BLM Boston chapter activists appeared on Maddow’s show last night (Melissa Harris Perry subbing) and finally released an edited version of the video of their conversation with Hillary Clinton from last week. As you may recall, they scored a private meeting with Clinton after their attempt to disrupt her campaign event was blocked by the Secret Service.
The video provides a fascinating look at how people with different agendas approach an issue and talk past one another — a scenario that has played out here and on social media repeatedly. It seemed to me that the BLM Boston reps who met with Hillary were more interested in getting her to own up to her role in advocating for Bill Clinton’s anti-crime policies than discussing policymaking going forward. One of the activists, Daunasia Yancy, expressed disappointment that she didn’t hear “a reflection on (Clinton’s) part in perpetuating white supremacist violence.”
While I admire Yancy’s commitment, the mom in me found it impossible to resist the urge to face-palm when I read that comment. Clinton is a candidate for president, and you expect her to reflect on her personal role in “perpetuating white supremacist violence”? Lots of luck with that. Here is Clinton’s response to BLM’s opening salvo about systemic racism:
“Your analysis is totally fair. It’s historically fair. It’s psychologically fair. It’s economically fair. But you’re going to have to come together as a movement and say, ‘Here’s what we want done about it.'”
That didn’t sit well with one of the activists, Julius Jones, who basically accused Clinton of whitesplaining (not in so many words, but that was the gist) at the beginning of the second video, which can be seen here. And Clinton got a tad snippy in return.
I would embed the video, but the organization linked above, GOOD, has an exclusive and appears to be yanking them down when published elsewhere, so you’ll have to watch it at the link. Here’s a rough, edited-for-length transcript of the exchange referred to above:
JONES: “If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do.”
CLINTON: “I’m not telling you, I’m just telling you to tell me.”
JONES: “This is and has always been a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us.”
CLINTON: “If that is your position, then I will talk with only to white people about how we are going to deal with very real problems.”
JONES: “What you just said was a form of victim-blaming. You were saying what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to is change white hearts is to…”
CLINTON: “I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate…you’re not going to change every heart. You’re not…you may change some hearts, but if that’s all that happens, we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation.”
It’s worth watching both videos, which unfold not unlike some of the discussions seen here and elsewhere.
But BLM Boston has been slamming HRC on Twitter ever since the videos were released last night. That may throw a wrench into the theories some folks spun about BLM Boston being a Clinton ratfuck organization.
One of BLM Boston’s tweeted criticisms cites Reason.com as a source, which may launch a new round of speculation — is the group shilling for Rand Paul?
Nope. BLM Boston has its agenda — they are idealists. Hillary Clinton has hers — she is a pragmatist. What did you think?
Bobby Thomson
Not a Clinton ratfuck.
ETA and seemingly much more interested in blaming the right people than changing things, at least according to how they’ve chosen to edit.
TaMara (BHF)
I’m not getting in the middle of this, because it seems last time it got ugly. But I will say this as a manager and business owner – if you have a problem, what I want from you is not that you come to me with just the problem, I want to hear your ideas of how you think it can be fixed. If you’re experiencing the problem, I think you’re the best person to also see a solution.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: Nope, a Clinton ratfuck, as in, originated by Clinton or her supporters. Some people were saying BLM was a ratfuck against Sanders, and they used the fact that BLM Boston got to Clinton’s event too late to interrupt it as evidence that they were in the bag for Hillz.
ETA: Hopefully it’s clear I don’t share that theory. But I’ve seen it bandied about.
dedc79
I mean, the first half of the sentence, I can understand, but the second part?
Why have a meeting at all if this is the message?
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: you misunderstood me. This clearly wasn’t instigated by Clinton.
raven
@dedc79: To get all up in your face.
beltane
Are there any people in the Rand Paul campaign who are smart enough to execute such a brilliant ratfuck?
Jake Nelson
@dedc79: “If you don’t know what you did wrong, then I’m not going to tell you.”
Always a productive attitude, that.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: I don’t think it was instigated by anyone either. My point was, there are people who were saying BLM Boston (or BLM in general) acts on behalf of Clinton to sandbag Sanders.
dedc79
Betty, that doesn’t sound like idealism. It sounds like the opposite of idealism. And I can understand where that absolute lack of idealism would come from, but it clearly did not make for a productive meeting.
ETA: I wrote “absolute lack of idealism.” That’s obviously not very artfully put, but “nihilism” seemed unfair.
Zandar
You come to a presidential candidate to talk policy, and you don’t have policies to talk about.
Not very productive.
It’s great that BLM is directly challenging Sanders and Clinton. It’s necessary. Also necessary: the plan to get rid of the Republican control of Congress, when they have every reason to make sure that your stated goals are never, ever achieved.
Botsplainer
I’m seeing the loudest of the current rack of advocates from BLM as being Bolsheviks, out to destroy liberals deemed to be not sufficiently purely progressive.
I hear kumbaya. I also hear drums and chanting and see giant puppets when I read phrases and admissions that they wanted to hear from Hillary.
raven
Guess what folks, you don’t get to define what is “productive”.
schrodinger's cat
What do BLM activists want from Hillary or Bernie for that matter?
John
Like every other disorganized, decentralized movement, BLM will make a lot of noise, issue conflicting and disjointed statements, and be generally ineffectual at anything other than discrediting the cause they espouse. The civil rights movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s were effective because there was planning about how best to present a united front. Pressure was applied to reluctant potential allies in an organized manner, not through haphazard stage invasions. The most radical elements of the coalition were pushed to the fringes, but not expelled altogether, providing a visibly more threatening alternative to the generally peaceful protesters at the center of the movement.
I admire the effort BLM has made to make people aware of the awful amount of state sanctioned violence directed at black people. However, a lot of the messaging seems counterproductive if the actual goal is to enlist the Democratic power structure in the cause of ending the violence.
Roger Moore
@Bobby Thomson:
The underlying problem with an organization that can’t define, much less police, its membership is that it also has no control over its message. Right now, just about anyone can call themselves a BLM activist and do what they feel like without anyone being able to conclusively disown them. It’s ratfucker’s dream.
Cervantes
@raven:
Or anything else, for that matter.
Betty Cracker
@John: Maybe. I think it could go either way — it could travel the Code Pink route to irrelevancy, or leaders could emerge to create and drive an agenda. It’s early yet to write it off, IMO.
Cervantes
You’re on thin ice …
raven
@Cervantes: When you said there was and answer from W Va what did you mean? I couldn’t find anything.
Keith G
In big time politics, when it comes the the conflicts between the highly idealistic and the people/policies they want to change, I think about the ending of the movie Lawrence of Arabia.
CrustyDem
What do we want?
When do we want them?
How do we want them?
WereBear
I see is as Statement/Fix-It, myself.
It’s like that line item that says “Education” on a non-profit. That’s valuable… but I don’t know why they are, in that case, only focusing on a few people. Do they think that will carry over because controversy gets out there?
EZSmirkzz
Once more from the top Start with respect.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: In 1917 the Bolsheviks won.
Laertes
When you’re talking to the most powerful person you’ll ever meet, and they ask you what you want, you’d best have an answer. If you don’t, you’re wasting a valuable opportunity.
sparrow
@raven: There are no objective measures that ever matter? Or only some people get to apply the yardsticks?
Joel
I’m in my thirties, and my twenties weren’t all that long ago. But it’s so very hard not to be ageist.
Joel
@Gin & Tonic: That worked out splendidly!
Cervantes
@raven:
Did not say the answer was from there. It was from me.
burnspbesq
@Zandar:
… Is still fundamentally the wrong plan, because violence against people of color by law enforcement, by and large, isn’t coming from the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, or IRS Criminal Investigation.
This is fundamentally a state and local problem. It has to be fought out at that level. If BLM are actually interested in change, as opposed to just making noise, they need to be in the faces of county DAs and state AGs, not Democratic candidates for President. When I see action on that level, I will start to think BLM activists stand for something more than getting their faces on my teevee.
John
@raven: If you mean no one outside of the disorganized, decentralized movement that has been dubbed BLM can define productive, you’re probably right, because productivity would imply there is a goal upon which everyone has agreed. As the various elements that make up BLM seem to be unable to generate a specific message other than “Black Lives Matter” (a noble message, for sure, but one that has obviously been deliberately misinterpreted by the racists who support state violence against black people), productivity would seem to hinge on the general spread of that philosophy. Based on that criterion, does it seem that the various chapters of BLM have been effective or productive? If the goal, instead, is to enlist the support of elected officials to make structural changes that help to end the violence against black people, does it seem like telling the likely nominee of the Democratic Party “If you don’t know what you did wrong, then I’m not going to tell you” is a productive act?
askew
Hillary did herself no favors in these videos. She had the most time to be prepared for the BLM confrontation. They tweeted ahead of time they would be attending her event. They didn’t rush the stage (smart move with her Secret Service detail) and talked to her calmly and politely. Complete opposite of what they did to O’Malley and Sanders. And Hillary still screwed it up. She condescended to them. Gave them her canned talking points and then said defensively that she should only talk to white people. WTF? This showed her limitations of her political skill. Obama or Bill would have had no issue handling this meeting effectively. I think even Biden could have done a better job.
All 3 candidates screwed up their initial meeting with BLM. Hillary was condescending. Bernie was defensive and stormed off stage and cancelled meetings. O’Malley stood there gobsmacked and then said “All Lives Matter”. What matters is what the candidates do post-BLM interaction.
Sanders took a long time but finally released a criminal justice platform. It’s good, not great. And he is sitting down with DeRay from BLM to discuss CJR. He has also amended his standard stump to talk about CJR.
Hillary’s team began spinning her interaction immediately after it happened. They told the media that BLM didn’t want any cameras for the meeting, etc. BLM flatly said Hillary’s team was lying. Hillary has yet to release a specific criminal justice platform but her team is going around twitter claiming that she has and keeps linking to articles about her CJ speech with a few vague points. They are overly defensive and don’t seem to be capable of learning.
O’Malley right after the BLM protest at NN gave multiple interviews to AA reporters. He set-up meetings with BLM and other activists. He got their input on his CJR plan. And then he released the most progressive, comprehensive CJR plan that has been praised by BLM, civil rights activists and immigration activists for realizing immigration and CJ are intertwined. He is still doing outreach and continuing to meet with AA reporters, groups, etc.
