The movement for Black lives
August 1, 2016 8:12 AM   Subscribe

 
This will join Campaign Zero in being an excellent answer to the (dumb) question "Gosh, what do all these protestors even want, anyway?"
posted by tobascodagama at 8:23 AM on August 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think it's particularly revolutionary that BLM explicitly says "we are basing our policies on the needs of the most marginalized" - assuming that one understands marginalization correctly, that will sweep up everybody's needs by working from the most urgent needs outward instead of doing the usual "the most marginalized people will get thrown under the bus in order to make gains for the most politically palatable members of the group" thing.

BLM gets a certain amount of complaint (from Black activists) in the circles in which I move for being kind of respectability-politics oriented and too friendly with the Democratic Party. It will be interesting to see where all this goes. Mainly I think BLM is something new, and the old ways of analyzing what a group is and does do not entirely fit. Which is not to say that there's no use looking to history, but that history does not subsume everything - which, thank god. BLM and associated projects are just about the only things that can cheer me up these days.
posted by Frowner at 9:05 AM on August 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Reading a few online articles on A Vision for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter on the internet wasn't too helpful in figuring out the relationship between the two groups. The Washington Post identified them as the same group. A Vision for Black Lives seems to claim to be a coalition of 40/50/60 groups, although they don't seem to be named, unless I'm missing something.

The racial injustices under which blacks, especially, have been suffering has recently been back in the public eye (that is, in the mainstream media, finally. As one of those older people who remember the 60's as a time when social/political/economic justice seemed to be in ascendance, the last fifty years have been confounding, confusing, disappointing, and horrifying, with some bright moments of acknowledgement and change now and then--but seldom for African-Americans.

The Left will argue about this, as they do about everything, but it seems as though coalitions--with real demands--are a step forward. This group's demands for reparations has always been a third rail for black movements...how would this work?...but the idea is one that so clearly focuses attention on America's long and inhumane treatment of Black Americans that it has to stay on the table.
posted by kozad at 9:13 AM on August 1, 2016


The focus on the most marginalized is so important because the mainstream does not allow them to have (or strongly pushes back on) anything from which they themselves can not benefit. This means that equality and justice for the marginalized necessarily includes equality and justice for everyone.
posted by rhizome at 9:21 AM on August 1, 2016


Reading a few online articles on A Vision for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter on the internet wasn't too helpful in figuring out the relationship between the two groups.

BLM in general is pretty decentralised. There are a huge number of regional groups which are bonded to one another more by agreement with a common set of principles than any kind of hierarchical structure. It's a method of organising that is fairly routine within radical/activist circles but not well-known outside them.

The point of this is that it allows the local groups to be more sensitive and reactive to local issues. This is important because policing in America is largely controlled at the local level in the first place, and that's where the real change has to happen. Shitty judges and sheriffs need to get voted out (where applicable), city and state governments need to update their laws, etc., etc. Awareness of the movement at the national level matters, because it helps create pressure to act, but Congress and the President can't just sign some Black Lives Matter Act of 2017 and fix everything, because the modern system of policing wasn't created by Federal law to begin with.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:15 AM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh, and I should clarify that the above is just my perspective as a white person who follows the movement, rather than somebody with authoritative knowledge. I probably could have worded my comment better to reflect that, but I didn't think about it until after I hit post.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:17 AM on August 1, 2016


I think it's particularly revolutionary that BLM explicitly says "we are basing our policies on the needs of the most marginalized" - assuming that one understands marginalization correctly, that will sweep up everybody's needs by working from the most urgent needs outward instead of doing the usual "the most marginalized people will get thrown under the bus in order to make gains for the most politically palatable members of the group" thing.


but how does that work? black women are clearly more marginalized than black men. do their needs vis a vis the cops differ from black men? probably, since black women are probably more immediately in danger from violence from black men than the cops. but then how does this need intersect with the needs of black men not to be the subject of violence from the cops? the idea is either a dodge, something to deflect attention ( since who would argue against the needs of the most marginalized,) or a recipe for endless dividing people from one another, all of whom which have a need, on the most basic level, not to be killed by the cops.

and then you can turn the whole thing around. take the example of freddie gray in baltimore. baltimore politics has been dominated by the black community for a generation, it had a black police chief, several of the officers who killed gray were black. so, "black power" was represented at all levels wrt his death. how do the needs of all the black people involved in gray's death, as marginalized people, intersect with their power over the life and death of a man in baltimore?

