Adding to the Betty Cracker post earlier about HRC and BLM, it’s not difficult to fear the same thing happening to BLM that happened to OWS. Granted, the movements are not the same. Economic inequality lacks the urgent life or death reality that face the black community, as their lives really are at risk for just doing what white people like me do every day and don’t think twice about it. Things like driving to the grocery store, or walking down the street, or going to the pool, or, well, basically anything seems to be excuse enough to shoot a black person these days. So there is an urgency that separates the two movements.
There are also similarities- mostly structural, in that a decentralized organic movement like this has all kinds of different actors with different ideals and different attitudes towards what is productive and what is not. There is no rigid leadership structure, and were there one, it would probably kill the movement anyway. People who follow protest movements are in a much better position to discuss this than I am, so I will just stop there.
But one key similarity that OWS and BLM have in common that continues to lead to these uncomfortable Jerry Maguire/Rod Tidwell “Help me help you” moments such as the most recent video that Betty was discussing is that economic inequality and racial inequality are such large foundations of what this country is and what we are made of that no one really knows where to start in a way that will succeed. It’s just that entrenched in our society, and the issues of racial and economic inequality are concomitantly inexorably intertwined yet disparate issues. This is, after all, a nation that was literally built on the backs of slaves, yet race is not the key reason that so much economic inequality exists.
The very structure of our society has, over the last 50 years, created an impenetrable and impregnable wall between the haves at the very top and the rest of us. The very few own and control most everything- the laws favor the status quo, the tax structure favors the status quo, the bought and paid for Congress and statehouses favor the status quo, the media favors the status quo, and on and on. Anything that changes the status quo is vigorously fought to the death, while things that aid those already in power seem to breeze through our legislatures and courts (see the erosion of civil liberties, the erosion of the Bill of Rights except for the 2nd Amendment, Citizens United, and so on). And it goes without saying that those at the top of the economic ladder are also mostly white, mostly male, and mostly not willing to give up anything.
So while we may have reached a tipping point with the populace screaming for change, the deck is so stacked against us in favor of those already with institutional and economic power that really, it’s difficult to figure out where to go and what to do, and screaming for change becomes just screaming. This is not a bug, this is by design.
So how do you tell people who are working three minimum wage jobs, trying to raise a family, living paycheck to paycheck to be patient, we just made a little progress with Wall Street Regulation and the CFTC, and Seattle just raised it’s minimum wage. How do you tell a terrorized African-American population, a group that daily watches the police execute one of their own in the streets for not having a front license plate or for walking in the wrong place or looking nervous or suspicious or wearing a hoodie to be patient and to focus on the state and local level? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how you tell people things are getting better when they clearly aren’t or at the very least sure don’t feel like it.
So we’re back at the beginning. How do you harness the energy of movements like BLM and make actual, tangible, immediate things happen? And how do you stop people from yelling at each other when they are basically on the same side to focus the rage where it belongs- into real plans of action? If you know, you’re smarter than me. And, apparently, the Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley campaigns.
And before you comment, don’t flay me over nitpicky bullshit. This was just a stream of consciousness post about things. There was no intent to diminish or demonize anyone in my words, just me wondering aloud. Give me the benefit of the doubt for once, fer fuck’s sake. I’m a white guy in a white state who is relatively financially secure trying to grapple with things that haven’t spent my whole life thinking about.
srv
Real change never comes without violence. More violence, things will change. IDK if it will be better or worse, but it will be different.
Cacti
You don’t. If you’re an ally of a movement, but not really part of the movement, you can support, encourage, and add your voice to theirs. Translating action into results is something the movement has to figure out for itself.
And even if successful, nothing happens immediately. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were the culmination of 15 years worth of concerted effort by a wide range of groups, with varying methods, but a similar end goal.
raven
Damn, this is almost 20 years old.
The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars
Keith G
This is probably the most thoughtful post from you that I have ever read. The ideas herein are quite important and worthy of many hours of conversation.
raven
@Keith G: I was gonna say that!
Not That Guy
Flay you? That was epic. You do your best work when you write (what appears to be) stream of consciousness emotionally exposed prose.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t know, it might actually be the key reason. Certainly the game of pacifying poor white people by making sure they’re one social step above black people is well-known, and there are all sorts of ways that the existence of a despised underclass (and, before that, actual slavery) keeps other workers’ wages down.
kindness
@srv: Tell that to Ghandi.
Doug R
well if you think the walls are impenetrable then they are
Keith G
@kindness:
Can’t. Someone killed him
Actually violence was an important part of change – the violent behavior of the power structure which further displayed their moral illegitimacy.
Edited.
BruceFromOhio
I’m thinking burns called it.
Baud
@Cacti:
Agree 100%
CONGRATULATIONS!
Epic post.
I don’t think you should. Black people are being hunted by cops for sport, and if the cops can’t find a suitable black guy, well, truth is they don’t care about skin color that much, they’ll just shoot anyone convenient. On orders from our owners, Americans of all colors must be made to understand that we have no rights, just useless pieces of paper that won’t stop a bored cop’s bullets.
Anyone not immediately in fear for their lives from the police state simply gets to live in existential terror as the banks and moneymen have reserved the right to take everything you own without recompense or recourse.
Turgidson
I’d say it’s worse than that. No one is really asking the top 1% (or whatever nomenclature you want to use for the very top) to give anything up, other than maybe a little bit of their investment incomes and other wealth-based in come to higher taxes – and many of them are rich enough to not even notice the money is gone, much less see their standard of life decline.
No, what is happening now is that the people at the very top not only refuse to give up a single dime of their privilege, they are also damned determine not to allow anyone below them to attain any further rights or privileges, even if it costs them none of their own. They’re up in the penthouse, frantically pulling up the very ladder they used to get there so that no one else can use it.
Edited to add – this attitude manifests itself in both race-based ways (unyielding assault on the Voting Rights Act to name just one example) and otherwise.
Betty Cracker
@BruceFromOhio: I agree it’s a state and local problem primarily.The activism on a national level makes sense to draw more people’s attention to the problem (quibbles about tactics aside), but changes mostly have to come from the organizations that actually oversee rogue cops.
That’s true of so many other issues as well. City council, school board, state legislature, etc., races and even midterm national elections lack the compelling reality show drama of “America’s Next President!” but damn, we have to focus on every race if we want things to change. Focusing on presidential politics 24/7 is a form of Green Lanternism, as someone pointed out in the earlier thread.
PhoenixRising
All politics is local. I don’t have time, but I’m finding the time, to attend the community meeting set by the DOJ consulting team as a condition of maintaining local control of the police.