At the end of the day, it won’t matter. Hillary will be our nominee. But, this shows why she is so deeply flawed and is going to face real problems in the general election.
greennotGreen
It’s not just black people who care that police are killing black and brown (and any other color) America citizens. Those in authority (who are predominantly white) can stop the disbursement of military supplies to the police, and they can call for federal investigations where appropriate. But they may not be able to change the community dynamic if they don’t know what needs to be changed. That’s where BLM could make a real difference. Making people admit guilt for things they weren’t directly responsible for may make BLM activists feel good, but it may also be counterproductive in changing policies going forward…and there definitely needs to be change.
ET
What was the purpose of this meeting? I really don’t understand. I now they were stopped from disrupting an earlier event and this was a way of hearing them out but what was their goal. Just to rant? Just to get HRC to take on all of Bill’s policy decisions? To get her committed to ???????
I am sure this is part of me not understand BLM’s larger goals – I assume they have them(?) – or is this just inchoate(?) activity. Is it because it is so fragmented that is has no overarching operating principle(s)? Is each individual time we see BLM only what that small group wants and not part of something more? There is definitely value in agitating but if it isn’t something more then it will loose steam just fade away.
Am I just too old (47) or too white to understand the how of this?
Emma
Idealists are necessary in politics; they point to what is intrinsically wrong. But they are usually lousy politicians.
Incitatus for Senate
They seemed intent on Hillary accepting personal responsibility for pretty much everything bad that happened in the 90s. There is obviously nothing wrong with asking her about decisions made by Bill when he was president, just like Jeb gets asked about W. And then Hillary and Jeb have to figure out how to answer those questions without completely throwing their predecessor under the bus. But these BLM guys did not seem to be interested in anything constructive, they just wanted to fuck her over on tape. The BLM movement is really important, but these particular people are not helping, and seem to be actively bad for the effort.
sparrow
@Joel: In which direction? I do find the attitude of “I don’t have to explain to you” and “I’m not doing that work for you, look it up yourself” to be really weird for self-proclaimed activists. I mean, fine, I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want, but then you seem to be going at this activism things in a really odd, purposely unhelpful way.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Jake Nelson: Oh God, a perfect way for a marriage to lead to divorce.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Because of the lousy writing or the sentiment?
Kropadope
Huh, dialogue, two people talking…to each other…imagine that.
An apology would be nice; you can print the text, frame it on your wall. I actually think Clinton was right trying to focus on changes in current policy, how she would make good on her mistakes.
EconWatcher
@Laertes:
This, exactly.
Based at least on this snippet, the BLM folks need more experience, or they need to pick better spokespeople, or they will achieve nothing.
I’m no Hillary fan (as clear from previous threads), but she was really spot on in this:
“I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate…you’re not going to change every heart. You’re not…you may change some hearts, but if that’s all that happens, we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation.”
Nashville_fan
Dear Black Lives Matter:
-Identify laws, institutions, and programs that are in need of an overhaul.
-Decide which ones are the TOP priority.
-Move forward in that direction.
Sincerely,
A Black Life
P.S. When folks take the time to listen, be sure you are ready with something relevant to say.
Frankensteinbeck
Blacks have been loudly getting shit in America lately, and quietly getting shit for thirty years before that, and before that a long, complicated history of getting shit. I think racism is the dominant political issue of our time, the central drive of one half of our political system. I have strong sympathy with activists who want to make it a central issue on the Democratic side, to make sure their allies are fighting the same war.
What I don’t understand is the focus the far end of the liberal spectrum has with punishing evildoers, that making bad people pay is the most important political consideration. I don’t understand it here, and I haven’t understood it when people make the same demand of Obama.
Belafon
@ET:
I wonder if that was a big part of the problem. They may have been hoping to interrupt the Clinton rally, but weren’t able to. When they got to talk to her, they had their statements they were going to make on stage (a rally is a one-direction communication), but weren’t prepared to take questions.
And all of this is where I’m pretty much out of my league. I’m an engineer, and would be trying to find solutions. My wife doesn’t like it because a lot of times because she just wants to get something off her chest. I suspect if I tried that here, a lot of my solutions would sound patronizing (I see that when I offer people around me “solutions”).
Baud
Mission accomplished. Good work Team HRC and BLM.
Zandar
@burnspbesq: Both need to be done.
But you’re 100% correct on the starting place.
City councils, school boards, county commissions, state reps and senators.
This is where we need to begin.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@TaMara (BHF):
I wish, i think, that i had the pleasure of working for you.
However in my experiance, it rarely works that way. As I have rarely approached management about a problem without at least two solutions to said problem.
I can only remeber one time in which a solution was implemented.
Anecdata, of course, and milages may vary.
Blaming the victim, and expecting the victim to solve the problem is a f*cking pipe dream.
I mean, seriously. Asking a woman raped to solve the problem of rape?
Really?
Asking a kid who gets picked on to solve bullying?
Really?
I could go on…
…
Botsplainer
@John:
The messaging is hugely counterproductive with regard to the vitriol leveled at the two candidates most inclined to do a lot of heavy lifting to help. In my estimation, SCLC was successful in the 60s due to the extent of widespread local activism across multiple southern cities in a scope tat could not be ignored. Somehow, the example of that success got lost, all in service to loud national protests in NYC, DC and LA, along with punditry appearances.
Local activism disappeared in a big way, and looking for a presidential Green Lantern just won’t do it to correct local police departments.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
I sensed that first and most of all, they wanted from Hillary and others a confession of sins past and perhaps still ongoing, as part of a purification of hearts in society at large. Which I think they see as a prerequisite for change.
Hillary was trying to impress upon them the need for a practical agenda; having one and working towards it was what gained the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s its successes.
I tend to agree with her, After all, she has eaten salt longer than they.
dedc79
@Botsplainer:
This is a big problem for progressivism generally. Too many people seem to think that being a politically active progressive means voting once every four years for a Democratic president and nothing else.
karen marie
The people representing BLM are not learning. I don’t know who they’re getting advice from, but my prediction is that if they continue with this unproductive shit throwing, they’re going to have the sticking power of Occupy.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
The latter, of course, and I’m not saying I disagree with you.
raven
@Cervantes: Yes, that was it. Someone mentioned Emory and W VA said he disliked all things Emory because they had fired Don West. Thanks!
patrick II
That’s a tough one for Hillary, they won’t tell her what they want done, but if she does something without asking them what they want done she is a racist.
That’s more than idealism vs. pragmatism.
Kylroy
Back when I worked customer service, when I wanted a call to stop wandering, I would ask the caller “What would you like me to do?” It worked wonders at getting people to articulate what the call was supposed to accomplish.
Seems Hillary did essentially the same thing here. I can’t view the videos (at work), how did the BLM activists respond to it?
Big ole hound
BLM has no solution just as the NAACP had none once the legislation against discrimination was passed. The harder they look for blame with no solution the longer many people will remain unchanged and foster another generation of bigots.Until the hardcore 25% of both whites and blacks get off “us versus them” mentality nothing will change. The past 50 years has proved that and reinforced the definition of insanity.
Eric U.
I think I’m a pretty smart person, and I have to say that I’m somewhat at a loss about what to do about this problem. Black Americans have been systematically excluded from the power structure of their country, and to ask BLM to come up with solutions is probably a little unfair. “Um, quit killing us?” And that’s where I really run out of ideas. So I think our next president needs to lead on this issue, not just ask the victims what they want.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Anarchists. They want to burn the world down. Perfectly understandable, being black in America sucks.
But don’t expect a lot of people to sign on for that agenda.
raven
@sparrow: I don’t know about ever, I’m talking about BLM now.
Baud
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
I don’t understand your analogy. Women have taken the lead in addressing rape issues. And African Americans have taken the lead in addressing racial issues.
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat: My guess is nothing. The point doesn’t seem to be to raise awareness amongst allies as to break ties with allies. If there’s consciousness raising going on, it seems to be aimed at people who might think that the Democratic party offers solutions.
Laertes
It’s frustrating as hell to watch this. I hate the way my countrymen are getting gunned down by the police, but it’s not personal in the way that it would be if I was a member of the ethnic group that’s being oppressed.
I could think of myself as eager to be an “ally” but I have little voice and no power, so my good wishes aren’t worth a damn and that’d just be empty self-congratulation. My opinion of the BLM movement, one way or the other, won’t do anyone a bit of good. But there they were, in the room with someone with real power, someone who’ll most likely soon be in a position to do them a lot of good, someone who’s asking them what they want and all they can think to do is purity-troll her.
I imagine this movement will grow into something more potent eventually. I hope it happens fast.
boatboy_srq
@Gin & Tonic: @Joel: Actually the Mensheviks won – in February. The Bolsheviks won in October. There were an intervening eight whole months that the Mensheviks effed up – but effed up not by not supporting the serfs but by continuing the (very bloody, and for the Russians going very badly) war. So the Bolsheviks did win, but they did so because the Mensheviks didn’t fix an unrelated problem. Sounds very similar.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Jake Nelson:
Nice paraphrase.
Assumes that my answer to the conun drum of my black eye, should be “dont punch me in the face.”
She was asking them to do her research for her.
To that i’ll have to take an anagram from the Linux/Unix world:
RTFM.
…
Cervantes
@patrick II:
I agree.
Baud
@karen marie:
Being a liberal activist group isn’t easy. Most fail, I would guess. Still too early to know how BLM will progress.
rikyrah
@Zandar:
How do you NOT bring up Militarization of Police?
The Prison Industrial Complex?
What would HER Justice Department do about police departments.
Mass incarceration
Stop and Frisk
Marijuana legalization
the list goes on and on and has NOTHING to do with ‘ respectability politics’.
karen marie
@askew: Oh, please. Are you 12?
Peale
@Baud: Except in this case, African Americans don’t really have much say, even collectively, about changing police behavior. They can band together all they want, but they will still have no control over the police. When the police misbehave, politicians either run for the hills or pretend that they don’t really control them, either, or pretend that they can only rubber-stamp police budgets because they don’t want to look soft on crime.
Laertes
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
And it’s totally fair for her to do that. When some random idiot asks you a racism-101 question on some message board somewhere, it’s totally reasonable to call them out for trolling and tell them to do their own goddamn research. When you get a meeting with the most powerful person you’ll ever meet in your life, doing their research for them is your job. You’ve got the opportunity to educate them. You’re a fool if you don’t seize it. Refusing to do so looks an awful lot like being unprepared.
Baud
@Peale:
No, but they know what they would like to see changed, even if they can’t control it in their own.
Belafon
@Laertes: And if there are two groups that need to figure it out right now, it’s Democrats and blacks. From a political standpoint, if Republicans gain the presidency, they’ll write every law they can to suppress Democratic votes. From the point of blacks, a Republican won’t stop crushing minorities at deporting Latinos.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: Good questions all, they should have you as their spokesperson.
Bobby Thomson
@patrick II: no, that’s someone with an agenda. And not a good one. This isn’t about tactics. Ratfucking or pro bono, it’s the same difference.
Belafon
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
There’s a manual for race relations? Do they also have one for raising kids?
karen marie
@Baud: They’ve got me rolling my eyes now every time I hear “BLM activist.”
Peale
@Laertes: I think that’s a fair point. If Hillary had offered to put together a “Study Group” to inform her on possible solutions, I don’t think BLM would have found that answer satisfactory. It would look like another privileged deferral. It does seem like either someone either has to already have an action plan on the issue or they will be cast aside almost immediately. Maybe they’ve cobbled together something on Twitter.
Incitatus for Senate
@Laertes: “When you get a meeting with the most powerful person you’ll ever meet in your life, doing their research for them is your job”
Exactly. There are a few million other folks who would love to be talking to her, so do your fucking homework.
Baud
@karen marie:
It seems a general trait of a lot of liberal activists to be unable to move onto Stage 2 of their strategy. Call it the Occupy syndrome if you want.
RP
I agree that there needs to be a lot more activism at the local level. And, at the risk of sounding like an insensitive white dolt, I think they need to focus more on police tactics and the role of law enforcement in our society than on racial issues. Make this about abuse of power, not race: there are more concrete steps that can be taken to deal with those issues and they’ll get a much broader base of support. Given that the black community suffers the most from our f*cked up police culture, they’ll also gain the most if we change it.
Kylroy
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: So, when your boss asks you basic questions about how something operates, do you usually reply with “RTFM”? How does that go over?
Another Holocene Human
Yancy’s mom died when she was a child. She was sent to live with relatives and described it like living in the Dursley household in the Harry Potter books.
Laertes
@Kylroy:
Right?
It’s really simple. When you’re presenting to someone with some power, you tell them the things that you want them to know, then you ask them to do the things you want them to do. If you can’t do that, don’t bother walking in the door. The presenters before you and after you have got their shit together, and might get what they want. You won’t.
Another Holocene Human
@Kylroy: I used to have a boss who refused to hear me over and over when I tried to explain that relational databases don’t work that way. I didn’t tell him to RTFM because I learned that I just had to keep repeating the same song for several days and he would come around and ask me to do it as if it was his idea. :D
Cervantes
@rikyrah:
Exactly.
Kropadope
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Please, Clinton put forth ideas such as reforming prisons and housing fairness, perhaps not in full detail, but those are constructive places to start. I’m not sure what the BLM reps wanted, an apology or if nothing she said could have been good enough?
EconWatcher
As a cranky old (white) man, this is why I don’t have much time for leftists. Liberals usually like to talk about policies and solutions. Leftists just want to get in your face. Reminds me of college, when the policy solutions offered by lefty friends often consisted of overthrowing capitalism–which would totally eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, jock itch….
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Baud:
Yes, they and we have, yet women are still raped with something resembling impunity, and lynched by cop has black bodies piling up like cord wood.
Asking the powerless to come up with solution to the abuses of power is f-ing ridiculous.
Does that make sense?
…
Laertes
@Laertes:
Though, to be fair, once I look at it that way I suppose they DID do it that way.
Tell her what you want her to know = “You’ve played a role in perpetuating white supremacy.”
Tell her what you want her to do = “Own up to it.”
I think that’s a stupid thing to ask for, but I suppose it’s not fair to say they weren’t asking for something. Asking for something pointless that you’re obviously not going to get is, IMO, indistinguishable from being totally unprepared.
EZSmirkzz
It’s a shame you PFYs don’t have some music to coalesce around like we had in the heady days of the politics of confrontation.
You all know that Bernie Sanders and Julian Bond were members of Snick, ( SNCC Student Non-violent Coordination Committee,) so I won’t go into who’s to bless and whose to blame for all of America’s societal ills, or why BLM has to exist today. I think Hillary is wrong about changing hearts, but you have to target the heart in times like these when emotional thinking is ascendant over intellectual thinking as things were in the 1960s. Trump is making an impact for that very reason, not because he is overwhelming us with policy nuances.
So BLM may in fact be deploying the correct tactical maneuver while offended progressives and liberals are demanding strategic goals and concrete proposals to address a systemic cancer, which was never eradicated by the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
This is a topic which no politician wishes to address in that they have all been doing what they can, which is nothing, so long as the moral institutions of society, churches, synagogues, mosques, Kiwana’s, Chamber of Commerces etc. do not make the end of racism a priority and goal of their own institutions, which they won’t since by and large they are grifters in heart and soul.
But we cannot ignore that American society is being driven, not by rational thinking but emotional twerking, and so long as we participate in that twerking, we are as much a part of the problem as the racism we deplore.
I would suggest those of you with a spiritual bent getting in touch with your god, and those of you with skeptical bent to start thinking of solutions to emotional problems that will actually work politically in an emotional charged public.
Hillary and Bernie’s Achilles heel at the moment is trying to ignite an emotional response to their candidacy with rational thinking policies. The conservatives are fanning the flames of emotional thinking which is totally obscuring the smoke signals of rational thinking.
To quote the Scripture: “Be wise my son, that I may make reply to him that is taunting me.”
aimai
@askew: Oh, fuck off. The demand that anyone personally apologize for white supremacism is a non starter–there is literally nothing that anyone can say that will satisfy that demand because its a demand for emotional healing which no single individual can provide. None of the candidates can successfully negotiate the right response for BLM because BLM doesn’t want to accept any gestures–all gestures being merely gestures. If you don’t ask for something concrete and set benchmarks for achievving specific goals you are just setting the other person up for failure. I’ve got no problem with that–if people don’t want to vote for a given democratic candidate or hate that candidate they should go right on pursuign that as a line of action for themselves. But don’t kid yourself that it is a political strategy for getting something specific done legislatively. Because its not. It makes as much sense as saying that Obama would have to personally apologize for not having gotten the private option before pursuing expanding medicare. People apologizing doesn’t mean shit. Its a stupid thing to ask for when you are given the chance to make a specific demand that might actually get action. Come to think of it its like asking the genii in the bottle to apologize first as your first wish rather than making the first wish. Its the very definition of a lost opportunity.
Cervantes
@Eric U.:
Good points also.
Baud
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
No, it doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think most of us would say that powerless people should have solutions imposed on them by powerful people.
Josie
Has it occurred to anyone that it is just slightly sexist to assume that Hillary supported the criminal justice laws passed under Bill? Of course, she can’t come right out and say that any more than Jeb can say that W screwed the pooch in Iraq. She has, however, always seemed to me to be more progressive and attuned to the problems of the disenfranchised. Those people might have made some incorrect assumptions that caused them to waste their opportunity.
Another Holocene Human
@RP: You’re making a great argument, and we should do that! But I’ve been thinking over the last several days (as a white progressive) that we need to address this rift and breach of trust between black progressives and white progressives. We all agree on the same goals but seem to have problems communicating and working together.
I feel like there is a need to really, seriously, work on racial bias again. Just back to basics, teach children (and adults!) what is unconscious bias and how to counteract it. Throw in some cognitive behavior therapy. Discuss the statistics. Use a multimedia approach. Discuss representation; show some videos.
They did some of those things in the school where I grew up (we saw a video on representation narrated by … Bill Cosby!) but I’ve found out that most places never even tried. And what we were presented wasn’t even enough.
We all have to live in this society together. We all would benefit from less microaggressions, misrepresentation, and unneeded and unnecessary confrontations with coworkers, clients, family, and random strangers fueled by unconscious bias. We can do this. And that sort of thing goes double for the police, who deal with the public all day long.
Where I work, the lawyers decided that a couple of hours every two years was sufficient for “diversity training”. Okay, that is Jokertown, that doesn’t do shit. Police Academy is too short. They should be transforming people in there, and not into paranoid, diseased nutsacks with their finger on the trigger, okay? They should be going deep into human psychology and be learning to master their own. There should be no irrepressed ids running around.
Patricia Kayden
@Zander: And isn’t it a bit stupid to have expected Clinton to say “I supported racist policies in the past” or words to that effect? BLM better get politically astute quickly. They seem very naive and impulsive.
raven
@EZSmirkzz: You mean like this?
“Mau Mau (Amerikon)”
Whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant
Both to us now and to you
We are the present
We are the future
You are the past
Pay your dues and get outta the way
‘Cause we’re not the way you used to be
When you were very young
We’re something new
We don’t quite know what it is
Or particularly care
We just do it – You gotta do it
Let the music do it, take you there
Do it, do it, do it – gotta do it
Something new, something new, something new
New, New
Kylroy
@Laertes: I mean, maybe. Probably, even. But as you said, asking Clinton to self-flagellate as a prerequisite to further discussion seems a really unproductive hill to die on.
Back to the boss analogy: you’re having a meeting about problems caused by policies your boss supported. Is opening the meeting by demanding an apology for past actions really the best way to solve the current issue?
Kropadope
@Josie:
Check the article, she was a spokesperson for the law in question.
Calouste
@Laertes: If you want something from someone who has a lot more power then you, and consequently, a lot more on their mind then just you, you want to give them a question or proposal that they can give a quick, simple, and positive answer to. Second, the engineering rule: break up a problem that is too big to handle in one go into smaller problems that you can handle and solve those.
justawriter
Kind of makes me wish all us left wing loonies were being directed by the Ghost of Saul Alinsky. Or if we won’t read Reveille or Rules at least read a little Sun Tzu.
Nick
@Peale:
Well, right — none of us do. That’s why, when you have a chance to talk to the Democratic front-runner for President, you think about what you would like to do if you were her, and you bring it up with her. That’s the whole point of activism — to be active enough that someone with a big stick hears you.
Another Holocene Human
@Josie: My memories of the 90s are fading fast, but Hilary did not exactly maintain a low profile. She and “Tipper” were running around trying censor videogames and music, authoritarian lite, which was number one reason I was against her in 2008. (Iraq war authorization was the second.)
