as a symptom of economic inequality.
It’s not enough for white liberals to sympathize, BLM protesters want us to see America as they see it. They want us to address the issues that affect them. It’s still unclear how exactly how willing we are to fix a very broken system. Economically, Bernie Sanders has been a leader showing us how America can reclaim its promise. By listening and responding to Black Lives Matter, he is once again leading the way. He could have resisted. Instead he opened his mind and his campaign to a movement he could just have easily marginalized.
…and ask pointed questions about how he plans to address their issues, as they should all candidates. However, the stunt they pulled regarding basically forcing him off the stage was rude, obnoxious, offensive (How many other adjectives can I use?), and completely out of line. There is no place for that in civil discourse. I don’t care if I agree with their goals or the extent to which they “worked”. Next time, they can organize their own rally, maybe even invite candidates to speak at it. For those who suggest that wouldn’t get any attention I would point out that Dr. King didn’t grab someone else’s microphone to deliver “I Have a Dream” and that was very well-covered and well-attended to say the least.
“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
…his quote and my thoughts are mutually exclusive. He was the model of direct action and clearly got a lot done. I’ve seen that quote a lot in the last few days supposedly defending these tactics, but his own actions I think also speak louder than words.
Martin Luther King was hounded and harassed by the white American government. He was murdered by a white man, whom many have suggested was unlikely to have acted alone. During his lifetime, he was despised by huge segments of the American public.
His actions were disruptive. They were designed to be disruptive. The civil rights demonstrations that he encouraged were often accompanied by violence — looting, arson, vandalism — even though he did not advocate such violence.
MLK was a divisive figure who was canonized and sanitized after his death by a white society who could not escape its shared guilt in his murder. It was much easier to erect statues and utter platitudes after the man was dead than to stand up and defend him — both word and deed — while he was alive.
I suspect that those of us who were alive and paying attention to racial justice issues during those years have a different view of the relationship between his actions and his words than you suggest here.
Martin Luther King was a courageous, compelling, and deeply divisive figure in his words and his actions. That’s why he was killed.
…that he didn’t advocate destruction and violence (and to be fair, neither has BLM as far as I can tell). Of course he was controversial for his time; I never said he wasn’t or shouldn’t have been. I’m objecting to some very specific tactics that I am not aware of his ever engaging in. Sometimes it IS better to look through the more objective lens of history than contemporary raw emotions, so I reject frankly your implication that because you lived through something you necessarily have the superior perspective. I am quite aware of much of this anyway, FWIW.
A big mistake.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlk-press-statement-regarding-riots-los-angeles
Striking how his explanation could carry word for word today – same riots, same issues. Police violence, economic distress, desperation. White community not knowing or not caring.
That should tell you very precisely about what MLK thought about riots and violence. He saw them as a symptom of a larger problem, but was not one who stoked their fire.
marched with Dr. King and was arrested leading protests against segregation in Chicago schools.
If you think MLK Jr. would have done what these protesters did, or agreed with them, I don’t think you’ve paid close attention.
He courted and worked with many, many politicians who would have frustrated him a great deal more than the staunch ally he’d find in Bernie Sanders. There is nothing “lukewarm” about Bernie’s level of acceptance.
The MLK Jr. that I remember would have had little to say, one way or the other, about this episode. At the height of the civil rights era, there were numerous organizations, some inside the umbrella of his SCLC, that were far more disruptive than the strategies advocated by Mr. King.
One of his strengths was his unusual ability to use that diversity to advance the cause he was passionate about, even while distancing himself from those aspects of the diversity that he disagreed with.
The “lukewarm” word choice was Mr. King’s, not mark-bail’s. I didn’t read this comment as characterizing Mr. Sanders as “lukewarm”, and I enthusiastically agree with you that there is nothing lukewarm about the candidate’s passion for racial justice.
That’s why I support him in this primary campaign, and that’s why I (and I suspect Mr. Sanders) welcome this episode and the media attention that has followed it.
As Kos and others have pointed out.
stuff, but I don’t know that it’s astroturf. The MSM seems to basing a lot on a blog post. Read it. It looks like the girl is a former “Christian.” They may freelancing, self-aggrandizing protesters. That’s nothing new. Abbie Hoffman tried it at Woodstock:
The Weathermen sort of hijacked the SDS. Of course, they can associate with BLM since BLM isn’t exactly organized. I seriously don’t understand how today’s movements are going to function when they don’t believe in organization.