Because I’m tired of living in a city with rogue cops running the joint. I’m tired of lost lapel camera footage. I’m tired of driving my teenager everywhere because if she forgets to signal a lane change, my local PD can assault, arrest and injure her with impunity.
I’m also attending an early fundraiser for a DA candidate who shows every sign of being part of the next generation of party Dems, who look at the Boomer ‘lawn order’ types who had to be (Bill) Clinton tough on crime to get elected as the throwbacks they are. We are beset with elected officials who are unwilling to address militarized policing in our communities with anything other than a ‘how high?’, and out of control state violence is the result. That’s not the country I was raised in.
If you’re tired of living in that country, there’s a local meeting near you.
rikyrah
@Turgidson:
You’re on the money on this. Absolutely on point.
hilzoy
Stream of consciousness comments:
(1) I think the assumption that if you question the tactics of BLM (or any other movement), you’re trying to divert attention, criticize the movement itself, or do some other hostile thing has to change. Some people are doing that, but some people are not; it’s worth trying to figure out who is who. (Hard to do in 140 character chunks.) Because the more important it is to achieve some goal, the more important it is to get the tactics right. Tactical stupidity isn’t that important if you’re trying to get out of an annoying meeting; it’s *enormously* important if you’re trying to save lives. And it’s hard to figure out where your tactics could be improved if you respond to all comments about tactics as though they were attempts to undermine the whole movement, or to distract from people being killed on the streets, etc. I’ve seen a lot of people associated with BLM not fall into this trap, but I’ve also seen some who did.
(2) The “victim-blaming” part: I assume (since HRC was not, in fact, blaming anyone) that this was shorthand for: it’s not our responsibility to educate you. — This is, imho, a fine thing to say to someone who expects African-Americans to be their personal tour guides through the black experience, or in general to do work that that person should have done herself. But it is, again imho, really not the best thing to say in *this* circumstance.
I mean: does anyone who supports Black Lives Matter actually think that it would be better if HRC formulated her policies on the relevant issues *without* their input? If she said: I should take responsibility for educating myself on this stuff, and therefore I am *not* going to reach out to BLM activists to make sure they don’t have good ideas that I haven’t thought of? I hope not. And if this is something she should be doing, then calling it ‘victim-blaming’, or in general trying to get her to see that there’s something wrong with it, is an odd thing to do.
(3) In general, I thought it was a wasted opportunity. If you’re interested in changing policing and incarceration in this country, in trying to do whatever you can to keep African-Americans from being the victims of police brutality and/or murder, then I would have thought that having someone who might very well become President ask you what steps you think she should take, at a time when you have actually created a movement that might force her to take those steps, is a wonderful thing.
(4) I wouldn’t ever want to ask anyone to be patient with any of this. No one should ever have to do that. But, again, the fact that it matters so much means that it also matters that people take opportunities like the one they had with HRC, and that they be as tactically smart as they could possibly be.
bmcchgo
As a Black man who grew up in the inner city and took advantage of every opportunity to succeed and progress beyond my parent’s station in life, it would be knee jerk of me to put total blame on the less fortunate that #BLM claims to represent. I resist, because I know that its more complicated than that.
I can lament the lack of political participation of Black folks, as well as the lack of parental participation in the lives of too many young Black folks. But I resist, because I know its more complicated than that.
I can fault the entrenched White privilege and the defensiveness of my White friends when I broach the subject of institutionalized, systemic racism. But I resist, because I know its more complicated than that.
Often times I just try to ignore the controversy, the confrontation and the incessant calls for a ‘conversation’. I resist, because I know its just too damn complicated.
rikyrah
I support BLM, but they need to understand that they are not inventing the wheel. They need to understand that those before them really ‘have seen and done it before’, and maybe they should sit down with them and ask, ‘ what do you think you would do over if you could?”
They need to realize that ‘respectability politics’ is nonsense that lets them off the hook for doing the hard work that needs to be done ‘ in them streets’.
RareSanity
I think that one of the problems that BLM (and OWS) are not managing correctly, is the stage that you’ve screamed, now people are listening…what do you want them to do?
Like the “representatives” of BLM from Betty’s post…you made it, you’re sitting face to face with one of the most influential women in American politics, a candidate for President…what do you have to say to her? Unfortunately, you’re still screaming, and it appears that you may have offended someone that is in position to take action in the furtherance of your cause.
At some point BLM has to stop screaming and start talking about actual policies and actionable items to politicians, that they feel will address their concerns.
During that conversation with Secretary Clinton, where was your calm request for her to publicly support the institution of a third party investigative group for alleged racial incidents with police officers? How about asking her to lend her support to legislation removing the decision of whether or not to prosecute police officers from the local district attorneys, that have clear conflicts of interest with the police?
I ascribe some of this to the unavoidable fact that these movements are started and carried out by enthusiastic, idealistic, young people, that may not have the wisdom needed to translate an emotional movement into an actual political one.
The point is, that not of these “movements” will ever gain any traction until it is able to speak with one, rational voice, that actually has an answer to the question, “What can we do to help?”
There doesn’t seem to be that one person that is trying to take the lead. It seems that there are a lot of people that don’t mind being a sergeant, and even more foot soldiers, but no one seems to want to be the general. Or perhaps there’s not someone strong enough, in the movement currently, to unite all of the different “chapters”.
Gin & Tonic
@PhoenixRising: If you’re tired of living in that country, there’s a local meeting near you.
Indeed, and Open Meetings laws are a powerful tool. Alternatively, as I have mentioned here before, in most cases the barriers to becoming a candidate for local/municipal elective office are low. Many offices down at the bottom of the ballot have only one candidate. Run for something – you may win.
raven
@RareSanity: Hi.
RaflW
BLM needs to do what BLM needs to do. Yes those of us who are white can be allies, figuring out how to do that is not easy I suppose.
But right now what I am hearing and reading and otherwise picking up on is that we white people have to figure out our own sh*t. Whiteness, white privilege, white supremacy (not KKK crap, but the baked-in American system of white needs and wants being (far) superior to the needs and wants of everyone else), that’s what needs to be dismantled.
And that isn’t going to be done by black folks — certainly not by black folks alone. Even through violence (yeah, thanks, srv, fantastic suggestion).
Gay liberation and black liberation are different things, but the former may have some instructive value to my fellow white people. It took time, and I’d suggest it in part took the AIDS crisis to teach straights that gays are worthy of compassion and liberation. I suspect that seeing gay people die in just as stark of human terms as can be, and seeing other people – families, lovers, lesbian neighbors, etc – caring for and grieving over the losses of loved ones humanized the gay community for those straights with the courage to look, the heart to see and feel.