Now when she came to State she starting pushing a non-sucky feminist agenda and she inspired great loyalty in the people who worked for her. So my opinion of her changed.
But I feel like Bill’s policies are fair game. As far as that kind of stuff went they always presented to the world that they were a unit. Bill liked to have a lot of advisors but would make his own decisions, but I can’t think of a single issue where she’s staked out a different position than Bill. Instead, Bill has gone around explaining why all the shitty stuff he did was politically necessary at the time but he didn’t really believe in it.
Cervantes
@justawriter:
Could not agree more.
Sherparick
@ET: The purpose of the meeting was to get their message out there and that they did. I do wonder if there is a bit of Republican ratf..king in this whole thing in that Democrats are the principle target, but then Democrats need to know they can’t take the Black (or Hispanic vote) for granted. Also,a lot of the anti-crime and War on Drug bills were actually championed by members of the the Black Caucus in the late 80s and in the nineties (I remember Charles Rangel particularly on the “Crack epidemic.”
I biggest problem with both BLM and OWS movements is 1) it seems so much about the ego of the activists and getting their 15 minutes and 2) the lack of local political organization and staying power. I would love it if they and similar group was going through every county in the states of the Old Confederacy and start challenging people to get register and get organized to defend their rights from the Teahadist’ regimes that now rule from the Rio Grande to the Ohio River. Because that is what the gremlins in the Conservative and White Theocrat Movement did 40 years ago.
Frankensteinbeck
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Asking the powerless to implement solutions to being oppressed is ridiculous. If they’re lucky, they can get the sympathy of someone powerful, who offers to implement what they come up with and makes a few suggestions. Refusing that offer? Also ridiculous.
Another Holocene Human
I have no idea what problem BLM Boston has with Clinton’s policing initiatives in the 90s although I’m sure I’ll hear about it around the ‘net sooner or later, but let it not be said that Bill didn’t have his share of bone-head ideas, like school uniforms.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@EZSmirkzz: Your comments on emotion are well taken. Another way to look at our current politics is tribalism run amok. “You’re in my tribe, so I support you.”
Obama has tried on multiple occasions to get us to think about different emotions and different, larger tribes. His speech that mentioned the importance of us being Citizens and the one that talked about us being Our Brothers’ Keeper are elements of this. He gets this stuff, but he – as gifted as he is as a speaker and a politicians – shows how difficult it is.
We know that fear and anger are powerful emotions, and riled up voters show up at the polls.
I don’t know the solution. We need to stop thinking less with our lizard brains. We need to have a counter to the screaming and fear that is being whipped up by the Teabaggers. I have seen some indications that O’Malley gets it, too, but he’s a work in progress.
Remember when the press went all gaga over Hillary in the 2008 campaign? When they thought she was tearing up in her “I just don’t want to see us go back” response to a question in NH. Policies matter, character and background matter, but we’re social creatures. The emotional connection needs to be there, too. Hillary would be good to remember that episode…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Laertes:
You might be surprise to discover that every black person who has traveled with a semblance of ease in the white world has done plenty of heavy lifting on the “research” front, as we are generally congenial, unthreatening and open.
Frankly after 40 some odd years of attempting to be a credit to my “race”, i am f*cking tired of it.
Do we really need anymore of a message than “stop treating us like shit?”
…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@EZSmirkzz: Your comments on emotion are well taken. Another way to look at our current politics is tribalism run amok. ‘You’re in my tribe, so I support you.’
Obama has tried on multiple occasions to get us to think about different emotions and different, larger tribes. His speech that mentioned the importance of us being Citizens and the one that talked about us being Our Brothers’ Keeper are elements of this. He gets this stuff, but he – as gifted as he is as a speaker and a politicians – shows how difficult it is.
We know that fear and anger are powerful emotions, and riled up voters show up at the polls.
I don’t know the solution. We need to stop thinking less with our lizard brains. We need to have an answer to the screaming and fear that is being whipped up by the Teabaggers. I have seen some indications that O’Malley gets it, too, but he’s a work in progress.
Remember when the press went all gaga over Hillary in the 2008 campaign? When they thought she was tearing up in her ‘I just don’t want to see us go back’ response to a question in NH. Policies matter, character and background matter, but we’re social creatures. The emotional connection needs to be there, too. Hillary would do good to remember that episode…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@EZSmirkzz: Your comments on emotion are well taken. Another way to look at our current politics is tribalism run amok. ‘You’re in my tribe, so I support you.’
Obama has tried on multiple occasions to get us to think about different emotions and different, larger tribes. His speech that mentioned the importance of us being Citizens and the one that talked about us being Our Brothers’ Keeper are elements of this. He gets this stuff, but he – as gifted as he is as a speaker and a politicians – shows how difficult it is.
We know that fear and anger are powerful emotions, and riled up voters show up at the polls.
I don’t know the solution. We need to stop thinking less with our lizard brains. We need to have an answer to the screaming and fear that is being whipped up by the Teabaggers. I have seen some indications that O’Malley gets it, too, but he’s a work in progress.
Remember when the press went all gaga over Hillary in the 2008 campaign? When they thought she was tearing up in her ‘I just don’t want to see us go back’ response to a question in NH. Policies matter, character and background matter, but we’re social creatures. The emotional connection needs to be there, too. Hillary would do good to remember that episode…
FWIW.
(Trying for a 3rd time to get this to post…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Belafon:
You have eyes, there are books…
…
Laertes
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
This is what I’m talking about. Techniques for dealing with random idiots in chatrooms (like me) are not appropriate for meetings with the next president of the goddamn united states. “Do my research for me” is a time-worn trolling technique when I do it because I have no power and it’s just a way for me to derail a thread.
Hillary Clinton is not trying to derail a thread. The techniques you’d use in that situation are not appropriate for a meeting with her. She’s got power, and when you get a meeting with her you’ve got an opportunity to persuade her to use it in ways that would suit you. Have a plan.
Calouste
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Asking them to come up with a solution, or a proposal for one, is not ridiculous. What would be ridiculous is asking them to solve it, they don’t have the resources for that. But they could give a proposal to Clinton, and Clinton, once elected, will have the resources to implement that proposal. Just as an example, they could ask that all cop shootings are investigated by the Feds. Not a difficult proposal to come up with, but one they obviously can’t implement.
Josie
@Kropadope: @Another Holocene Human: Sounds like I was way off base on that. I must admit that I was not paying much attention at that time due to working and raising three boys. I do remember that my husband, a criminal defense attorney, was much more tuned in and was not happy with Bill Clinton during his administration.
Laertes
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
This is what I’m talking about. Techniques for dealing with random idiots in chatrooms (like me) are not appropriate for meetings with the next president of the goddamn united states. “Do my research for me” is a time-worn trolling technique when I do it because I have no power and it’s just a way for me to derail a thread.
Hillary Clinton is not trying to derail a thread. The techniques you’d use in that situation are not appropriate for a meeting with her. She’s got power, and when you get a meeting with her you’ve got an opportunity to persuade her to use it in ways that would suit you. Have a plan.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Heh. I guess it didn’t like this Guardian link – …
Will that work alone? Nope. Let’s try stripping the h t t p … Nope. Anyway, a link to the Clinton ‘crying’ in NH is easy to find.
Cheers,
Scott.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@karen marie:
The movement is just so wearying…
Thanks.
You are a credit to your “race.”
…
brantl
@askew: Hillary didn’t screw this up. BL?M did. Don’t go to somebody and tell them you want them to move the levers of power, and have no idea where you want them moved to
Another Holocene Human
@Sherparick: Ugh.
BLM protested at a Jeb! event. These sorts of protests have been opportunistic, and since they are getting media and more conventional protests are not, expect more of them.
Getting media is not about your “15 minutes”, it’s about raising awareness for their issue. Even the highway blocking cri de coeur protests are not getting attention, but this candidate bombing is. So more people will gravitate towards it.
Getting arrested did not get the same press. Remember the day everyone’s favorite people on Twitter got arrested? Media? Doesn’t care. Candidate gets protesters at event? Roll clip.
The youth group that organized in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s killing was definitely working on voter registration and youth education about government. So is HealSTL. But beyond bad faith arguments, I feel like white progressives in person and on the internet are trolling black progressives and lefties into staking out increasing agnostic positions towards the political process. I mean if I’m a Black progressive and Democrats ice me out, that leaves exactly zero major parties. So now what options do you have to impact the political process?
White progressives: stop being dicks.
piratedan
@Laertes: it’s a matter of asking Hilary to don the hair shirt while she’s running for the highest public office in the land seems a mite ambitious and unrealistic if you ask me. Even if she decides to do so, against any sane and rational judgement, what has it bought you as a member of BLM? You get to claim a scalp perhaps? How does that translate into anything tangible for your movement/issue?
Recognition that it’s an issue… okay, sure. We also see that Immigration and infrastructure and climate change and economic inequity are also issues, what the fuck are we doing about them? Dems at least, appear to be trying to offer tangible solutions. The GOP, if they can’t deport you, incarcerate you or bomb you, you can rely on their fundalmentalist police to make sure that you’re complying with their standards.
I understand the frustration in getting somebody, anybody to hear you out and take you seriously, but if all you’re doing is screaming about the water rising and haven’t done anything to pack your belongings, or scout out any higher ground, it’s damn hard to be anything but sympathetic. Sorry for the crappy analogy, but I agree that this needs to have a focus locally, like voter registration in order to truly make a difference. You have to work with the local pols, the police and the courts and start building better bridges instead of burning out the folks that own the bridge building supplies.
pamelabrown53
@rikyrah: #68
Thank you, rickyrah for you strong but partial list. I’d add drug sentencing laws as it pertains to crack vs. powder cocaine.
IMHO, these particular BLM members blew an important opportunity. Instead of actual policy goals it seemed they wanted a therapy session, i.e., the member who said to MHP on MSNBC that they wanted self reflection from Hillary.
Peale
@Calouste: Yep. I don’t think I’m going to give BLM a pass. They are powerless, but it doesn’t make sense to treat them like they are illiterate buffoons who don’t know crap about nothing but being angry. We are talking about fully functioning adults who have been apparently so moved by a problem that they want it addressed.
Laertes
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
This is what I’m talking about, and I think it’s probably what went wrong in that meeting. They took troll-management techniques and used them in an environment where they’re not productive.
“Do my research for me” is trolling when some clueless person does it. They’re just derailing a thread, and imposing upon the marginalized person the burden of educating them, and that’s a burden that it does the marginalized person no good to take on. Educating some random idiot who’s probably not open to persuasion anyway is a waste of time.