I just returned from visiting family in baltimore and, on the day that all charges were dropped against the cops involved, the states prosecuting attorney said this:
However, after much thought and prayer it has become clear to me that not being able to work with an independent investigatory agency at the very start, without having a say in the election of whether our case is preceded in front of a judge or a jury, without communal oversight on policing in this community, without reforms in the criminal justice system, we could try this case a 100 times, and cases just like it, and we would still end up with the same result.
and was pilloried in the press and criticized by the entire black political establishment including the mayor. meanwhile, the mayor of baltimore, stephanie rawlings-blake, was just finishing off being on national tv as the "acting chair" of the DNC convention in philly. mosby (the prosecutor) is finished politically, but rawlings-blake appears to have a bright future ahead. And where was #BLM in all of this? Nowhere to be found, except a small controlled protest at city hall.

I guess it's a testament to racial progress than radical black college kids get to be self-aggrandizing, political naive and ultimately ineffective in the same ways as white kids.
posted by ennui.bz at 12:19 PM on August 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Thank you, roomthreeseventeen, for finding this and posting it. I appreciate your sharing because it will help me educate myself. I am a privileged white woman who wants to understand.
posted by Altomentis at 12:57 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


but how does that work? ... [valid criticisms of specific tenents of the platform]

I struggle with using this (and things like it) as the answer to the question of: "Gosh, what do all these protestors even want, anyway?" because, well, there's stuff in there that just seems like a bad idea. And the All Lives Matter dingdongs, and even some of the allies will point to anything that's not perfectly thought out as an example of how people who believe that black lives matter are "unreasonable." And the good stuff will get thrown out with the bathwater.

But on the other hand - no one will get anything without asking for it. And having concrete, cogent, positions on policy issues gives the people on both "sides*" who want to do right a place to start.

So, this is good. I think.

*I'm defining "sides" as people with power vs. people without power, which isn't a strict black/white divide though there's obviously significant overlaps where you would expect there to be.
posted by sparklemotion at 2:06 PM on August 1, 2016


no one will get anything without asking for it.

YMMV, but I read this and think it's basically bonkers (and: both too expansive and, as a run-of-the-mill laundry list of progressives' wants, unimaginative). By contrast, the reforms put forth by DeRay etal a few months ago was responsive to the core complaints, focused, and seemed politically feasible.
posted by jpe at 4:34 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Always ask for more, because you're never going to get anything but less. At first. Shove that goddamn Overton Window.

> BLM gets a certain amount of complaint (from Black activists) in the circles in which I move for being kind of respectability-politics oriented

I hear that, and at the same time it's funny, to me, considering how often people (people right here on metafilter, people I know or kind of know on fb) will get all boo-hoo about how BLM protests are too confrontational and too disruptive and couldn't they be nice like Dr. King was. There is no perfect way to do this, that is for sure.
posted by rtha at 7:17 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


There is no perfect way to do this, that is for sure.

Not only that, but the system adapts to protect itself from what has worked before.
posted by rhizome at 8:27 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


The second half of this morning's Democracy Now! broadcast (alt link) covered the platform and included an interview with Ash-Lee Henderson.
posted by XMLicious at 10:07 AM on August 2, 2016


how do the needs of all the black people involved in gray's death, as marginalized people, intersect with their power over the life and death of a man in baltimore?

Surely that's exactly where "centering the marginalized" comes in: you build start from the position of people like Freddie Gray and build up your demands from there, to ensure that you aren't leaving out large numbers of people suffering under the existing system of oppression. You don't start from the position of a Black political establishment that isn't even allowed to admit that the criminal justice system is utterly biased against Black people -- an establishment that appears to be incapable of representing the needs of someone like Freddie Gray.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:20 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


In platform, Black Lives Matter accuses Israel of ‘genocide,’ backs BDS
Ahead of elections, umbrella group releases document labeling Jewish state an ‘apartheid state,’ calls for stopping US support

It's a pity they're going down this path.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:29 PM on August 3, 2016


Clickbaity headline, but the article is worth reading: Why Do Black Activists Care About Palestine?

posted by Joe in Australia at 5:04 PM on August 22, 2016


« Older Chernobyl going solar   |   "Traitor." "Too much make-up." "Dressed as a woman... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments