I read about how the offshoot of blm who disrupted Sanders claimed the Democrats are not the answer because many areas where police violence occurs are I areas with democratic party leadership, and nothing changes.
I felt they are right. Democrats tend to rule urban areas, large cities and many state governments. But police violence isn’t curtailed because of it. Cops aren’t gunning down people in pre civil rights Alabama, they are doing it in Maryland or nyc which have one party majorities for the dems.
If this is true, what options does blm have if neither party cares about police behavior?
Newsflash! For BLM or any political group. Getting your guy (or gal) elected isn’t the end of the process, it’s the beginning. You need to keep up the pressure, thereby creating a space where your elected person can actually do something about the problem.
For the BLM folks, maybe they need to reach out to righties and say something like. “You’re always complaining about aggressive law enforcement, but we deal with it.” Admittedly, the movement needs a better poster person than some of the cases so far, but the woman in Texas comes pretty close. Hanging yourself for not signaling a lane change. Unbelievable, literally.
The movement needs to wither away and be replaced by one that does not pretend Michael Brown was a victim. Black Lives Matter is the boy who cried wolf - sensible people do not care about their opinion because their opinion is borne from their own racism. If another movement arises that speaks for victims of criminals in the police force, but does not also try to whitewash robbers who are killed by their own suicidal stupidity and aggression, then that movement is worth listening to.
The disrupters are not an offshoot of Black Lives Matter. They are Black Lives Matter.
Who are BLM?
It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.
The media has been reporting that the two assholes who abused Bernie Sanders, and the crowd who came to hear Bernie Sanders, with their rhetoric were from BLM.
Where has change in racial dynamics come from in history?
War, for one. Massive social upheaval–riots, boycotts, mass demonstrations–for another. Threat of military force (the 101st airborne!) to enforce judicial edicts, for a third. It has not, generally speaking, come from electing politicians to engage in ordinary politics, though obviously it matters at the margins who is in office.
So it seems pretty elementary to conclude that electing the right politicians is very unlikely to be the answer. And it’s pretty safe to say that civil war and a Supreme Court that cares about civil rights are off the table.
So that leaves riots, boycotts, mass demonstrations. Which, not coincidentally, is where #blacklivesmatters is focused at the moment. The only real option is to build a social movement and force the change you need.
That didn’t work out to well for the OWS hippies but what the heck, if BLM want to start a race riot, I’m sure there will be dozens of people who support them.
Is this the same Supreme Court who just made same sex marriage the law of the land? That’s an example of them caring about civil rights. Rodriguez from SCOTUS was a surprising turn in 4th amendment jurisprudence. I wouldn’t say SCOTUS is off the table.
The thing is, the means have to support the goals. Do you think riots, boycotts, and mass demonstrations to the extent they are being done currently are effective? I don’t. The only people that care about it are the ones that were already predisposed to care about it. Messaging that lauds Mike Brown don’t resonate.
He said: “Kid, I’m gonna put you in a cell. I want your wallet and your
Belt.”
I said, “Obie, I can understand your wantin’ my wallet, so I don’t have any
Money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?” and he said,
“Kid, we don’t want any hangin’s.” I said, “Obie, did you think I was gonna
Hang myself for litterin’?”
It may not be the entire answer, but it’s a lot better than the alternative, and given our current electoral system there are only two viable alternatives, at least short term.
By “off the table” I mean exceedingly unlikely to make the kind of dramatic move embodied by Brown v. Board. I think civil rights activists (and here I’m using the term to refer to those fighting for racial justice) would be ecstatic if the Supreme Court would just not kill the remaining legal tools at their disposal such as the remains of the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, there was much rejoicing when the Fair Housing Act survived last month. I think that’s about where we’re calibrated right now–a victory is the Supreme Court not actively preventing racial justice.