Yes LGBTQ people had to protest, and sue, and march and parade and change H.R. policies and come out at Thanksgiving, and all of that. But straight society had to change too. It had to come from both directions to agree that there really wasn’t a straight privilege worth defending any more.
I think BLM is upsetting the metaphorical Thanksgiving tables in a related way. So that we white people will wake the fuck up and say “this has to change because I cannot tolerate living in a society that treats others, people just as worthy of love and life and liberty as me, with such reckless disregard.”
And then we white people have to get up in the faces of mayors, and chiefs of police, and district attorneys, and legislators and governors and even the recalcitrant fu*knobs in D.C. to demand change. For black people, but for ourselves as well.
White people have the privilege to not bother. But it makes us moral cowards and complicit in the suffering and death of others if we don’t lead the change among our white peers.
And I think we might just find that when we stop defending our white privilege (yes, I’m looking at us, BJers, we are part of this, even if inadvertently, through unexamined processes, assumptions and wants), when we stop defending the status quo, we might just find out that like giving up a useless hetero privilege, giving up whiteness costs us nothing. Or even makes our own lives better as society becomes more equitable and just.
Iowa Old Lady
I’ve decided I mostly need to shut up and listen. It’s not BLM’s job to make me feel comfortable. And I have way less to teach them than they do to teach me.
In all truth, I have no idea what I’d say if I were HRC or Bernie Sanders and BLM confronted me.
RareSanity
@raven:
What’s up Raven? Been a month of Sundays since we’ve said hello.
I’ve been mostly lurking on the site for that last several months, sometimes participating can do more harm than good to my psyche. haha
Grumpy Code Monkey
Like Burns said, a lot of the change that has to happen needs to happen at the state and local level. Mayor, city council, county commissioners, state legislature, Governor. The DoJ can pursue civil rights cases (and the President can certainly make that a priority), but they can’t change the culture of police and sheriff’s departments. That’s down to hiring and firing by city managers.
A lot of the problem is outside of federal jurisdiction.
King said it best – the problem isn’t the over racists or the white supremicists, it’s the white moderates who value “law and order” above everything else, including justice.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
One thing about Sander’s early reluctance to directly attack racial issues might be part of a strategy to deal with these people. There’s a fairly large racist underclass that would like less economic inequality but is also, well, racist. With the current position of the major parties, these people have to vote against one of their issues to vote for the other. The Republicans seem to have grasped a good strategy to get their vote – pull them in with coded appeals to their racism, and say very little about their plans to increase inequality.
A number of strategists have suggested the reverse strategy for the democrats – pull these voters in by appeals to fairness and opportunity, and deal with racism by *doing* something about while not talking about it much in campaigns. When Bernie said earlier that it’s basically all about economics I don’t think he was clueless enough to think that racism isn’t a huge problem separate from any economic issues. I suspect he means that by *talking* overwhelmingly about the economic issues we can put Democrats in power, and they can then deal with the racism issues.
It’s an unpleasant truth that to do something about Trayvon Martin, Freddie Grey, Sandra Bland, and all the others, we’re going to have to get votes from people not particularly bothered by such things and even supportive of that kind of institutionalized racism when it’s not quite so vicious and blatant. We need out own dogwhistles – call for things like sentencing reform and cop cams; things that aren’t *obviously* opposed to institutionalized racism but in practice are powerful tools for reining it it.
Of course Sanders couldn’t *say* this even if he believes it. My impression is that he and Hillary are both doing their best to blow these dogwhistles (albeit not the same ones) and they’re both probably a little frustrated few seem to be hearing them.
raven
@RareSanity: Not much, gearing up as usual! I know what you mean, there are a bunch of topics that I have nothing to add so I just read. Glad to see you are around.
WereBear
Despite what the ignorant and the ill-intentioned say, Rosa Parks was not a seamstress who’d simply had enough that day. She was a longtime NAACP member who had been chosen for this action, after literally years of planning and organization.
She refused to stand up, but there was a lot of people behind her, helping her, and counting on her.
That is what is missing from these amorphous “activists” who ignore the few paths there are to change. Not pointing fingers at anyone, but when I heard that Occupy were having meetings where anyone could say anything at any length… well, that’s a fine bit of idealism.
It’s just not how anything gets done.
Emma
@rikyrah: Yes. People who fought the earlier battles are still around. Talking to them, learning from them, would not only organize their agendas but they could find a wider circle of supporters with the right contacts.
JPL
@RareSanity: This
Belafon
@RaflW: I think another thing that allowed gay rights to move so quickly is they are our relatives. At some point, you either throw your son out, or you acknowledge he’s gay. Similarly for your daughter.
Which means, one of the things we whites have to do is make sure minorities are in our lives. How to do that? At one level, make sure you don’t subconsciously discriminate when you hire people, shop, or even ask people for directions. At another level, I’m not entirely sure. Walking up to a black man and saying “Hey, I don’t have enough black friends, would you be one?” is just wrong.
raven
@WereBear: She carried a .38 too.
sigaba
Why bother? What is BLM beyond a hashtag? I think black lives matter, but I’m not sure exactly if Black Lives Matter matters. How many votes can they deliver? Who do they speak for, and how can they claim to speak for them?
What exactly is the “energy” of BLM? They have maybe a dozen people show up at rallies of 10,000; and they heckle the dias until they get the microphone, unless the speaker preemptively agrees to speak to them, in which case, in an actual exchange, they seem not to know what to do with themselves. I hear the sizzle but where’s the steak?
It’s unclear to me that, even if you gave BLM a speaking spot at the convention and three cabinet seats, they’d be able to save a single black life. They seem completely ineffectual, and not because anyone is holding them down.
WJS
@hilzoy:
A thousand times this. Asking people to be “patient” in the face of daily violence is absurd. You don’t ask for patience. You ask for forgiveness and get off your ass and do something.
WJS
@rikyrah: You may not realize it, but that’s pretty much a textbook example of whitesplaining. They don’t “need” to understand anything. They’re dying every day. And the only reason why you know who they are is because they made a Democratic politician uncomfortable in public.
Fair Economist
@RareSanity:
Yes, exactly. Clinton was even *asking* for this kind of thing and not getting it. I agree with her that if we don’t take some explicit legal measures to reign in this abuse we’re going to be in exactly the same place 10 years from now. As an escapee from the Southern small-town upper middle class I get a “privileged” view into the hearts of the other side and I’m sorry to say – I don’t think you’re going to be able to change them. I’ve been trying for half a century without success.
Cacti
@WJS:
Psst…Rikyrah is black.
sigaba
@WJS:
This is equivocation between BLM the movement and black people. They aren’t the same thing and are in fact categorically exclusive; a political movement isn’t a race, and I’m sure white people would be allowed to join BLM, and that BLM can even advocate a position held by many white people.
Asking BLM to “be patient” is not tantamount to asking black people, as a race, to tolerate police violence.
Belafon
@Fair Economist: The arguments I’ve had with my mom….
RaflW
@Belafon: I agree that the family connections matter for LGBTQ issues.
And what you go on to say rings true as well. I recall some data about most white people on Facebook having remarkably few black or other P.O.C. friends & connections.
But that is amendable in other ways than the ultra-awkward “be my friend?!” urge. I joined a racial justice coalition 6 years ago, where we meet and plan and act together. And in the past few weeks I also joined an intentional cohort of 25 grassroots fundraisers-to-be who are training together, over 50% P.O.C. and by design multi-class.
Of course, the groups I’ve joined are not easy to find in every community, but I remember my college friend Charles back in 1984 being a member of the NAACP in his hometown in Nebraska, and he was about as white as can possibly be imagined (was he born with sunblock on his skin?)
Get active at the YWCA. Or a PTO. There are plenty of civic organizations that are not all-white. In other words, it might take white people being strategic and intentional about building relationships with P.O.C.s. You don’t have to walk in wanting friendship. Walk in wanting to do good work together and see if friendships develop.
Belafon
@RaflW: Thanks. I needed some ideas.
Cervantes
@Keith G:
Even more than that, someone on his own “side” killed him.
Belafon
@sigaba: At the same time, movements and change aren’t started by entire populations. They are started by a small group of people who get tired of dealing with the status quo.
Fair Economist
@Belafon: I’m lucky in that my own family isn’t *too* bad. They hold racist opinions of black people, but they actually oppose racist policies already, so I can usually manage a civil and productive discussion. But their friends – OMG.
different-church-lady
Actually, I thought it was one of your most well considered, and insightful posts in ages.
[not snark]
Gin & Tonic
@WJS: Are you new here?
RaflW
@Fair Economist:
I take the BLM interruptions of Bernie (and other politicians, and traffic, and the Mall of America, etc) to be about saying to moderate white people not in the entrenched south for us to get off our butts and fix the racially biased police departments and D.A.s offices and school systems and corrections depts in the states that democrats control.
There is low hanging fruit – or should be – in our ‘blue’ places. It was highly instructive to see the Minneapolis police union try to sabotage and undermine our mayor shortly after she was elected on a racial equity agenda. She is a threat to entrenched white supremacy policing here and they tried (clumsily, thankfully) to neutralize her.
But there is still a shit-ton of work to do here in relatively progressive Minneapolis.
Cervantes
@Cacti:
And that’s the funny part.
HRA
@Belafon:
I have no idea if there has been a change in saying I have a Black relative or a Black friend. At one time, you were beaten down verbally by a Black person for it. On the other hand when I showed up at a job where a Black supervisor called me a friend, it was fine and it was true. We once were schoolmates and neighbors.
The most major problem in race discrimination IMO is the lack of white people recognizing Blacks are people, too. I even sense it while reading posts every day here, too. If you can’t relate to a Black person not wearing a suit and tie, then you don’t have consideration for all Black people.
Rant over.
Cervantes
@Emma:
And that’s another funny part.
Cervantes
@RaflW:
Just as mere change is not the same as improvement, the comment was merely an observation, not a recommendation.
Montysan0
Hate to say it, but I’m not sure how much BLM really matters. Their scope is too narrow.
The only thing that will have the horsepower to effect some real change is a truly broadbased, bipartisan, angry populist uprising. When that happens, when there’s a populist candidate that can draw from across the political spectrum, then you’ll see true panic in the corridors of power. We The People still have the power to fix this, to effect real change. What we lack is unity, and this is no accident. From Lee Atwater on, there’s been a concerted effort to divide and conquer, and it’s worked. Bernie is the closest thing to a solution that I’ve seen in years, but he’ll likely fail to draw even moderate conservatives (if they still exist) because “soshulist”.
different-church-lady
@BruceFromOhio: Oh, I dunno about that — a fair number of Justice Department actions could give cop culture the kind of kick in the pants it needs to start changing.
kc
@Cervantes:
What’s funny about it?
p.a.
@RaflW:
This is so true, but I’m just uncomfortably reminded by BLM actions of New Left performance art; a kind of public “We’re more moral than yooouuuu” without considering whether the targets are probable allies or actual opponents. You’re going to get in Bernie Sander’s grille, not Jeb Bush’s? Contrast to NC’s Moral Mondays, who target the enemy.
Archon
@Betty Cracker:
State and local police departments need to be reigned in. If that means more federal oversight and more federal power to supervise and reorganize rogue police departments then so be it.
msdc
I think this is part of the problem right here – the expectation that change on this kind of scale, against this kind of entrenched opposition, can happen immediately. (Or that energy alone is enough to bring it about.) Changing the structure of a society is an effort that will take years, if not decades, to achieve even partial success.
I suspect it will be done by people who share the message and the goals of BLM, and maybe even the slogan, but who ditch the decentralized structure and short-term thinking in favor of a commitment to long-term strategy and organization, and a willingness to work within existing political structures at all levels of government.
(By way of analogy, consider the differences between Occupy and the campaigns around the country to raise the minimum wage. One of them has a pretty good track record.)
BruceFromOhio
@different-church-lady: How about both?
RaflW
@Cervantes: I was factoring in all the trolling srv does. I can easily imagine them wanting BLM to get violent so there would be a concomitant crackdown.
If I am misjudging srv, well, there’s a first time for everything.
KS in MA
@WereBear:
THIS. THIS. THIS. Also, let’s remember that Rosa Parks was a graduate of the Highlander Folk School–among many, many other people who became leaders in the civil rights movement. More people today should know about Highlander (hint: Google!). In many ways it was a think tank, where people got together and talked out a lot of the issues Cole mentions in his great post at top: where to start, what tactics will be effective, etc., etc.
Iowa Old Lady
@msdc: That’s true, but Occupy may still have needed to happen.
Bobby Thomson
@rikyrah: having actually watched the video now, I think that’s part of what he was trying to get at. He was diplomatically asking “explain how you got from lobbying for the crime bill to where you are today. What changed? What have you learned?” She was admitting “sin” but without being specific about it (and gratuitously taking a shot at Sanders). There was also a whiff of Get Off My Lawn with her comparisons to older movements. Definitely some talking past each other. At the same time, I actually thought she came across better when she engaged and disagreed a little than with her listen-and-nod, which seemed patronizing.