But BLM put Bernie’s feet to the fire, and instead of getting mad, he thought about it and acted for the best. Personally, I think we need more discomfort and disruption, not less.
I thought I had read that that was Gov. O’Malley’s line (which he later apologized for)?
Black and all lives matter are not mutually exclusive. Almost reminds me of the annual kerfuffle over Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas.
Your comparison is insulting. It reveals the enormous gap between your experience as a privileged white male and the experiences that motivate these demonstrations.
Saying “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” buries the point BLM is making. Not just buries it, but buries it under a coating of lime that corrodes the awful truth that motivates BLM and that disturbs white people. Hillary Clinton was rightly pillaged for saying the same thing.
Of COURSE “all lives matter”. Of COURSE “white lives matter”.
It is BLACKS who are being killed, beaten, abused, and harassed every day in every state. It is the unwillingness to confront that “strange fruit” that BLM is attacking.
OF COURSE black lives matter, and I have no problem with anyone pointing out the obvious, but when we get caught up in flame wars over slogans, nothing of substance actually gets done to address the problem. It’s not privileged to not get harassed by authorities, BTW. It is a right and an expectation – one we need to work together to see actually comes to pass for all people.
I’m sorry, but to compare “Black Lives Matter” to “the annual kerkuffle over Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas” IS, in my view, crystal-clear example of white privilege.
If it is obvious that black lives matter, then why are so many black lives taken, with so few consequences for their murderers?
on privilege. You’re either privileged or not privileged. It’s a zero sum phenomena. If you are not privileged by being black, then you are privileged by being white.
Yes, in fact, it is privileged to not get harassed by authorities. When large swaths of the population are harassed by authorities because of their color and you aren’t, then you are privileged. When people are actively out to restrict the ability to vote based on the color of people’s skin and it’s not your color, then you are privileged.
When you say it’s not a privilege to be free from harassment, you are denying your own privilege. Why does it matter? We know you to be a good man. A caring man. A man who does things for the community. The point isn’t to beat up on you or ourselves. Seeing our white privilege allows us to see things differently, with more urgency and more complexity, than we would otherwise.
Good example: the BMGer who has done best in pointing out privilege is, in my opinion, No Politician. He lives in Springfield and sees and writes about how Springfield and the people who live there are underprivileged. There may be little we can do to remedy the situation at this point, but at least we can see it clearly because of him.
If black people all of a sudden stopped getting harassed tomorrow, which would of course be great, it would in no way mean that white people would get more harassed.
there would no longer be privilege. Your privilege is someone else’s lack of privilege.
I just don’t like calling it privilege as if it’s something extra. I hope everyone is “privileged” (if we insist on using that word) to not be harassed.
as it ought to be.
I’m not exactly keen on the slogan, because it elicits, from well-meaning people, exactly the reaction you had, which results in a vituperative lecture about “getting it.” The point to be “gotten” is that it appears that people of color wind up injured or dead in what should be innocuous police encounters more than do we uncolored people.
Accepting that, this particular disruption seems foolishly counter-productive to me in that this particular targeted candidate is really the only one with an economic agenda that actually directly addresses urban poverty and inequality, which to me makes the whole thing seem like a temper tantrum not focused on any particular goal.
I agree that it is still unclear to me what the Seattle protest was trying to accomplish tactically, I will agree with early BLM criticism direct at Sanders, including those at Netroots Nation, that economic programs are insufficient to advance the cause of social justice. Systematic racism needs to be dismantled and income inequality needs to be mitigated against. One cannot happen without the other, they are distinct but linked together.
Systematic racism makes it more likely that blacks are confined to literal prisons via the prison industrial complex or to metaphorical prisons such as segregated housing, segregated schools, and public services and opportunities that are separate and unequal. Mitigating income inequality ensures robust equality of opportunity in America via a stronger and wider safety net, a taxation system that rewards job creation rather than wealth manipulation, and full employment. It is difficult to be poor in this country and expect to rise above the poverty line, it is doubly difficult if you are black and poor. Yet mitigating income inequality still leaves structural racism in place, while only dismantling structural racism still leaves millions of blacks, now safe from incarceration and police shootings, below the poverty line, with no means of rising above it. They both have to happen, they both have to happen yesterday, and I think it only benefits the Sanders campaign to couple these issues together.