They got the likely next President to come out with a fairly strong set of principles on criminal justice reform (and certainly forced it as an issue in the primaries). They have forced race matters to the top of the national dialogue in a way we haven’t seen in 30 years. They’ve vastly increased the adoption of body cameras. They’ve convinced major sources of funding to focus on criminal justice reform and research. I could go on.
The movement has done a lot in a year. Remember that there was 10 years between Rosa Parks and Selma. If this movement continued for a decade, I think we could very well see major national legislation like the VRA that reforms how police forces to business and how they are prosecuted when they do wrong.
I don’t agree with all the tactics or ways that individual cases are characterized. I was among the people who thought George Zimmerman should be acquitted. Mike Brown is a poor example of unwarranted police violence. Both cases do have elements in them that justify outrage, including the way the criminal justice system operated and how the media and public at large reacted.
It’s hard to see past your own blinders. In a narrow slice of the left right now there is a shitstorm over the Sanders interruption. In the mainstream world, barely a blip. Similarly, many on the right know all the details of the Mike Brown killing. In the mainstream world, not so much. What moves the needle is not the stuff the high-information, activist people focus on. On the big picture stuff, I think the movement’s tactics are working out just fine.
Likely next President? However likely Sanders is to be elected, I think Sanders has had a pretty strong track record on civil rights issues in general, and racial justice issues as well. Is my impression correct? In other words, I’m not so sure that crediting the BLM movement with the principles that Sanders has taken is giving credit where it’s due.
Along those same lines, do you credit the BLM movement with adoption of body cameras (actually, has this been increasing? I wasn’t aware but am interested to read), and other various research? I think general societal pushes that happens to coincide with BLM may be happening, but I’m not sure that BLM deserves the credit. It seems like giving credit to Louis Farrakhan instead of MLK.
Yes, I do give them credit and yes, it is happening.
It’s absolutely true that this coincides with other threads, and that some of the momentum was pre-existing. That’s also true for pretty much every social change in the history of the world. The question is always a counter-factual–would we have this change but-for this particular movement? And I think the answer in this case is “no,” we would not see this big push for body cameras in the absence of the orchestrated movement post-Ferguson.
I understand the quote comes from the BLM website. What part of the quote talks about heckling and shouting down public speeches? And how are we getting from that to public rioting? I don’t see any of that behavior advocated in the quote you pulled, which looks quite reasonable and progressive to me.
I’m glad to hear increased exploration of body cameras. I’m not so sanguine about crediting BLM vs. other generalized societal pushes that coalesced after Ferguson, but I grant I’m not following the issues with BLM closely. Hopefully the cameras work well and increase in usage.
Credit is a funny concept when you try to examine it too closely. I mean, if you actually look at a granular level at any of the accomplishments of the original Civil Rights Movement, you could make an argument that none of the prime movers was really the but-for cause. There was the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, Thurgood Marshall, local churches, individual brave protestors, regional organizers, public figures, politicians, etc. etc. Dr. King became a leader and we remember him in retrospect as the face of the movement. He was certainly a remarkable and talented man. But the world is full of remarkable and talented people.
(Incidentally, the same thing is true of the gay rights movement. There is so much credit jockeying happening now it makes your head spin if you really try to untangle things. The truth is everyone plays a role, from Harvey Milk to Andrew Sullivan to Anthony Kennedy. I doubt that a single face will emerge as the face of the movement.)
So I don’t really know how you’d objectively gauge the contributions of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi and the others closely connected to BLM, as compared to the efforts of people like Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson and what Eric Holder would have done without them. But my subjective impression is that they really did harness the power of social media to make a narrative out of police killings (which have always been happening, but which were not made part of a narrative) that might not have taken hold absent their efforts.
This is why government working well matters. It’s one thing to complain about police violence. It’s another to figure out the root cause: arrogant government employees and a culture of no accountability.
Big city Democrats tend to allow a certain level of corruption and stupidity, and won’t crack down because the public employee unions fund their campaigns.