The Next President is not some random idiot who’s not open to persuasion. It is worth your time to educate her. You’ve got to recognize when your training doesn’t apply to the situation. Common troll-management techniques are not what you want to use when you’re talking to a powerful and possibly friendly person who has the ability to help you.
glory b
@burnspbesq: THANK YOU FOR THIS!!
i’ve been tearing my hair out about this every time I see BLM folks on tv. The Bob Mcdonalds and Marilyn Mosbys have a lLOT more to do with solving this problem than the Bernie Sanders or Hillary Cintons do.
As an African American, I’ve hoped that we now know something about the limitations of what a president can do.
Protest during the campaigns for State Attorneys and mayors and District Attorneys if you want that type of action.
Example: California is considering legislation to prohibit secret grand juries for cases of police related deaths.
No one cares about Clinton’s self reflections. What matters is what can she do and what will she do.
Betty Cracker
@Calouste:
That strikes me as a much more worthwhile federal expenditure than this, for example.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: Ah, the enhanced sentencing. I do remember when they took discretion away from the federal judiciary. That must have been part of that or an outcome of that.
Never agree with any of that shit.
Never agreed with the concept of “hell” either. Thought if God was real he was more culpable for our sins than He pretends.
Sadly, I did grow up and learn the hard way that some people do evil shit on purpose.
brantl
@EconWatcher: Yep, she spoke like a person who has formed policy / law that was to be implemented, in the past, and a person who would like to form and implement law / policy in the future. They aren’t paying any attention to policy, which is how you start to get things DONE.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Kylroy:
Read my first comment, or reread it.
I always follow up a problem with at least two solutions. In a job.
In my life I deal with quite obvious systemic racism.
My life is not a job, but feels like it most of the time.
…
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
I guess this is a kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It may be desirable, even necessary, but it is at best a small part in a larger process.
And unlike the South African models, while the BLM may be able to claim the moral high ground, they do not have any particular political power, nor do they seem to have any practical goals.
Another Holocene Human
@glory b: Legislation which would be signed by the governor. Who is over the DA? The laws of the state, which are created by the legislature and signed by the executive.
Executives matter, just all those other layers matter too. And DAs must be held accountable. They’re given a lot of power for a reason, but with that power comes great responsibility, yadda yadda.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Peale:
Thank you.
.,,
Another Holocene Human
From #BLM home page:
Demands
They tell everyone clearly who they are and what their goals are. Can we stop having dozens of posts in every #BLM thread questioning their motives and their sanity?
kindness
BLM is a tough row to hoe.
What can progressives do? The best I can think of off the top of my head is to register people to vote in many of these communities and organize GOTV drives by, you know, helping to get many of these people to the polls so they, you know….vote.
If every person who didn’t vote, voted, our elected government would look way different.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
I think people are criticizing the failure to talk about those policies in their face to face with Clinton.
Another Holocene Human
@Laertes:
Excuse me? Waiter? I demand better youth activists. Yes, I’d like some that aren’t quite so youthful. Their idealism and naivité is ruining my appetite.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human: Yet, they didn’t seem interested in discussing any of that with Clinton. They didn’t seem interested in discussing anything with Bush and Sanders.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: The first time I did citizen lobbying I’m sure I did a horrible job, but we still got the bill killed.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: Which “they” are you talking about?
Kylroy
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: Agreed, your life is not a job. But is asking an activist to treat their activism with the same level of effort they treat a job out of bounds? Particularly when you have secured a meeting with the presumptive Presidential nominee of a major political party?
I sometimes wonder if the amazing ability of social media to “raise awareness” serves to strangle budding social movements in the crib. It gets a name out before there are specific goals outlined or an organization in place to effect them, and the group burns out before accomplishing anything. It happened to Occupy, it could well happen to BLM.
Another Holocene Human
@kindness: White voter participation dipped below African American in the last presidential election, I believe.
A lot of single white females (with kids!) not doing their duty, and that’s a majority D demo.
Time for us to clean our own house.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Did you take a video of you doing a lousy job and go to the media to talk about it?
EZSmirkzz
@raven: Yeah it’s a start. But we were fortunate to have Mo-Town to Liverpool, hell even Elvis Presley got in some chops about it all. Me First and The Gimme Gimmes don’t quite get the same play in the more independent and diverse scene today, as those groups did back when it was more channeled and business was intent on killing the cultural revolution, which goes to my point, since there never really was a viable cultural revolution, but just a bunch of paranoid old dudes twerking about the hippies.
dollared
@Another Holocene Human: So Bernie Sanders supports all those goals. (well, maybe he’s a bit soft on gentrification) But they shut him down. And Hilary Clinton would have liked to hear that list when they were having their “discussion.” But she didn’t.
So yeah, I question whether they know what they are doing.
Bobby Thomson
@EZSmirkzz: the Civil Righrs Act of 1964 got a lot more accomplished than a million sermons. Change the law and hearts will follow. It takes a hell of a lot of time, but at least you have the law.
dollared
@Peale: This.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human: BLM activists in this interview and at the various rallies they disrupted.
Another Holocene Human
Is Hilary Clinton a babe in the woods? I’m just reading some of y’all’s comments and, wow.
brent
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Well yes. Really. Who is it that you are expecting to solve the problem? The rapist? The bully?
Of course, the real problem is that your analogy isn’t especially useful. Clinton and anyone who takes her position is not talking to an individual and asking them to solve an individual problem with another individual. She is talking to the representatives of a movement which is presumably formed to address a particular societal problem and asking them what they see as a solution. Seems like a pretty fair question to me and I am a 45 year old black man who has had his share of run-ins with shitty cops. I have seen plenty of activist interactions with police policy that are somewhat effective and many others that seem pointless and counterproductive.
With respect to BLM, I am still withholding judgement but still looking for a reason why they should be considered to be in the former group (somewhat effective) as opposed to the latter.
EZSmirkzz
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Agreed. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I don’t think there is any quick fix since the national television networks quit doing news to flash bang with kids. One can only hope the GOPs political twerking grows as old with the public as fast as Mylie’s did.
feebog
I wonder if age isn’t playing a part in this as well. Every BLM representative I have seen is quite young. I’m between Hillary and Bernie in age, and my first reaction to their tactics is negative. I understand what they are trying to accomplish, but getting into someone’s face and shouting (see the Netroots Nation tape) or asking a candidate to publically apologize for attitude or policies of the past is counter-productive. I am appalled every time I see one of these unjustified police shootings, but the answer is to organize and change the system, not place blame on candidates for perceived past sins.
Kylroy
@Another Holocene Human: No, she’s a presidential candidate meeting with activists wanting her to make progress on a specific issue. When she asked them what progress should be made, they told her she should already know.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human: She put out two constructive ideas in that short, 7 minute interview; prison and housing reform. It’s not like she hasn’t spent any time thinking how she might help the black community.
I deplore Hillary Clinton, but I think you and the BLM activists are being unfair here.
glory b
@Kropadope: I’m a lttle uncomfortable with the insistance that Hillary accept blame/fault/whatever for her husband’s policies. Smacks of a touch of sexism, treating her as an appendage rather than an individual.
Another Holocene Human
Maybe this is just PTSD from being a union steward talking, but if you’re so disappointed with BLM and have such great ideas for Hilary Clinton, why don’t you lobby HRC your damn self?
You owe it to your country, dagnabbit.
Kropadope
@glory b: She publicly advocated for these policies. I posted about this @100.
John Cole
Alrighty then, so today it’s ok to point out that the BLM movement should probably be prepared to do more than grab a mic from someone and tell the crowd they are white supremacists?
Last week it was whitesplaining and racist and condescending.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: You misunderstand. Some commenters are acting like if BLM did anything other than feed policy prescriptions to Hilary with a baby spoon they failed and should be ashamed of themselves for getting up that morning.
Hilary’s been around the block a few times. SHE WAS SECRETARY OF STATE. I think she’s quite capable of getting the message even if the messengers don’t express themselves well and she’s more than grown enough to grapple with the consequences of policies she championed 20 years on.
Kropadope
@John Cole: I think you have a mostly different crowd talking about it today.
randy khan
I guess whether the BLM folks approached the meeting right depends on their goals. If they want to get Hillary on board for solutions, I think their approach was dead wrong – and even the video they released shows they were given an opportunity and not only didn’t take it, but aggressively pushed back against it.
If they had a different goal, say, highlighting that in their view Hillary was part of the problem and therefore needs to be, for lack of a better word, purified before you can get to the next part, then maybe their approach to the meeting made sense.
That said, most politically sophisticated people are going to have the reaction I’ve seen here several times, which is that they should have known she was going to want to know what actions she should take and that an apology (and, for what it’s worth, a very non-specific one) wasn’t on the table. And I suspect that most politically unsophisticated white people are going to have a similar reaction, although somewhat less nuanced.
If getting some kind of acknowledgment of the structural issues and the general complicity of majority society in the creation of those issues was their key goal, I think they actually could have gotten something if they hadn’t made it quite so personal to Hillary. I think she might be willing to say that there is a long history of actions that effectively target black lives, which is morally wrong, and that as a society we need to address that issue. If they’d asked for that, and asked her to articulate specific steps she would take to effectuate that goal, I think that would have been possible for her. But asking her to apologize personally was going to be a non-starter.
Again, all of this is said with the recognition that my idea of what their smartest approach should have been and their idea might be very different, as they get to define their goals, not me.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Probably is the PTSD. People underperform. I do it every single day. But if you underperform in public, you’re going to be subject to criticism and Monday morning quarterbacking. That’s just life.
Amir Khalid
I think Hillary came across as more than sympathetic to Black Lives Matters’ worldview and general aims. But I think she also felt they weren’t being practical enough in pursuing those aims. This whole business about setting conditions for talking to people (“wanting the purity pony” is the Balloon Juice term for it, I think) amounts to forgetting what the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s knew: your objective is to change facts on the ground, one at a time if need be. The theatre — the protest marches, the sit-ins, the rallies — is a complement to that, not the main event.
Another Holocene Human
@John Cole: If it upsets you that much, walk away from the computer.
I haven’t agreed with everything BLM activists have done. There’s times I would have made different choices. But I don’t feel the need to rage about it on the internet. I mean, why? That accomplishes nothing, and whoever pissed you off in the first place surely doesn’t care.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human:
Right, but when she tried to talk about how she planned on making up for her mistake policy-wise, they weren’t trying to have that conversation. They have no interest in what the candidates will do, but rather how everyone feels. Truly activism for the Twitter age.
