But as much as this series of protests might irritate me as a Sanders supporter, my frustration is not really about him or this ridiculous protest. I am frustrated by what one of the protestors called the biggest grassroots movement in the country right now and their lack of interest in winning any tangible gains for those that they claim to have as constituents.
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What is the weirdo populist economic determinism that Garza speaks of here? Is it a minimum wage of $15 an hour, which will disproportionately help Black workers? Is it the expansion of Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare? Is it the guaranteeing the ability of workers to organize collectively as a civil right? Maybe it is arguing for universal healthcare in a world where a Black person is sixty-five times more likely to die from a preventable disease like diabetes (approximately 15,000 completely preventable Black deaths from this in 2014) than they are to be shot and killed by the police (238 completely preventable Black deaths from this in 2013)? Or is it socialism in general, which Black people favor by a 55 to 38 percent margin and figures heavily into the history of emancipatory struggle in the US?
Black people, in poll after poll, seem to really care about this weirdo populist economic determinism stuff, since they consistently list things like education, the economy, and income inequality at the top of their policy concerns. As for police violence, a Gallup poll came out earlier this week that showed Black people reported feeling no more mistreated by police today than they did two decades ago (and that percentage is actually down seven percent from the 2004 survey).
And when issues of economic inequality have been on the lips of politicians left and right since Occupy Wall Streets rise in 2011 (I would actually say that it is the one way that Occupy actually shifted political discussions in this country), why is it that Black Lives Matter seems to be doing the most to steer the discussion away from the issues that Black Lives Have Actually Said Matters Most To Them?
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The problem, of course, is that it is hard to build a movement around fighting white supremacy and institutional racism when you are circumspect about a definitive path to eliminating those social ills; people typically want to know what your endgame is before they support your cause. How are you going to end white supremacy or institutional racism? Is it over once every cop is fitted with body cameras? Do we win when cops go to jail for civil rights violations? What if those things happen while unemployment for the Black working class is more than double the white working class? Is that not white supremacy, too?
Prescriptions are a good thing. Otherwise a social movement becomes what Black Lives Matter has seemingly become: a vehicle for individuals to become celebrity activists, feted by major media and nonprofits across the United States. How many articles have you seen that were focused on individual activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter? How many articles have you seen about policy victories at the local, state, or national levels?
Compare the two in your mind and see what you come up with. It is far more likely that you will remember some activists profile before you can think of a story on any kind of significant change that has affected Black Lives for the better. Great for them, I suppose, but then what has all of this been for if we are not working to remake the relationship between the state and its citizens? Given the polices role as the main defender of private property in a capitalist system, we need something more visionary than a few hashtags and beige liberalism carefully disguised as radical change.
This has been a summer of disappointment. Not just with Black Lives Matter, but with self-described socialist organizations and publications that seem to believe that pandering to this particular protest group will get people like Alicia Garza and the innumerable online personalities who parrot similar rhetoric to stop engaging in the worst kind of hypocritical red-baiting: a red-baiting that completely erases socialists and communists of color from history in order to serve their mangled versions of liberatory politics.
As I have told people privately and publicly on a regular basis, their efforts will do nothing more than embolden an exclusive and identity-based liberalism. And you know what? The Sanders campaign posted about the #SayHerName hashtag all over social media. The largest socialist organization in America has posted on their blog and on social media in support of Black Lives Matter in the wake of their last demonstration at Netroots Nation in Phoenix.
Guess what? We are still here, with Black Lives Matter activists denouncing people at a rally for programs supported by Black people by a 9-to-1 margin as white supremacists, and with people from the online social justice set calling them white moderates. Funny how that works out.
It has been painful to see Black Lives Matter go all catawompus the way that it has. When the protests in Ferguson first began, I thought that this might be the best chance for a transformative and revolutionary change in our communities since King was rallying Black people and progressives of all stripes across the United States to a vision of liberation and justice. But it seems that all of this potential is being squandered so that a few people bent on the empty satisfaction of moral rectitude can score their fifteen minutes of fame. I have little faith that this will rectify itself in a world where the intoxication of fame and adulation is just one hashtag or attention-grabbing moment away.
Black Lives Matter is more interested in airtime for the few than social change for the many. What an absolute fucking shame.