Charlie Pierce writes:
That’s a little like being in favor of world peace. OK, but what does that mean, exactly?
ACT UP was offensive as they come, and one certainly cannot deny their efficacy, but that was because they had some pretty specific goals in mind: to get the FDA to acknowledge AIDs existed, and then to get treatments approved.
I am not sure that BLM has any immediate concrete goal in mind, which is why it seems a lot like the Occupy movement.
in mind. See here. I also think they are in the midst of organizing. So there are twin goals. They have met with Hillary, so they are making the rounds.
Like you, I think, I’m puzzled by this generation’s tendency to organize by refusing to organize. At 51, I’m too young to have participated in the last generation’s protests, and anyway, I’m too involved in government to do much protesting. I understand the appeal of decentralization, but I don’t understand how it works. It would seem like steady pressure needs to be applied, and that’s hard to do without some sort of centralization.
n/t
This went out yesterday on Facebook.
Interestingly, Ms. Cullors-Brignac’s Facebook page is now down; hence the link at the bottom of the post.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=727718905#
Black Lives Matter
https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter/posts/479642585540325?fref=nf
What happens when events get disrupted by small groups which might not be viewed as sympathetically as BLM. What if right wing Jewish extremists had wanted to protest the Iran deal, and tried to get Bernie on their side. What if fishermen had wanted to protest against catch limits.
I suspect it would be very hard to round up enough Jewish extremists or disgruntled fishermen to make even a blip on the national radar.
BLM is not a small group of extremists. They speak out for ENORMOUS portions of America’s black community.
But it only took two girls to chase Bernie off his stage. If BLM wanted to make a point create their own stage, aren’t we due for another million person march.
It only took one black woman (Rosa Parks) to change the course of racism in the south. White society has learned how to shrug at the million-person marches and do nothing.
This is a national story because millions of black men, women and children resonate with what’s happening. It doesn’t matter whether the two women (women, not “girls”) were or were not officially affiliated with BLM. It doesn’t matter whether they acted alone or as part of a larger movement.
What matters is that we have a major problem that affects millions of our brothers and sisters (and potentially huge effect on the outcome of our elections). What matters is that episodes like this stop us from sweeping the problem under the rug for yet another election cycle.
The religious among us are familiar with the phrase “God works in mysterious ways”. History is chock full of people who were doing the work of God even while they thought they were doing the opposite.
I suggest you read more history.
If Blacks wanted to get things done all they would have to do is threaten to have a national movement to withold the “Black” vote from Democratic candidates until racial questions were put front and center in every election. It’s the Dems who have been patting Blacks on the head, telling them to show up every couple of years to vote and promising things will be better next year.
Hopkinton is putting up over 1100 units of housing (mixed condos,apts,houses). I wonder how many Blacks will be moving into town and will it change the +97% white makeup of town. That bastion of white liberalism must be going through so much angst about the plight of the BLM movement.
and disagree with most of your opinions, but I think BLM would agree with this statement:
With that said, you and your ilk don’t even try.
In the 1970’s I wrote a letter to the vice-president of the company I worked for and had a face-to-face meeting with him wanting him to explain the companies presence in South Africa (there was a company owned factory there). Pretty ballsy for a 3-11 card punching factory guy.
a great husband, and a credit to your community for all I know. I’ll I know is what you write, man, and based on that, I’ll stand by what I said. Your edge might have been cutting 40 years ago, but it’s dulled since then.
Just wondering why the free-floating anger against “white liberals” settled on Hopkinton — which went 60/40 for Brown over Warren in 2012.
Link
Just happened to be reading the Metro West news and saw a thing about Hopkinton and looked at zillow and saw Blacks were 0.34 % of the population. I try to look at other perspectives (why I read this blog) and wondered how a BLM person would be welcomed there, not for a photo-op but as a neighbor. For the record if I was Black I would probably be in jail because I would have been in the riots, and they would have been in the suburbs not downtown.
While many folks in similar towns would not call themselves “liberal,” they would resent being labeled as “racist.” One of the conversations that seems to have been jump-started in this election cycle is how seemingly neutral regulations may have anti-integrationist effects in practice.