John
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
When I worked in corporate IT, I provided direct support to C-level executives. In my experience, when you tell someone in power to RTFM, they do one of two things: Fire you and find someone who will explain the issue to them, or ignore you and find someone who will explain the issue to them. When you are in a position with little power demanding that someone in a position of greater power provide help, is it really too much to ask that you define what constitutes help?
A Ghost To Most
@Kropadope:
Yea, some of us have just STFU, rather than continue to be called racists.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
That depends. Do you want anything to change? If so, you absolutely need more of a message than that. If you’re content with the way things are, just go ahead and do nothing but repeat that.
That may not be fair or just, but it’s true.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid:
Amir, with all due respect, the sit-ins and the marches were directly aimed at changing facts on the ground.
As for the rallies, most of them were internal, intended to keep the good soldiers fighting in the face of the risk of beatings, dog bites, arrest, and even death. The big exception is the March on Washington which was political theater, and very effective as well.
Laertes
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve got nothing to tell Clinton that I think she needs to know, and nothing to ask her for that I think she needs to do. Therefore, I’m not going to ask for a meeting with her. I’d have both of those things lined up before I ever did ask for that meeting.
Kay
@glory b:
I agree but there’s a real intersection that Clinton should have to address, and that’s advisors and any staff she may hire or appoint as President. If she now believes that Bill Clinton’s tough on crime focus in the 1990’s was misguided, it would be really, really important that she not hire the architects of that- people who are still around and part of the group of people she knows well and probably trusts.
Clinton will have a real opportunity to show us she’s independent of Bill Clinton, but that wil be up to her. Ending welfare as we know it, the hysteria over juvenile crime, zero tolerance at schools- those things came from a specific group of influential Democrats. Identifiable people. She can’t just renounce the approach. She has to get some new ideas.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human:
The only people raging seem to be BLM supporters. Whenever anyone tries to talk about proactive ways of addressing racial problems, including here on Balloon Juice, they get a whole stream of “you don’t care, you want to wait patiently while black people die, your a racist, etc.”
smintheus
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: As a ten-year-old I could have told the principal in our school what to do to stop the bullying that was out of control there (expel the bullies). I’d have been ready to tell him he was to blame for creating that environment, but I wouldn’t have been so naive as to expect him to confess to being to blame or agree to wear a sackcloth in penance.
Another Holocene Human
Selma to Montgomery March
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/selma-montgomery-march
John Cole
@Another Holocene Human: That was raging?
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Laertes:
I imagine the we are fellow travelers in all good meanings of the phrase.
And I tend to agree with some of the frustration of the tactial acumen of this nascent movement.
I am not involved myself, but support the activism, as we are talking about issues of race and class as a result of it. And maybe we might get somewhere this time.
However as we approach the 50th anniversary of the murder of martin luther king,the gains for african americans, during the interum, have been marginal, or incremental at best.
Could the meeting with Hillary been more focused and productive, certainly. I would like to think I might have done better, but fear that I would not, seeing that i have accomplished little or nothing on this thread.
Anyway appreciate the input.
…
glory b
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: Yeah, but this isn’t your worklace, if your solutions don’t get implemented, the business goes under (at worse).
Where legislation can be passed and regulations implemented, there is usually more than “Just do something and we’ll let you know if it is a resolution.” In government, people expect you to offer a proposal, and that doesn’t mean “your reflections on your past wrongdoings as we see them.”
If you don’t know what you want, figure it out and come back.
We spent so much time focused on the white house, we didn’t notice the Republicans taking over the majority of state and local governments around us. Day to day, those are the ones thst can do more to make our lives miserable or liveable.
Think of all of the republican governors, attorneys general, mayors and their appoiintees who have wielded so much power and screwed up so much in the country.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: I posted on this very thread about how we could reduce racism, a really common sense suggestion, and not only did no BLM supporters rage at me, none of the very concerned White Progressives™ on this blog responded either.
Apparently actually reducing unconscious bias, especially among whites, is like eating broccoli or canned green beans. “Where’s the remote, I’m changing the channel.”
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Another Holocene Human:
Thank you
/Tips hat
…
Brachiator
@aimai:
There is neither anything wrong nor particularly unusual about this demand. The United States government, and specific individuals, have apologized for any number of earlier acts of racism and hatred. And here BLM may also be asserting the same requirements of something on the order of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. And here individuals absolutely gave testimony about their actions under the apartheid regime.
One could easily assert that President Clinton’s welfare reform compromises harmed black people, and that other actions while he was governor and president furthered white supremacism. And weren’t Bill and Hillary passing themselves off as a co-presidenting team when welfare reform and other programs were on the table? The challenge to Clinton may be inconvenient, but it is not wrong.
I think it is politically bad strategy for BLM to go after Democrats here, and the lack of a practical focus on BLM’s fault is potentially self-defeating, but no one can claim that their demands for some racial truth telling is illegitimate.
Another Holocene Human
@John Cole: Obsessing, if you prefer. I find when I’m obsessing I’m secretly pretty angry about it as well, but YMMV.
glory b
@Eric U.: I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of ACLU and NAACP attorneys who have a few ideas.
Kylroy
@Amir Khalid: There was a solid decade-plus of organizing and smaller-scale demonstrations that happened off the national radar before MLK became a household name. In an era of social media, I’m not sure that would be given the chance to slowly build before being splashed across a Fox News ticker.
kc
Talk about a lost opportunity. These guys get the opportunity to sit down with a strong candidate for president, and instead of coming ready with a list of concrete policies, they want to get all emo.
A Ghost To Most
@kc:
And turn on their friends.
Kay
@glory b:
At the time that zero tolerance in schools was put in there was a liberal argument that it would lead to more equity because they were limiting discretion. We were all going to get our clipboards out and rely on factors and data and we would have an equitable result, because …”outputs!” The idea is if you limit discretion you limit bias- remove the human factor. That IDEA needs to be re-examined because it was a dismal failure. The “outputs” are clear. They weren’t able to remove human beings from decisions made about other human beings :)
All people did was take the data and the factors and apply it in their biased way, on everything from the death penalty to school suspensions.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human:
I just went through all your posts and I’m not sure precisely which one you are referring to. A little help?
I love broccoli AND green beans, even canned ones.
MariedeGournay
Christ and damnation, they sound like the most pretentious students in my critical theory graduate seminars.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Another Holocene Human:
I have had many such encouters employing similar social engeneering practices.
Also a needed nap becons. So im out.
If i missed anyone, i’ll try to catch up later.
Peace!
…
John
@Another Holocene Human: While it would probably be better for his health if he walked away from the computer more often, I generally like Cole’s plainspokenness about most issues. He says what’s on his mind in good faith, whether he’s right or he’s wrong.
In this situation, I understand his frustration. BLM has legitimate points of anger about the way America’s legal structure devalues black lives. The problem isn’t that unguided freelance activism will turn off white voters, though. The problem is that if they focus the anger of the black community on every Democratic candidate, all that will happen will be a reduction in the numbers of black people who turn out to vote. In the end, that will ensure that the Republican nominee gets elected and spends even less time addressing the issue of state sanctioned violence against black people. Self-defeating action is self-defeating.
kc
@brent:
“What do we want?
How dare you ask that!
When do we want it?
Now!”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
The 1990s tough on crime laws really need to be evaluated within the context of their time, a context that has largely slipped away. Yes, they had awful consequences and with hindsight, they were bad mistakes. At the time, though, even a lot of black representatives were in favor of them.
That was a time when crime really was out of control. It was a time when the inner cities were so torn apart by the crack epidemic that being torn apart by the police seemed like a better outcome, even by many of those in them. It was a time when not pursuing policies to deal with all that crime was itself a racist policy.
And the crime started abating almost as soon as those policies were put in place. Granted, we now know that those policies really had little or nothing to do with the reduction in crime rates; Kevin Drum has done a great job of publicizing that environmental lead rates were what was really going on. But given the propensity for the human mind to assume that correlation equals causation, a lot of people then, and a lot of people even now, think that the criminal justice policies put in place in the early-to-mid 90s were important to that process.
So just walking in and demanding Maoist style abject apologies for being in favor of those laws isn’t going to happen, for reasons beyond just the baseline for why people don’t do those things. If that’s what you want a meeting for, you’re a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. It’s certainly appropriate to demand that people be aware of the crisis of society’s treatment of African-Americans, both historically and in the present, but that’s not the same thing.
Kylroy
@Another Holocene Human: “Apparently actually reducing unconscious bias, especially among whites, is like eating broccoli or canned green beans. “Where’s the remote, I’m changing the channel.””
How the hell could it not be? If being a better person were easier, people would have done it already.
kc
@CrustyDem:
Damn it, you beat me to it . . .
rikyrah
@Kropadope:
NOPE.
If we can ask questions of Jeb with regards to Dubya…then we can do the same for Hillary with regards to Bill.
JMV Pyro
@feebog:
I think there definitely is a generational divide going on between older progressives and the much younger BLM movement. A lot of the terms and argument styles I see from them are the exact same as those used by social justice bloggers on sites like Tumblr. “It’s not my job to educate you” was one such style of argument, adopted largely to shut down disingenuous trolls.
In my opinion, applying it to real life activism isn’t going to work out, because one of the most important aspects of activism is education. However, it’s a popular line of thinking among people my age in social justice circles, so I expect to see more of it in the future.
Kay
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
All due respect, but the sex offender laws relied on exactly the same premise as zero tolerance. Ohio juvenile judges had to sue on seperation of powers (they won) in order to wrangle some discretion away from the data-driven factors crowd to avoid freaking tragic and ridiculous results.
This is a really resilient idea and it needs to be genuinely questioned, the idea that if we put enough “benchmarks” in people will be able to stop using their own common sense and experience and get a good “result” because it is still happening. I can almost guarantee you there will be 5000 “no one could have predicted” body count studies on sex offender laws and “unintended consequences”. They go crazy with this stuff, and they do it over and over and over.
Cacti
Youthful activists are going to make youthful mistakes.
But the fact that the tone of the conversation is changing from “they shouldn’t be calling out (insert politician’s name)” to “they need to do a better job in sit down meetings with politicians” shows that their movement is making progress.