Brien Jackson
I think BLM is very different from OWS at least in the fact that, unlike Occupy, they don’t deliberately disengage from the political process and they have a set of easily articulatable goals they want to reach. Occupy, on the other hand, ultimately wasn’t much more than an awareness campaign whose only endgame was to fade away as they became less of a curiosity or provoke a violent state response to drive them out of public spaces.
Ksmiami
@Iowa Old Lady: that injustice towards any American citizen is injustice to us all and an utter pox on the so called greatness of this country. That is why police violence tinged w racism is anathema to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
EZSmirkzz
Good post John. None of us can really put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes, but we can all imagine what it must be like to not have any shoes at all. What BLM is about is saying black lives have no feet. Like hilzoy said, I suppose, sometimes we have to stand up and say we don’t know. If we don’t know we can’t understand, and if we don’t understand then we are of little help. This is just the start of something big.
I know you’ve been through the ringer the last couple of years, glad to see the buffalo hide is still intact. If blogging were easy everyone would do it. Not sure if I’ll make it back from my sabbatical, but with you and the lads doing a bang up job I’m not too sure I will either. Anyway I can’t think of nicer guy to throw rocks at than you. :-)
Botsplainer
Possibly the finest facebook battle I’ve ever seen. Texas Governor Abbott is a Catholic wingnut, and made the mistake of putting up a typically wingnutty Marian devotion on his Facebook page – and was set upon by a howling pack of fundamentalcase mouth breathers.
https://www.facebook.com/TexansForAbbott/photos/a.269781890087.322345.181888625087/10155955455685088/?type=1&theater
This is some awesome entertainment.
Rich (In Name Only) in Reno
Sorry, but due to Viv Stanshall, “The Strain” will always be this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PycvJqUyEs
Kay
I disagree that OWS didn’t accomplish anything. They put the issue front and center and the debate changed for the better. We moved away from earnest round-table discussions on the earned income tax credit and “job creators” to wages, work hours and sick leave. It got much, much more real.
Discussing these things was just not done prior to them, outside of organized labor circles.
I think BLM probably has the same effect. Hearts AND heads. Liberals were missing a heart. Movements like these bring one. That has value.
Linnaeus
Bernice Johnson Reagon’s talk, which you can read here, is always worth revisiting at times like these.
Eadgyth
As a lesbian, it is my perception that LGBT became ‘legitimate’, and people wanted to stop discriminating against us once we started to look like them- that is with stable marriages and families. On the other side, the in your face Pride parades made enough room for ‘normal’ -ish gay people to live their lives and tell a slowly growing circle of people who they were.
I look at US history, I see that after a very bloody war, we managed to get at least a legal definition of blacks as full human beings. Progressed then went into the deep freeze, although quietly stuff happened that made the 50’s and 60’s possible. At that point a lot of activism and violence got us to the point where black people could actually have the benefit of laws. While they still experienced entrenched racism, the lynchings and cross burnings finally stopped, and Jim Crow was officially banned.Then again the apparent deep freeze.
As of today, we are on the precipice of more vivid progress, which is wonderful. There are multiple examples of successful black people who look like middle class white people. To me this operates deep in the psyche for most- seeing black people being President and talking on their new iPhones at the airport etc normalizes black people, which helps a lot of white people stop with the instinctive withdrawal and dislike. Since there is a solid and growing black middle class, to me we are reaching a tipping point culturally (sorry I have degree in anthropology; I have to think this way.)
So to me BLM is catching fire because the time is right. And when thinking about tactics I come back to the question- are we needing to be in-your-face to create space that isn’t being given now? Or do we now want to cultivate respectability? If the latter, then BLM should have front and center well dressed well spoken people. If the former, then they need to amp the crazy.
Also I tend to feel like the problem with our police system is way bigger than BLM. They murder and harass people of all colors. Black people are taking the lead since they get the worst of it, but it should be a unifying issue for anyone who is poor or near poor or who cares about people who are. Police always target whoever is poorest. When I lived in Alaska it was the Eskimo/Tligit tribes who got the worst of it. My tactical suggestion here would be to raise awareness of all the abuse, not just the abuse of black poor people. Maybe this is a topic for a coalition, where BLM is a partner.
Botsplainer
Tsk, tsk – y’all are so busy squabbling, you’re missing the real fun from Abbott’s page.
msdc
@Iowa Old Lady: Not disagreeing at all – just wish it had happened in a way that left us with more than a couple of cool memes and a handy analogy for the next failed reform movement.
raven
@Botsplainer: Some people don’t give a fuck.
Kay
Fight for Fifteen, too. Why were they successful? Because they’re the actual people affected and they made people look at them. They went out and said “we’re the people who make 8 dollars an hour and we’re not waiting for a 21 point policy plan anymore”.
15 an hour was an unimaginable pipe dream and there was much clucking about it at the time. They got it in some places. I guess they could have said “we’ll wait until Ezra Klein tells us what’s achievable and then demand $9.19 and a refundable tax credit ” but are activists really in the business of being “reasonable”? We don’t lack “reasonable”. There are plenty of those.
We can have both! :)
RaflW
@p.a.: I think there’s both-and space for black work in America. Moral Mondays is a great strategy. They’re building power and getting noticed. BLM is working in a different space, and that makes sense to me.
I tend to think in terms of the GLBTQ history that I know better, and I mentioned this in a thread some days ago, but the queer movement has had both in-your-face Act Up and the corporatist Human Rights Campaign. The Stonewall drag queen riots get lots of attention in our history, but there was already the much more suit-and-tie Mattachine Society laying early groundwork.
I think that young folks should try and learn from older, more experienced people – because I am one now! – but I was a pissed off gay boy into street theater before I became a policy wonk and UU community organizer. I understand both positions (or like to think I still do, if I reflect on my early radicalization and subsequent path to less confrontive work).
I suspect there are some black young leaders who don’t feel they’ve been that well served by NAACP chapters or conservative black churches. I am not personally weighing in one way or the other on that, but I am sympathetic to BLM activists seeing what my racial equity colleague and co-troublemaker (and ex Army NCO) says: “the present efforts are yielding the present results” and wanting to upset not just the white status quo but perhaps also the establishment black organizations.
In my book that means a more vital community is emerging. One that can support, for example, both the NAACP and BLM. Can they mix it up and work together? Yes, probably so. Hopefully to better effect in the days ahead. But they need not crowd each other out — there is a lot of space open for liberation work.
Brother Dingaling
There is one huge difference between OWS and BLM that I don’t think gets noticed much. OWS occurred at a time when the primary debate among our political elites was about deficit reduction and austerity proposals. OWS was simply a way of changing the terms of the debate. It seemed to come out of nowhere, it involved a lot more than the hippies in the park, and it communicated to our elites effectively enough that income inequality and debt relief are now being addressed (verbally, anyway).