Years of planning went into the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The leaders were E.D. Nixon, the local head of the NAACP (whose connections spanned the gamut from black labor to the Southern Garvey movement) and the collective efforts of the Women’s Political League.
Rosa Parks was recruited for the bus action. She was the third person arrested, but the only one acceptable to the whole of Montgomery’s black community.
King was not the leader, but the spokesman, and accepted the role only under duress. (To his credit, King grew into leadership, but that’s not how he started.)
What won the boycott was not the symbolism of Mrs. Parks in isolation, but the logistics – for example the alternate transportation – that reinforced it.
Tom, I realize that you mean well, but these romantic distortions of history do no one any good.
true history is just as powerful
I’m familiar with the history. I appreciate you reminding us of it.
My intent was to highlight the fallacy of scott12mass’s dismissal of “two girls”. I felt that too much elaboration of the events of Montgomery would distract from the point I was attempting to make.
…and yes, before you start in with another history lecture I know it was planned and not done on a whim. It absolutely did not prevent the bus from continuing on its route and getting all people on board regardless of race to their destiniations
maybe you should think a little more before you write things like this:
Just what do you think happened in the interval between Parks’ refusal to move and the police removing her from the bus? The bus went nowhere. It (and presumably all of its passengers) sat and waited for the police to arrive and finish their business on it. Eventually, the bus did continue its route, and all the people — except for one — got to their destinations. Just as all the people inconvenienced by the recent highway protests eventually got to theirs.
What you describe isn’t on Rosa Parks. It’s not like she hijacked the bus and insisted she get dropped off first. Her keeping her seat didn’t prevent the bus from going anywhere; enforcing an unjust law did. OTOH the highway blockage is exactly what stopped innocent bystanders from moving.
What you describe is the view seen through the eyes of a Yankee from more than fifty years later (and no I do NOT mean a member of a sports team).
You demonstrate no understanding of how Jim Crow culture felt about blacks, why Jim Crow laws were in place, why those laws were in place, why those laws were enforced — and therefore why Rosa Parks did what she did. The bus was stopped while the police removed her from it for the same reason that a taxi will stop while the driver removes vomit from the back seat. Refusing to yield her seat to a white WAS “hijacking” the bus. It WAS preventing the bus from going anywhere. That awful reality was WHY Rosa Parks (and the rest of the movement) felt compelled to do what they did. That is why BLM protesters do what they do today.
The citizens of Montgomery Alamaba REVILED black people. The “white” section of the bus was filled, and whites WOULD NOT sit in the “colored” section. The police who removed her did so because the white community demanded that of them (and because the police felt the same way). The Jim Crow laws existed and where enforced because they reflected the prevailing attitude of that culture at that time. The citizens and police of Montgomery would no sooner tolerate a “colored” woman sitting in the white section than the citizens and police of Boston would tolerate an abandoned pressure cooker occupying a seat. The facts may be different — the underlying meaning is not.
I get that you have read some of the facts of history. Your commentary demonstrates a profound inability or unwillingness to accept the human experience that accompanies those facts. In particular, you again and again demonstrate a profound absence of both insight and empathy for victims of racial injustice — then and now.
I will say that I was shocked and dumbfounded once I left the friendly confines of Cambridge my fellow Maroons from other parts of the country were completely ignorant of black history. It wasn’t just the kids coming from southern or western public schools, but from some of the toniest prep schools and zip codes on the coasts as well. And it made me realize we were an outlier. Most schools don’t require reading the autobiography of Malcolm X, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Letters from a Birmingham Jail. Fuck whatever either Bloom might say, they are an integral part of the Western canon.
Song of Solomon still sticks with me over ten years removed now from sophomore English.
For your consideration, the following excerpt is from a 2009 blog post from Reverend Irene Monroe, but Cambridge hasn’t changed all that much.
I just meant our schools are an outlier compared to the country, our policing and issues if social and economic equity sadly are not, and in many cases are worse. My fiancée feels more comfortable as a person of color in Chicago than she ever has in Cambridge or Boston. I think I also told this story before on BMG when I got stopped by the police at night since I had in a hoodie on and they saw me from the back, pulled me over and asked for my ID and the other officer said “he’s not black, let’s go”. “He means the suspect is black” said the other officer, but either way, I’ll always wonder how worse that would’ve been if I was black.