The fact that they got a private meeting with candidate Clinton and are in the process of arranging one with candidate Sanders, shows that all the folks lamenting “this is not the way” in regards to their public tactics were dead wrong.
Step 1 of getting candidates’ attention was an unequivocal success. Step 2 of getting said candidates on board with BLM’s policy positions is only just beginning. BLM’s official policy positions were published a mere 9 days ago.
Kropadope
@rikyrah: Erm, that was a quote from the poster I was responding to. And not only is the dynamic you describe valid, I believe, but she was an active participant in pushing those policies.
rikyrah
@Kay:
tell it, Kay.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
That’s basically what I was saying all along. That you seemed to have missed that is your own problem. OP here laid it out for you in a way that you can’t ignore it, good for her.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@rikyrah: There’s a difference between asking questions and just assuming that the person is responsible and demanding an apology. To my knowledge, no one has asked Jeb! to issue an apology for invading Iraq, and it would be inappropriate to do so.
Now, it happens that Hillary Clinton does share some responsibility for the policies in question, and asking her to accept some responsibility for them is perfectly fair. Demanding that she issue a personal apology really isn’t fair, and it definitely isn’t productive. It isn’t even productive in the sense of trying to raise awareness of the problems; there is just about no one who is not already convinced that this is a crisis who will respond positively to it, and more than a few who are on the fence who will be alienated by it.
As a political tactic, this approach really has nothing to recommend it.
BrianM
@Kropadope: “she was a spokesperson for the law in question.”
That given, why not just say “I was wrong”? It would display a nobility of spirit. It could even be hedged with an Iraq-war-vote style “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Kropadope
@BrianM:
It couldn’t hurt, but I would still rather hear how she plans on fixing it.
MazeDancer
Watching both videos was so much richer and more interesting than reading transcripts and snippets.
The BLM guy was, indeed, most respectful. And I would certainly like to hear more of what he has to say on every part of the “demands” mentioned on the BLM site. He seemed like a thoughtful, interesting man.
But have to say this is the first time I have had any kind of excitement about the prospect of Hillary.
She was passionate and no-nonsense at the same time. Excellent qualities in a President. Maybe it was my years in the feminist trenches, or decades advising corporations and organizations on how to create strategies, that had me feeling some of the bone weary, cut-to-the-chase Hillary was clearly feeling about how to get results.
Yes, she wants change. Yes, she has been there and back and she knows that you have to create structural change first. Her saying if we don’t have concrete goals, we’ll be having this conversation in ten years with no change was so much honesty. Everything she said was about helping create change and substantive results, and more jam-packed with clarity and more straight-forward than she had to be.
Still don’t understand why it is wrong to acknowledge the wretched history of racism – which she did – and then say: What next steps do we take together? What do you want to be the steps of change? She straight up asked them what they specifically wanted. Why is that wrong?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Kay: I’m really unclear on how your comment is in any way a reply to mine. It isn’t even so much that I disagree with you; it’s that it doesn’t seem to even be on point. If it helps, I’ll just repeat that the criminal justice reforms in question were a mistake (and I even thought so at the time), but that they really need to be evaluated within the context of a time when crime rates really did seem to be spiraling out of control. The data to understand what was really happening, namely that environmental lead rates were driving so much of the change in crime rates, didn’t exist at that time, and without it, there wasn’t any good reason to suppose that things weren’t going to keep getting worse.
They need to be understood within a context where there were demands that something, anything, be done in the face of the crisis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: I tend to agree with most of this. I’ll just add this: the tactics that get you noticed and get you a meeting are not necessarily the same tactics that are effective during the meeting.
Myiq2xu
HEDW – heavily edited, didn’t watch.
Kay
@rikyrah:
And so if she puts some laws and rules in for police officers starting from the same premise that when we limit discretion we limit bias, she will then have to go to the 500 other points in the system where there’s a human being and bias enters, and write some rules there, because she’ll then find it in the charging instrument or the judge or the jury or the probation officer.
I think the BLM activists have a valid point about changing hearts and minds. You need both. “Solutions” are great, but you keep running head on into human beings who really mess up your data :)
Bobby Thomson
@rikyrah: it depends. If she runs as Bill Clinton’s third term, absolutely a fair assumption. Otherwise, ask, yes, but don’t assume.
Here you don’t have to assume because she publicly lobbied for the crime bill, as did Joe Biden. It’s of a piece with her vote on the AUMF.
Kropadope
@Myiq2xu: You’d think someone with such a high IQ would have a better grasp of acronyms. T is 3 whole spaces away from W on the keyboard.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@John Cole: I can’t keep up.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
No disagreement here.
Whether BLM goes on to greater success will depend on their ability to shift tactics once they’ve gotten in the door.
Bobby Thomson
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: depends on what your political goal is.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
I still wish they’d make an attempt at knocking before deciding to break the door down.
BrianM
@Kropadope: Totally. (I’m one of those “Problem. Must solve problem. Here are my proposals even if you just want to vent” types myself.)
But admitting you were wrong builds trust. I cannot blame Black activists for wanting some trust-building. It’s reasonable to suspect good-sounding solutions as being just words on the way to a nomination. That kind of talk is cheap. Prove you’re really in the game by doing something hard.
daveNYC
@BrianM: That’s blood from a stone territory for a politician.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
This x eleventybillion.
It isn’t remotely unreasonable for black people to want a formal apology for almost 2 1/2 centuries of institutional racist oppression and violence against them by the Federal government and the individual states. Economic redress also isn’t unreasonable.
Japanese Americans got both a formal apology and financial compensation for the racist internment policies of WWII. So neither is without precedent.
But as our Republic was founded on institutional and structural racism against people of African ancestry, white America has a singularly difficult time apologizing to Americans of African ancestry for anything, historical or current.
Plantsmantx
@rikyrah:
Neither Hillary Clinton nor those two young people gave very good accounts of themselves. I don’t know how or why the young man got hung up on “changing hearts”. Then he complained to MHP that Clinton wanted to focus only on policy. Policy is all there is. On the other hand, I think Clinton has to be able to admit that the bad policies she helped promote were as wrong back when they were implemented as they are now. She couldn’t bring herself to do that.
kc
ETA: Let me finish reading this thread before I post anything else.
glory b
@Laertes: Part of the reason for the effectiveness of lobbying groups, they walk around with proposed legislation in their back pockets. If someone in power asks, “What do you want and how do we do that?”,they have an answer.
Also helps to know exactly what power that person has to do what you want.
Cacti
@Plantsmantx:
Changed policy is the endgame, but human emotion is what fuels reform movements, and makes people willing to get jailed, beaten, or even die for them.
This is a movement that was born of black people of both genders and all ages, being disproportionately targeted for lethal violence. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, Michelle Cusseaux, and too many others to list were all somebody’s son, daughter, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, mother, father, etc. The anger of BLM is righteous anger and trivializing it would be a mistake.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Since you and I have pretty much agreed on things so far, I think I can slightly disagree with you now. ;-). I think that getting ideas from the victims about how to solve the problem is really important. I’m guessing that most rape or bullying victims have some pretty good ideas about either how the crime could have been prevented OR how the authorities could have responded differently. I think those are the kind of ideas that politicians are looking for — as the victims of these crimes, what do you think might help?
It’s less asking them to solve the whole problem and more asking for their input as the people most directly affected, because they might have some good ideas that haven’t been presented yet.
(Edited to fix autocorrect)
glory b
@Another Holocene Human: Well, I’m in Pennsylvania and our District Attorneys are elected, just like the State Attorney General.
state and local officials run for office and are much more easily approachable than presidential candidates.
And again, the president can’t do much about the over policing.
Plantsmantx
@Cacti: I’m not trivializing their anger any more than I’m trivializing my own anger.
Thoughtful Today
Fascinating.
A lot of those that criticized critiques of tactics and tone are now loudly criticizing tactics and tone.
Jake Nelson
So tired of “young people gonna young” attitude. I spent years with the Young Democrats, and amateurism and “youthful folly” were never tolerated, despite almost everyone being volunteers, most in college, some in high school… some of the most serious, practical people I’ve ever known.
I know people mostly mean well, but it’s SO VERY condescending. “What do you expect, they’re young people. You know how they are.” Soft bigotry of low expectations, again. Seriousness, practicality, etc, have nothing to do with “youthful” or “mature”, it’s whether you want to accomplish something or just want to vent your emotions at someone.
And hey, people need to vent! They need outlets to do so. It’s a constant lack, in my experience. But doing so in a time for practical efforts? A waste.
Part of the problem is that the Democratic/liberal/etc side still has none of the “build up the next generation” infrastructure the right does. It all used to be via the unions, but considering most people under 30 don’t even *know* any union members who aren’t gov’t employees, that doesn’t exactly work too well now, and nothing’s appeared to take its place.
sigaba
@Brachiator:
This kindof puts words in their mouth, and who is Hillary Clinton supposed to be in this formulation? Botha or DeClerk? And if the latter, who is Botha? This metaphor is tendentious and reads too much into what we know and what BLM has said — they might be for this thing but I’m not sure it constitutes their object.
@kc:
The encounter went basically as I thought it would. Presidential candidates want laws to pass, and they want people to vote for them. BLM wants white America to have a moral reckoning, and wants white presidential candidates (particularly but not exclusively the Democratic ones) to be the official spokespeople of White America, and pursuant to that role, to apologize.
moonbat
Nancy LeTourneau wrote a great post this weekend at the Political Animal about the problem this discussion seems to be dancing around. And that is in order to affect positive change you may have to build coalitions with people you don’t necessarily like. I know it’s the dead end of the thread, but I thought it was especially applicable to the BLM discussion. YMMV
TriassicSands
@TaMara (BHF):
This is a good point, but I think I’d change the wording (and the meaning) slightly.
Sometimes people who are in the middle of a problem may have difficulty seeing solutions or they may lack the expertise to formulate a solution that comports with the law or other limiting conditions. That’s understandable and not a criticism.
justkeepthinking
I don’t think idealism is what the BLM meetings and disruptions are about. I think, intentionally or not, they’ve been about empowerment. The coverage they’ve gotten hasn’t been complimentary, but does that matter? A few people here and there with BLM t-shirts have held up huge political rallies, made the national news over and over again, and gotten private meetings with presidential candidates. And they didn’t just meet with those candidates, either — they talked *down* to them. Just think of what that looks like to people who’ve been disenfranchised for so long they’ve given up any hope of empowerment in their own lives. Think of what it feels like to people who’ve been told their loved ones deserved to be killed because they weren’t properly submissive to “authority!”