BLM, on the other hand, is coming in the context of a solid year of activism and publicity around racial issues. The debate is already happening and has been ongoing. We are past the publicity phase.
Kay
@Brother Dingaling:
Agree. OWS got them off deficits and boy, no one else was making any headway. I think they also succeeded in forcing political actors to talk about student loans. They actually still do that. They got the US Department of Education to come to the table on for-profit college rip-offs. They did a boycott and then shamed DC into acting. All of Congress couldn’t do that.
Cervantes
@KS in MA:
Yes, and we discussed it here recently — most recently with reference to Don West.
RaflW
@msdc:
So this is my bias in regards to organizing: I suspect (but do not know) that raise the wage campaigns have had more space to work because of OWS. I have experienced in my own organizing work that it can be quite effective to have a more aggressive make outlandish demands so that our more respectable group can come in and offer the ‘moderate’ choice for politicians or policymakers.
Balloon Juice a number of years ago often talked about the overton window, but generally always in bemoaning it moving rightward. But then, as I see it, moving it left doesn’t happen from moderates pushing (though that might help). I believe it moves left again as the OWS-ers and the Bernies and Sen. Warrens and people left-er than them get loud and organized and funded.
The right figured that out back around, ohhh, Goldwater. They fund and amplify the right fringe and then slip into the new center. We still have a paltry few real left think tanks, writers, or activists. Sure, we’ve been sold a media bill of goods that Bernie is practically a bolshevik, but he’s a fairly moderate socialist.
This is why I am a both-and kinda guy, even if at this stage I don’t personally resonate with Occupy type tactics. I’m glad the left edge is waking up to soften up the targets for the sensible near-left options to look good.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
This reminds me of the Drinking Liberally movement. So many barfights, so little progress.
agorabum
You’re wrong about things not being better (hell, just go back to October 2008). But the ” very least sure don’t feel like it” is the key – the proliferation of smart phones and dash cams have unearthed things that had been kept under the rug.
The biggest driver to change is when people expect things to get better…and then they don’t. So they get mad about it. People who expect to be stepped on forever don’t speak out. People who expect better do. The fights for civil rights in the 50s and 60s were from an expectation that things would be better. And there is a new expectation.
If you look at the Gilded Age, the corporations and robber barons ran rampant for awhile…until people expected better and got mad that it didn’t get better. So the anger and groundswell is actually a positive sing. We have to do something with it – and on the practical level, aside from moving the conversation, that seems to be getting liberal Dems elected (or at the least, getting Republicans out of office). And then keep pushing.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
To some extent, it’s going to happen to people willy-nilly, because younger people are marrying outside of their racial and ethnic groups far more than previous generations. Lots of whites are going to wind up with non-white in-laws and, pretty soon thereafter, non-white nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and cousins.
Chris
@WereBear:
Yeah, this.
Cole says “a decentralized organic movement like this has all kinds of different actors with different ideals and different attitudes towards what is productive and what is not. There is no rigid leadership structure, and were there one, it would probably kill the movement anyway.” Yeah, okay. But at some point it also needs to go beyond being just an amorphous movement of people who show up at the same town square and are pissed off at the same things. OWS and BLM’s predecessors in the labor movement and civil rights movement might not have been “rigid,” but they were certainly more institutionalized than this – the Baptist churches, NAACP and the like for civil rights, the various actual unions that were founded for labor. Without some kind of institutions, of coordination, of long-term planning, these movements don’t ultimately accomplish much.
ETA: Republicans understand this, or at least they used to. Having a lot of religious conservatives who are generally outraged by the same things as you is nice, but having the institutional network of conservative churches is how you transform that into a solid and reliable base (the pastor reminding them to show up and vote, reminding them when a particular issue is coming up and how they should vote on it, etc). Having a lot of rich assholes who are generally supportive of your policies is nice, but institutions like the Chamber of Commerce are the political interface that allows them to pool their resources and translate their money into effective political action. Etc.
(I say “used to understand this,” because since Citizens United rich people apparently seem to believe that they can go it alone without the need for institutions like the Chamber of Commerce or the Republican Party. Surprise surprise… it’s turning their favorite party’s elections into a shit show).
PhoenixRising
@RaflW:
This, exactly. These kids are all up in my lawn, sassing Hillary Clinton (and the old philosophy-prof dude who looks like my dad if he were alive today). And there IS a place for that.
Rest in power to the great Julian Bond, who came up through the ranks of SNCC and the SCLC and the Dem Party to lead the NAACP…but the NAACP is now an institution. One that may need to be displaced by a new iteration of SNCC, which was all about making JFK and Bobby Kennedy and then LBJ a little uncomfortable. And making them do the previosuly impossible, in policy terms.
But you’re right: we were chaining ourselves to the doors at Burroughs-Wellcome (that used to be a drug manufacturer, children) at the *same time that the Human Rights Campaign sent suits in the front door for scheduled meetings*.
Note that the suits attending the scheduled meetings worked for an organization that didn’t even have ‘gay’ in its name. Far from purity patrolling about who was more entitled to self-style as ‘queer’, or asking for a reflection on feelings from a politician, we were all pushing for certain policy goals from very different angles.
I am hopeful that BLM can create pressure to address policy issues that the NAACP hasn’t had the juice for in decades. When I see self-appointed leaders get the meeting with our next President and try to force the dialogue toward her *feeeeeelings*, I want to scream with frustration. People died to get us the vote, to move the dialogue toward treating the pragmatic concerns of people of color seriously as policy problems. Spend that meeting wisely.
PhoenixRising
@Roger Moore: We Xs and Millenials are miscengenating as fast as we can.
We got this, coach!
Roger Moore
@Kay:
This. Even if we aren’t following OWS’s tactics, we’re still using their language every time we talk about income inequality and The 1%. They successfully moved the Overton Window several notches to the left, and that’s had a big effect on what we’ve been able to accomplish since then.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
This. The Overton Window doesn’t move when people inside it move closer to one edge. It moves from people at the edges pushing them, or from people on the outside pulling them. When a crazy idea is repeated enough, it starts to get respectability, and that’s the essence of moving the Window.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Sometimes it amazes me that only about 10 years ago, you were, in your own words, full metal wingnut…
TriassicSands
But it wasn’t always so. The laws and tax structure today were changed in the 70s and 80s to alter what was then the status quo. Only when the kleptocrats got things the way they wanted them would they consider opposing changes to the new status quo. Except they aren’t opposing changes to the status quo. Through their servants — the radical five on the Supreme Court and the lunatic fringe that is now the Republican Party — they are pushing for and achieving significant gains. Citizens United, a decision that should go down in history among the worst decisions ever made by the high court, wasn’t meant to maintain the status quo; it was designed to take things to heretofore unheard of extremes. And it’s working.