…is a difference in definition, or at least connotation, of the word disruptive. What Parks did, and for that matter lunch counter sit-ins, certainly had the effect of disrupting, but still mostly because of the reaction they provoked rather than the initial action. When I object to disrupting I am referring to actions that literally make it impossible for the planned event or activity to move forward.
It has never even crossed my mind that someone in 2015, much less someone who presents themselves as progressive, would consider whether Rosa Park’s bus was able to finish its route as a factor in evaluating her actions.
I mean, are you really saying that if those other passenger, gasp, had to get on another bus it would not have been worth it? She should have just called her legislator instead?
I was holding up Rosa Parks as an example of exactly what could and should be done.
…and “Wonk Posts”, for that matter.
Progressives are as subject to confirmation bias as anyone on the Right, and I like to provide data-backed information that may indicate evidence that is occasionally at variance with received wisdom. (The qualifiers in that sentence are because I like the data to speak for itself.)
You have a history on this site of willfully misunderstanding documented and/or plain sight evidence. Normally I let it slide, but when you evoke black history, it pushes some major buttons.
I mention in passing that Mrs. Parks did not “keep her seat”, she was arrested.
Nor was Martin Luther King some sort of “Can’t we all get along?” Rodney-King-before-his-time. FWIW, at the time of his death, he had pretty much given up on the aspirations he expressed in the 1963 March.
If you don’t want history lessons, don’t distort history.
I always find them instructive and enlightening. You and nopolitician always have great stuff coming from perspectives that aren’t heard often enough on BMG. I particularly like the integration of data and history, something I have to become more proficient with.
I still appreciate all the policy stuff I learned, thanks to your involvement in Chicago’s Olympic bid.
This is after all my degree and teaching license and I really do know what I’m talking about. I will cop to being conversational about it rather than using a blog to write a thesis, which probably results in not flushing out every detail (a perennial complaint of my teachers growing up), but I stand by what I have said in that I haven’t gotten my facts wrong. I certainly do not “willfully” misunderstand evidence and I hope if nothing else people respect me enough to assume I am being sincere. Of course I know Parks was arrested, but that’s not on her, though I’m sure she was well aware that would be the consequence.
they wouldn’t succeed. And besides a few of us, who views BLM sympathetically?
What if..? How about, so what..? If it becomes a slippery slope, then presidential candidates would have to change their public appearances.
Here is a key paragraph from the Bernie gets cranky link in the thread-starter (emphasis mine):
Exactly. Not just abstract activists being ignored by abstract people who criticize distraction, either — we saw this exact phenomena played out right here on BMG, in reaction to BLM, after BLM protesters from Tufts blocked I-93.
Speaking truth is disturbing. “Prophetic speech” is disturbing. That’s why so many prophets are killed. That’s why the biblical character of Jesus was killed (I use that phrasing to avoid going down a religious rathole).
White progressives and liberals have a long history of not wanting to be disturbed. Our black brothers and sisters pay the price of our resulting behavior.
These disruptions by BLM are good politics. They are good for Bernie Sanders. They are good for Democrats. They are good for America.
…if they tried disrupting those who were actually causing them pain, and not random people unlucky enough to be driving I-93 or presidential candidates who are most likely with them anyway. What can I say? I for one place a high value on civility. Maybe it’s the teacher in me thinking raise your hand and you can speak when I call on you. I was one who objected to the highway blockade at your link and I absolutely stand by it. There are potential safety issues with that one.
Indeed, it does sound like the teacher in you that is demanding that people meet your standards. I am not your student. The BLM protesters — including at Tufts — are not your students.
There are “potential safety issues” at EVERY disruptive event. Do you think the huge masses of black Africans who ended apartheid didn’t create “potential safety issues”?
That highway at that location is absolutely gridlocked in the southbound direction every morning and in the northbound direction every evening. If “potential safety issues” are so crucial, then why aren’t you an ardent and passionate supporter of taking immediate action to eliminate those dangerous traffic jams?
When the “potential safety issues” — especially for privileged white men and uniformed thugs — are more immediate than traffic jams, then we’ll start to make progress.
I’d love for it to be better, but it’s a far cry from deliberate action. I do not apologize for having high standards of civility. I could have used a parliamentarian example as easily as teacher.
I see.
So if my child dies because the ambulance was stalled in traffic, that’s ok — “traffic is traffic”. If my child dies because a protest made the daily traffic jam slightly more dense one morning, that’s unacceptable.