BLM as a movement may fizzle, if they don’t begin to evolve with some sort of power structure and a coherent voice, but think about what they can accomplish in the meantime. They’ve started a populist movement, so more and more of the victims of racism in this country can feel safe and strong in standing up with them and saying the violence is real, and it has to stop NOW. The beauty of the movement this time, more than the civil rights movement in the 60’s, is that so many American voices are standing right behind the victims, too……so maybe there has been some progress in the last 50 years?
It’s true that the violence against people of color originates at local and state levels, and it’s true that taking the fight to those levels will be necessary to make real progress. But it’s also true that the injustice at those levels has only continued because there’s a well-populated racist culture, and a power structure that kowtows to it, that allow it to thrive. The fight against that sort of embedded racism can’t be won if BLM doesn’t show up wielding three powerful tools:
1) The Wrench — the clamor of some very big numbers of people in the movement behind them. Local and state officials who kowtow to racism, and are used to feeling safe doing it, need to be swayed by the sheer number of voices opposing the injustices they’ve allowed. BLM, as a populist movement, rather than an organization, is already freeing those voices and cultivating the groundswell of support needed.
2) The Hammer — and a BIG one, in the form of having strong laws behind them. This is the tool candidates like Sanders, O’Malley and Clinton can best help to acquire. They’ll have to be pressured to stick their necks out and make campaign promises for progressive changes in the law, though — and it looks to me like that’s what BLM is trying to do — put each in the hot seat to get some sort of public statement of commitment.
3) The Screwdriver — the support of voices coming from a level of power ABOVE those state and local officials. The screwdriver has yet to be found, in the pandering political mess in Washington……but if BLM hopes to find committed, powerful voices behind them, the Democratic campaign organizations are the place to look. It seems clear to me that they’re not trying to get more “help” from likely prospects, but, rather, trying to effect change in their political stances.
Betty Cracker
@Jake Nelson: Young people DO gotta young, though. That’s not to say there aren’t young people who are serious, practical and focused. But as a group, they tend to be more impulsive and less patient. You were in a well-established group that didn’t tolerate that shit. BLM is too new to have that sort of infrastructure. Good point about unions, though.
glory b
@Another Holocene Human: No one is questioning their motives, and at least I’m not questioning their sanity.
But they will get to the point of diminishing returns if they don’t create or back something that an elected official can propose and enact. Otherwise, frankly, the media will move on to the next shiny object.
The old civil rights movement was clear about their goals and while the rhetoric was lofty and inspiring, they had practical realists to push for what they wanted to accomplish.
And Hillary or Bernie apologizing for their past misdeeds doesn’t move the agenda they listed.
El Caganer
@Another Holocene Human: That’s a great list of goals. While methods for achieving them and measurements for the effectiveness of those methods have to be implemented (or created in the first place, if they don’t exist yet), they provide specific targets that people can address. Hopefully, this will end the battle over proper protest etiquette or whatever the fuck it was about. But it probably won’t.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
Young people gotta young, and young movements gotta young too. There are always historical examples that can be looked to for guidance and inspiration, but every reform movement happens in its own time and own context. Nothing is ever an exact analogue of what came before.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
That was your “number one reason” for opposing Clinton in 2008?
If so it’s a good thing you had another reason!
The “Parents Music Resource Center” — a thing of the ’80s, not the ’90s — was created by Tipper Gore and others, but Hillary Clinton, not in DC at the time, was not involved.
C.S.
@BrianM:
Maybe — maybe — it would build trust with the people directly in front of her. Maybe. Doubtful, but possible. But she’s a presidential candidate, and the people directly in front of her are never the sum total of people Hillary needs to think about. Would admitting she was “wrong” on something as ill-defined as what they wanted her to admit she was “wrong” about have built any trust with the other many millions who will need to vote for her in order for her to become president?
Cervantes
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
Do environmentalists need any message other than “Stop despoiling the Earth”?
BobS
@CrustyDem: Thank you. That may be the best description I’ve seen of BLM in several weeks of reading.
The rest of the thread is fascinating as well.
Cervantes
@Cacti:
Not “singularly” difficult: consider the Native American.
RaflW
@burnspbesq: “If BLM are actually interested in change, as opposed to just making noise, they need to be in the faces of county DAs and state AGs, not Democratic candidates for President.”
White people need to be in the faces of mayors, and chiefs of police, and D.A.s and the whole state apparatus of racially-motivated suppression.
White people.
The system was built for our benefit, and we have to fix it. BLM might help out if they feel it is worth their time to do so. But I support BLM doing what they need to do to survive. We need to get off our asses and tell our fellow badly misbehaving white people to fucking stop it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
This. It’s the difference between, These policies you championed in the 90s were disastrous, what is your plan to fix them? and Apologize for supporting bad policies 20 years ago!
One is a conversation opener, the other is not.
Cervantes
@RaflW:
Now there’s an idea.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Kropadope:
I still have no problem with them having kicked the door in. But I do think that once that tactic works, they need a different strategy once they’re inside the door.
Cacti
@Cervantes:
Good point.
I guess the more accurate description would be, White America had a much easier time apologizing to a racial minority group that are considered “good ones”.
Bill Murray
@Kylroy:
and she absolutely should have known. It’s not like BLM hasn’t been on the political radar for a while and Clinton had to know they would eventually get around to her
brantl
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: @Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™: No, but if you’re smart, recommended remedial action for it will be right on the tip of your tongue, if you’re asked by someone in a position to change things, no?
Cervantes
@Cacti:
Which is racism in itself, as I don’t need to remind anyone.
glory b
@Cacti: But in any meeting like this there needs to be a conversation like, “we believe X and to get there, we waould like you to propose law Y.”
There has to be something that a federal law would fix. No one running has a bully pulpit, to exhort the right thing be done yet. There is another party that is ready to move heaven and earth to prevent your agenda from happening, you also have to convince elected officials that votes come with what you want them to do.
The tea party had republicans falling all over themselves because they had a loooong history of coming out and voting in large numbers. Us? Not so much.
I’m proud to be a member of the group (African American women) who voted in larger percentages than anyone else. But I also know that we (all of us not just AA women) stayed home in those off years. A lot of media time is atken up with talking about the belief that the Obama coalition doesn’t yote if he’s not on the ticket. A massive voter registration drive (granted, not sexy or media attention worthy)should come with this.
jacel
@EconWatcher: When Hillary said that, I thought it was a very honest, constructive answer, based on her own long hard experience. It sounds a little abstract, but comes from a real place. Too bad the BLM questioner only wanted a specific self-crushing response from Hillary.
kc
@Cervantes:
After that, someone needs to sit down with the Sunnis and the Shia and tell them to stop the bullshit.
El Caganer
@kc: And I happen to know just the person – President John McCain! Did you know he was a POW? No, really!
burnspbesq
@Another Holocene Human:
I hate to paraphrase George W. Bush, but we have an accountability mechanism for DAs. It’s called an election. But progressives, by and large, can’t be arsed getting their act together for local elections. Which is a very real and very serious problem.
agorabum
BLM started as a hashtag. Just a quick twitter statement. The people who have stolen the mantle seem to be mostly hacks and flakes. Which is disappointing. But you can slap a hashtag on any old picture or post out there. Meaningful and disciplined organizations make actual change.
I respect everything the NAACP has done…but it’s time for a new and professional organization (one that doesn’t include the phrase ‘colored people’) to start organizing for change. Something for the 21st Century. Unfortunately, BLM aint it.
daveNYC
@Bill Murray: When the likely Democratic presidential candidate and odds on favorite to win the White House asks you for suggestions on what they should do, that’s when you break out the short list of policies or goals you want. Then she agrees with you, and you look great because you got a candidate to agree to your goals, she looks great because she listened to you and agreed with your goals, and everyone is freaking golden. That question was a setup for them to do something useful and instead they crapped their pants.
Asking for a personal apology, getting grumpy when they ask you for ideas, and then talking about changing hearts (because if there’s one thing that a President can do is change hearts, shit, did they sleep through the last seven years) is just stupid. You think Goldman Sachs would show at this meeting with mealy mouthed bullshit like that?
Bill
It is absolutely appropriate, admirable even, for BLM to turn to the white power structure (whether it’s represented by Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton) and loudly, rudely, say: “We want you to stop killing us! How would you change things to make that happen!?”
If candidates can’t answer that question in a meaningful way, they don’t deserve support.
I don’t understand cutting off that conversation when the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party seems to want to answer the question though.
Did Clinton stump for policies that added to police brutality against minorities? I think she did. But there is zero chance she’s going to admit bad judgment on policy while campaigning. That conversation is a non-starter, and frankly does little to advance the admirable goals of BLM.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Cervantes:
Do environmentalists need any message other than “Stop despoiling the Earth”?
They should not, and i get where you are coming from, but it does sound a bit like dawkins re: elevator gate.
African Americans are still living under a reign of terrorism based on white supremacy, and while I am an environmentalist, this environment of terror is a much more immediate problem. It is, for us, an existential problem.
That many of white progressives seem to miss this is a bit astonishing to me.
Climate change will fuck all of us in the end. Which is another discussion we are not having, nor seem willing to acknowledge our individual complicity.
…
Cpl. Cam
JONES: “If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do.”
CLINTON: “I’m not telling you, I’m just telling you to tell me.”
Here’s the crux of the problem. Career politicians are so used to letting: oil companies write energy policy, banks write fiscal policy and insurance companies write healthcare, that, when it comes time to write policy to protect a desperate and hurting minority from daily predations all they can say is “what have you got? I’ll vow to try and pass it.” No, Hill it’s time to put that Ivy League education to work, look at the problem you acknowledge exists and come up with some useful policy proposals. That’s your job, politician.
BobS
@daveNYC: BLM could take lessons in articulating their concerns from this guy:Nigel
A Humble Lurker
@Cpl. Cam:
Not really. I mean, this is why we have experts. What I want from a politician is not someone who knows everything (because there’s no way in hell I’d ever get that anyway) but someone who will listen to the people who do know what they’re talking about.
sigaba
@Cpl. Cam:
Sortof. The question is how does BLM know if Hillary is doing what they want? What are her deliverables, as far as they’re concerned? It can’t just be the murder rate going down, or the high-profile police shootings going away, these are basically beyond her control. And she has policy proposals, but they really want something more… intangible.