Cervantes
@Kay:
Same here.
Elie
I am late to the show, but nice work, John —
I don’t have much to say. Change is painful and being pulled into it at any level can “rock your world”. I am black but haven’t always had the strongest identity. The last 6 years have really changed me with events such as Obama’s election, to how he has been treated, to OWL, now BLM and a whole bunch of in my face events from which I could not emotionally turn away. Ebola. That Africans had it — the hysteria that surrounded it, thinly veiled, even as we watched black people die. My heart has broken so many times in the last few years. The scabs set up and get ripped off again and again. And yet my pain, compared to many many others, is nothing
I have had to face myself and my own awareness and what my black life has meant. It is too hard to talk about here but I will say that the work of it is probably one of the most important things to me. Though I try to be hopeful and optimistic overall, sometimes I do ask myself, “can we make it here?” After almost 4 centuries here, after the labor and suffering of my forefathers, will we ever be “entitled” to confidence in our citizenship?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@agorabum:
Just wanted to emphasize this. It’s been pretty well demonstrated in history and anthropology studies that rebellions and revolutions happen when people are starting to hope that things have been changing for the better, not when they’re as miserable as possible.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
Yep. Though I myself am lily-white, I have a nephew who could end up like John Crawford and a niece who could end up like Sandra Bland, so it’s a lot more personal for me now than it was when I was in my 20s.
msdc
@RaflW:
I think you’re probably right to some extent, but this is the point of my comparison: the people who start racking up the victories are generally those who share the same message and goals as the activist fringe, but change the tactics.
I don’t think, though, that it’s because the activist fringe is out there being aggressive and outlandish, and I don’t think it’s because they make the “near-left” options look good. Occupy has basically disappeared, and yet the campaigns to raise the minimum wage are still winning ground. The organization and the commitment to constructive political engagement are what changed.
Joel
Oh, c’mon, please?.
Elie
@msdc:
I agree with your point.
So many times things are “set in motion” and their culmination is not always in either a straight conceptual line to accomplishment or an immediately temporal relationship. To me, having OWL and BLM as well as other activists get in our faces, is that they disrupt our comfort and in knocking over the “apple cart”, it can set off a cascade of realizations and thinking that can then lead to a variety of different awarenesses that trigger a variety of other actions. That is why open access to opinions — even sometimes the most noxious, is so important. When you kick the hornets nest, yes, you can get stung, but the stings may motivate you to run down a path you had not anticipated before — even as you run away from the pain of the stings.
All that is not to say that organization and appropriate management are not important. Only that the role of “disruption” and its necessary discomfort, is an essential component to activated change
gwangung
@RaflW:
Oh, I know so. That’s what the young activists are actually saying.
And I’ll take their word for THAT.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Police killings by race:
Hispanic: 19%
Black: 30%
white: 49%
True story.
Elie
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Ok.
What is the denominator for each statistic? All people? Population of each race? All arrests? All encounters with police? City vs state patrols? You know…the underlying specs…. and citation please…
Thanks
Omnes Omnibus
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Now let’s consider what percentage of the population each of these groups represents.
Elie
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Also, source please.
Steve From Antioch
@WJS: this is so fucking stupid.
No, BLM speakers are not dying every day.
Are black folks dying every day? Yes. Is that at the hands of police? Yes, she sometimes.
It is truly tiresome to listen to all these white folks fall all over themselves trying to get up on their purity ponies.
Joel
@Steve From Antioch: Well, something’s tiresome.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Definitely need a source. The last one I saw said that it was split evenly between whites and blacks, which means it’s disproportionate to the number of African-Americans in the US population.
Roger Moore
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Those numbers are highly suspect because we don’t actually have anything like complete statistics on killings by police. If there’s any systematic bias in the way killings are reported (e.g. places where there’s systematic bias in who police kill are less likely to report police killings) then the percentages could be substantially off.
Ruckus
John Cole
I have posted 2 or 3 times in the last few days, some overall thoughts. I’ll try again shorter.
1. As most things are politics really is the answer. However as you noted our politics varies from not working to fucking broken. We need a leader of the democratic party, doesn’t even have to be an elected person. I say that because the president is normally the leader but he seems to be a bit busy just now. That leader can tie together the various elements BLM, etc. One thing we do have is our top 2 candidates are far more in agreement than opposition.
2. This leader doesn’t have to detract from say the BLM message and shouldn’t nor control it, just coordinate it with the financial message.
3. GOTV, another reason for a strong party leader and not the one’s running for office. Now is the time for this, not 6 months out just because we have a nominee.
4. Hope like hell it works, because given the conditions we face piecemeal yelling and screaming will accomplish little to nothing.
WJS
@Steve From Antioch: BLM Speakers are not dying every day; police officers are killing African American citizens on a regular basis in cities all over America. They are facing no repercussions for their actions, are lying to cover for one another, and they are not being indicted, tried, or convicted for murder even though you can see it on the damned video. It is actually news when a police officer kills an unarmed African American citizen and then faces justice for their actions.
That was the point, Dumbass.
http://killedbypolice.net if you don’t believe me…
Llelldorin
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
As someone who read the site back then, honestly he wasn’t. He was one of the last of the now-extinct group of conservatives who were more or less engaged with the world as it actually exists, instead of the Fox News fever-dream version. I don’t think there are any left–they’ve all either switched parties as he did or they followed the “Evil makes you stupid” path that Fred Clark brilliantly described, and lost any contact with reality.
John Cole was a fun, thought-provoking read even when he was totally wrong. It’s hard to call that “full-metal wingnut” in the modern sense.
sigaba
@Belafon:
That’s true, but a recurring trope in this argument is person A will say BLM is doing something wrong, and then person B will say that A is whitesplaining, as if BLM was black people, is a surrogate of black interests, and anything said about BLM is immediately applicable to black people en toto.
Their tactics suck and are counterproductive, BLM isn’t saving black lives, and as long as it continues to do what it has been doing it will continue to not save black lives. If Hillary and Bernie give BLM everything it asks for, it would persist in saving no black lives. This position is not summarily racist, just because it slags on BLM. BLM is not black people, in fact it’s totally unclear who they actually speak for. It’s like saying anyone who was against Code Pink’s tactics was misogynist.
WJS
@sigaba: I don’t know why, but you kinda sound like William F. Buckley Jr.