Your comment conveys your value system. Traffic is ok, incivility is not.
High standards of civility are fine. I have high standards of empathy and understanding, especially for those we (with our high standards of civility) intentionally or accidentally abuse.
I have even higher standards regarding systemic, rather than individual, evil. In my view, a system that enslaves people is evil whether or not the slave-masters are civil. In my view, a system that impoverishes a select group of people based on the color of their skin is evil whether or not the agents of that impoverishment are civil. In my view, a group of impoverished people who take steps to end that evil deserve my support — whether or not they are civil.
I do not reject your standards of civility. I reject your value system that places them above so many factors that to me are far more important.
The plantation-owning Southern gentlemen were famous for valuing civility and manners. Toward white people, at least. Civility in the absence of empathy is not much use.
tl;dr: Bless your heart.
They weren’t the least bit civil to the slaves they beat, etc. and slaves would be well within their rights to rise up violently.
Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and apparently treated them well.
I don’t know enough history myself to speak from data, yet I am under the impression that many slave owners treated their slaves quite well, in the sense that kirth uses the term. I do not think that beating, raping, and otherwise abusing slaves was universal among slave owners. After all, many animal owners treat their lifestock quite well — until they slaughter them (which they do “humanely”).
Slavery is an evil institution, and remains so even if EVERY slaveowner treated his slaves with civility.
was stupid. Tactics have to work to be effective. That one just pissed people off. With that said, protest is discourse. Not every utterance is going to be meaningful.
Christopher you say, “I for one place a high value on civility” Sometimes “civility” is just another name for “complacency.”
….between civility and complacency. You can organize, rally, swamp elected officials with communications, and ultimately vote, which I hope plenty of people do.
so far, Christopher.
…at the levels necessary. I’m pretty sure we could make a few southern states reliably Democratic if the races voted in proportion to their numbers.
Christopher says “we” can “make Southern states Democratic.” That will solve everything, because Democratic politicians never perpetuate racist policies.
Note: sensitive persons be advised, this comment contains both sarcasm and irony.
It was the black vote that determined the 2012 Presidential election, specifically:
On the other hand, Romney got the majority of the white vote, including 56% of the white female vote and 51% of the white millennial vote.
I would argue, however that the abovementioned black turnout was due more (in 2012) to reaction to various Republican voter-suppression schemes than the efforts of the Obama campaign.
However all this demographics-is-destiny stuff begs the issue that, as an institution, the Democratic Party is organization-averse. Interest in creating permanent self-sustaining structures on the ground, embedded in local communities is little to none; to Republican tactical advantage, at least at the Congressional level.
For reasons too numerous to go into here, social media is incapable of filling the void (although it can fulfill useful astroturf functions).
Purely as a thought experiment, a cross-racial alliance could be created, and not just in the South, if that alliance’s premises were the tangible interests of voters; and if the organizers were home-grown.
Moral Monday is already a force for racial AND economic justice in North Carolina, I hope similar alliances can take shape across that region. Lord knows, there is no rational reason for West Virginia, birthplace of militant labor unionization where blood was actually shed for the right to organize, to continue voting the way it does. Only that the Democrats surrendered it and similar areas without a fight.
It’s why it’s so painful to watch some of the more tone deaf Sanderistas and BLM activist engage in a war of words and tweets across social media and even more mainstream publications like Gawker. Economic and racial justice are parallel but distinct causes with distinct solutions, but I don’t see how we solve one while ignoring the other.
… and learned the trade in county politics.
West Virginia is only a hop, skip and jump from what I still think of as home.
Speaking from experience, the Democratic Party could be rebuilt in these areas, which culturally include most of the South and a large chunk of the lower Midwest. The upper Midwest is culturally different but the same approaches apply. The message could be the same, but the messengers would have to be different. One size does not fit all in field ops.
However these folks are potential labor-liberals, not “progressives”, as the term is defined here. There is a lot of class baggage and elitism in modern Democratic Party politics (ironically the same applies to modern American socialism), and that generates a lot of justified resentment.
As a result the politics in these areas could be more accurately be described as anti-left populist than as conservative.
These folks are reachable if they are treated with respect, as opposed to condescension, and if the organizing is done in a culturally appropriate fashion by people they can trust; and if the goal is to create self-governing Democratic Party structures on the ground (as opposed to campaign appendages).
One final point: It would take at least two years of serious town-by-town, county-by-county work to put these structures together.
…it might be a good idea to recreate grassroots Democratic Party politics in Massachusetts.
As a point in isolation, consider that the increase in Baker’s vote in Boston alone, compared to his 2010 numbers, constituted one half of his margin of victory in 2014.
The 2014 Baker increase was 10,000; roughly 1/4 of Baker’s spread.
MA Gov 2010 (Boston Results)
MA Gov 2014 (Boston Results)
A big tent approach to cultural questions like guns (where reform is realistically not going to happen) and abortion (perhaps committing them to PP funding for contraception but a free vote on abortion itself) while moving harder to the populist left on economics there than you would in the suburbs of the Northeast might be viable. A good friend is a Yooper (Jasiu is familiar with this term!), and he interned for Stupak and while he was pro-choice, is the first to admit Stupak is the only Dem who could win up there. And a guy who votes with us 75% of the time is better than a guy who votes with us 0% of the time.
Sometimes moving left on economics is enough though. I did some canvassing in the lower midwest in 2008 (Indiana and Ohio) and encountered a lot of voters who were pro-life and pro-gun voting for Obama out of economic anxiety and frustration with the war. Many of these voters probably hate Obamcare and like single payer, since one is a complex corporate monstrosity and the other is Canadian style healthcare.
But organizing in depth in these communities and meeting them where they are is essential, it’s not enough to doorknock every 4 years and hope the economy or the war outweighs cultural issues that cycle.
…to organize each other.
Outside organizers invariably miss local nuances, whereas folks know their neighbors’ little quirks – which aren’t always political. In addition people know their own interests, and dislike being defined from the outside.
Finally, successful long-term organizations are of necessity social. Some of my most successful work was done for the cost of hamburgers, hot dogs, charcoal…and most importantly permission to use the host’s front yard (and his name on the invitations). It was the host’s standing in the community, not the candidate or the campaign, that conferred credibility.
Democrats have to realize that an organizer’s ultimate job is to put himself out of business.
if black folks can cast them.
If they haven’t been prevented with Voter ID laws, statutorily prevented by felony convictions rendered by our legal system, or next up, redistricting so that districts don’t have equal number of people, but equal numbers of eligible voters.
That sounds incredibly condescending and racially tone deaf, even though I know that was not your intention at all, but the entire civil rights movement was an act of uncivil disruption in the face of state sponsored dehumanization. The BLM movement is a fine successor to that tradition, warts and all.
So hard to manage these political strategy discussions with each other with all this moral superiority flying around, but it is important to acknowledge our own privileged experience in the political arena and quit telling Black people how to organize themselves.
especially from you.
Thank you!
but it’s also important to be humble.
In politics people cling the hardest to aesthetic preferences, and ultimately on that score there is no accounting for tastes. Consequently disagreements about style are among the hardest to resolve.
Here at BMG there is a heavy preference for electoral politics and all that implies. BLM is playing a different game.
At the same time I hope we recognize the tradition of waging nonviolent struggle that accepts the necessity for grass-roots activists to take the burden of suffering onto ourselves. The practical necessity.
Tactics such as mau-mauing Bernie or blocking highways at rush hour grab headlines, but the game is deeper than that.
Are these tactics really the most powerful thing that BLM activists can do? We’ll have to see, that is the humble part. But it’s at least debatable.
Deep Breaths clarifying memo on #BlackLivesMatters.. link below
“in the end, if we want to win for ALL of us on racial, economic and social justice issues, we need multiple sets of tactics, working together. Some are disruptive tactics. Some are loving tactics. Some are truth-telling tactics. Some can only be taken on by white people. Some can only be taken on by people of color. Sometimes we need someone from the other strand to step in and hold us up. Other times, we have to step out and hold them up. Each of us has a different role to play but we all have to hold the collective space for movement building together.”