Steve from Antioch
@WJS: See, you needn’t engage in silly hyperbole to make a point, good jerb.
Steve from Antioch
@sigaba:
This.
WJS
@Steve from Antioch: What’s an acceptable means for people to ask society to demand that the cops stop killing them? Do they just need to be more patient and accept the fact that being shrill and impolite won’t cut it with people who have better manners?
Marc
Does it matter whether your tactics are effective, or is it enough to just feel good?
Steve from Antioch
@WJS:
Well, there you go again. You see, BLM people ain’t getting killed – at least that I know of.
So can you just try to tether your rhetoric a little more to reality?
What BLM is doing is glomming on the death of some OTHER black folks to try and make political hay. Which is all good and fine and the nature of the political process.
Okay – we clear on that?
Now what’s your question?
WJS
@Steve from Antioch: How dare they ask people to care about folks getting shot by the police. How dare they.
No question. It was fun seeing you get worked up.
sigaba
@WJS: you’re doing exactly what I’m talking about — you’re taking something I’m saying about BLM and then acting as if I said “the negro race.” Buckley is attacking every possible black attempt at civil rights. I’m attacking 20 people in Seattle.
I’m totally sold that black people are brutalized by the police, particularly poor ones. It’s completely unacceptable and cops gotta go to jail. Cops gotta get sent to death row. But BLM, the way they run things, makes that result harder, not easier.
sigaba
@WJS:
Get laws passed. And short of that, march on Washington. It’s been done before, to good effect.
What you don’t do is hijack the press of your allies, and then harangue people with your UC Santa Barbara litany on intersectionalism and privilege. That screws everyone. Hillary and Bernie are your platform, they are not your competition; even if they don’t agree with you, even if they won’t let you have their microphone, that doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer. You just gotta know what to ask for, and what you’ll accept, here and now.
And yeah, cops might keep killing poor blacks. That’ll happen for some time. Don’t accept that, but don’t attack national Democratic politicians as if they’re the ones pulling the triggers, or as if Hillz personally invented mandatory minimums for drug offenses, and it’s your mission in life to embarrass her and maker her kiss a ring, as if she was the solitary condition keeping racism alive in the US.
sigaba
I mean, we’ve seen with Republicans what happens when their politicians are forced to kiss a Tea Party ring, or a Koch ring. This is something Democrats still sortof have — we may be in the pockets of the babbie-killers, we may be shifty grafters as we have been since time immemorial, since Roscoe Conkling, but at least our politicians don’t bow on bended knees on national television and beg for their worthless political lives. “I’ll do anything, just let me sit in the chair” is basically the short version of every Republican debate since 2008. And it’s destroyed them, from the inside out.
Our guys at least maintain the pretense that they have some modicum of agency and don’t wear some rich guys’ livery. They’re duplicitous bastards, but they aren’t lickspittles. This distinction is the essence of American politics.
gwangung
Wrong.
Arclite
Nate Silver said it best:
Whites are living in Sweden.
Blacks are living in Rwanda.
Paul in KY
@Turgidson: Definitely correct. They could easily give raises out (that would be chump change to their bottom line), that would definitely raise the morale of their employees, yet they like to see people hurting (IMO).
Problem is, we’ve become so law-abiding & the police are so sophisticated, that they don’t have to fear mob violence or other expressions of discontent that back in previous centuries helped them see that they needed to dial it back some.
Paul in KY
@WJS: William F. Buckley was a complete dick.
sigaba
@gwangung: You know better? I’m all ears if you can demonstrate how this is “working”, apart from alienating moderates.
sigaba
Roscoe Conkling was a Republican. I was thinking of Boss Tweed.
Ella in New Mexico
So Sick of this discussion.
It’s become clear to anyone who’s ever manged to find a solution to a serious problem or worked to get social and legal changes accomplished for the common good (and I’ve managed to do both) is that BLM is all about being angry, and getting people angrier and screaming in people’s faces but not really about getting down the brass tacks of getting things changed. They’re mistaking the political process for psychotherapy.
They want to have “confrontations” and get “apologies”, not unlike people in therapy want to punch stuffed dolls and scream into pillows or yell at the photographs of their abusers or bring their alcoholic, neglectful parents into a session to that they can get them to say they’re sorry for how much damage they inflicted. EXCEPT BERNIE SANDERS AND HILARY CLINTON ARE NOT YOUR DRUNK PARENTS.
Problem is, with no self discipline, people can get stuck in therapy, make absolutely no progress for years, because they simply refuse to get past the self-indulgent self-pity of anger. They never heal and incredibly, are so narcissistic they actually inflict psychological damage on their own kids or others who love them.
Anger is a really important emotion, it will mobilize you for sure. But it won’t make the past go away. It can’t be the sole rationale for waking up everyday. And the only thing that can change the future is to work to make sure the damages don’t get passed on to the next generation.
BLM is talking about issues that are of life and death importance. But they put their allies in a Catch-22 in which they literally can do nothing right. Their tactics are hurting the cause at this point. I want change, fast. Not apologies from people who are already on my side.
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@RaflW:
Thank you. All of what you said, was what i was attempting to allude to in the last thread on this subject.
I have been attempting to process the varied angles in order to attempt a coherent response at my place.
John, thanks for the post. I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this matter.
Hopefully we can learn from each other and learn something from Othello: “If you prick me, do I not bleed?”
…
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@Ella in New Mexico:
So Sick of this discussion.
Then why bother participating?
It is comments like these that serve as one of a thousand cuts, and make me wonder about purported allies, and their need to feel comforted.
I would ask any that share your opinion, if they have ever raised a voice, or interupted anyone, they thought was not giving their priorties the proper attention.
White dudes get away with it all the time. It is in fact how a certain real estate magnate from nyc and a certain jersey governor roll…
But adressing your concerns are apparently what BLM activists and black folk in general will have to address.
…
Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™
@WJS:
I am certain that you have been made to understand that she is a black woman by now.
However i agree with the gist of your comment.
…
Ella in New Mexico
@Provider_UNE_AndPlayersToBeHatedLater™:
You want to talk about a “death by a thousand cuts”? How about the fact that they’re doing it to themselves?
I am sick of trying to discuss why Bernie Sanders is being held “accountable” for something that no one else is being held accountable for.
I am sick of tiptoeing around the fact that while “Black Lives ABSOLUTELY Matter”, this schtick by the BLM against a frigging social liberal Democrat is obviously either stupid and counter-productive, or quite possibly being fostered falsely for political purposes.
And yes, as an advocate, as a person who has worked to change racial and gender-based discrimination and bias, and a person who is 100% angry about the injustices I see against blacks and racial minorities, I am sick of being told it is ME who should apologize.