http://seattlish.com/post/126277994976/how-do-we-call-people-in-even-as-we-call-them-out
I think we just have to wait and see with Sanders. There’s a big difference between being “well-meaning” and leading, and that’s what Sanders has sought to be, and seeks further to be. White Vermont, white Madison, Wisconsin, white (and male) Netroots Nation–it’s a pattern, not an accident. Manifestos are very nice. Highly visible employees are–well, highly visible. But Sanders has no black constituents, and never has had the reputation is seeking out black staff or black advisers, so there should not be much surprise the polls show he hasn’t many black supporters. People are not stupid, and when one runs for president one’s whole life and its preoccupations need to come under review. In that sense, though he would despise the characterization, Sanders is the quintessence of white progressivism in terms of race: it talks the talk, but rarely walks the walk.
the right steps. I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that Sanders is “the quintessence of white progressivism.” That was BLM’s challenge, and he has responded to it. He can’t change what he was, only what he is. He can’t act in the future now, so of course, we have to wait and see, but it’s kind of unfair to hold the future against him.
I think we’re in agreement about white progressivism. That’s why I wrote this post, even though I’m a white progressive. But It’s unfair to indict Sanders on things he has little or no control over. He’s white. Not his fault. Vermont is white. Not his fault. Should he have moved to Mississippi? Black constituents? It’s not his fault he has few, if any, black constituents. He hasn’t been running for President all of his life. Try to hire black staff or advisors? Presumably, he could have done that, though probably not from Vermont.
The point is, he’s now gone farther than anyone else in addressing the concerns of BLM. He seems to be a pretty genuine guy. He’s also only one man. My guess is, he believes what he’s saying about racial justice. My guess is, he’ll take these issues to heart. But time, not either of us, will tell.
…which is among the whitest states in the union, and not his fault.
That doesn’t mean we should all run around being rude, but we should expect it. And we should use Bernie Sanders as our model when we respond. He was, at first, angry, but he got over it quickly, he listened, and he did what was right.
… I’ve read through this diary and all the comments. Some are thoughtful and trenchant. Some, not so much. There’s the perennial rehash of the arguments and the assumptions that ought to be sub-rosa but are, in stead, rather glaring. And I’m not convinced either way.
One the one hand, I’ve always found ‘hijacking’ somewhat distasteful. I’ve been to many a rally or otherwise ‘organized’ political event that was about topic X and/or candidate X that was disrupted by someone with an axe to grind about topic Y trying to hijack the energy of it. I dislike it, extremely, when it happens.
On the other hand, the situation is desperate and, as is said, desperate times call for desperate measures. I don’t want to be the one to point out that BLM is earnest in action, desperate in motivation and wrong-headed in their follow-through… I, personally, want black lives to matter to every living person on the planet where clearly, at present, they do not. As causes go, it’s one of the more worthy ones out there. .. and who wants to gainsay that, in any way…?
On the third hand… I’m not convinced that BLM would not have got what they wanted from Bernie Sanders simply by asking him. I think Mark Bails definition of the success of a political action being measured by the outcomes is slightly off target. I understand the discussion about Bernie as a well meaning, but essentially white and therefore naive, politician who needed a wake up call like the rest of us. I understand it. I don’t buy it. I think protests should be defined on the outcomes achieved only if those outcomes are not available by other means. I’m left with the uneasy feeling that Bernie Sanders, more particularly the relatively easy access to him, was used for what was, in effect, a publicity stunt. I’m distressed that Clinton, apparently, is hiding behind secret service protection to avoid similar contretemps.
On the fourth hand, publicity about this issue is very much needed. The repeated, often violent, cessation of the lives of blacks is an ongoing horror and a true disgrace. So, I’m not going to shed too many tears that Bernie’s rally was hijacked and he was forced to do something he’d probably willingly do if asked. If that is the price of the publicity I say pay it.
So, like I said, I still don’t know… I guess it might depend on what happens next.
agreement. I felt very uncomfortable with the hijacking of Sanders’ rally. But I’m open to that discomfort. Something has to be done. And it doesn’t have to be what I think is best.
From The Hill:
…that President Obama has been a bit conspicuous by his absence in this discussion? As President he has a powerful bully pulpit, and as an African American he unfortunately probably has direct experience with some of the profiling and mistreatment at the hands of authorities, albeit not in the last eight years or so. Eric Holder’s activities were pretty low key seemed. What a prophetic and authentic voice the President could raise to galvanize the nation and focus attention on these issues! While he’s at it he can propose new legislation now (require body cameras, federal standards for training and background checks, take investigations and prosecutions of police out of local hands as just some ideas) rather than waiting for candidates who won’t take office for another year and a half.