Great TYT segment on how BLM can improve its tactics

[gobears10]

Great segment by TheYoungTurks. I always like the discussions between Jayar, Jimmy, and John. They made an excellent point: it's horrible politics to call your natural allies "white supremacists." As Jimmy said, politics is about compromise, the art of what's possible. It's about being able to build broad based coalitions, winning over people, knowing how to work the situations, knowing how to gain support for your issue, and to win not just short battles, but the overall war. Those on the radical left who prioritize anti-oppression identity politics often denounce smart politics as "respectability politics." But they are extremely naive and idealistic, living in a fantasy land and having no idea about how the real world works. Great point about how MLK Jr. strategically won the war, while what the Black Panthers did was theoretically justified, they were't able to have such a broad based impact on the overall American public.

Calling white progressives, people who agree with you on 95% of the substance "white supremacists" is horrible politics. This loses support, alienates natural allies, and pushes people away from your cause. Instead of saying something to get them on your side, you are pushing them way and doing far more harm to your cause than good. Theoretically and academically, you may have a case about how we live in a social system that perpetuates "white supremacy," or institutional white privilege built on structural anti-blackness. But when you're that deep in your ideological bubble, when you are using very specific sociological definitions of terms far removed from their standard and colloquial use, the population at large is going to look at you as a bunch of crazy people when you call ultra-liberal white people "white supremacist liberals." Still, even using the academic definition, calling people and Bernie that doesn't help your cause, and it fucks your cause over. Equating people who are on your side and support you with white supremacists who want to kill you like Dylan Roof is extremely idiotic, and BLM's actions did far more harm than good.

There is a much better way for people to approach this and win over people. They could have said, "Bernie, even in Seattle, even in the most progressive and liberal city in America, there are still a lot of blind spots. The progressives here still have blind spots. You don't know our experience, and how even in this bastion of liberalism, we are plagued with police brutality. You all need to have a bigger and more inclusive dialogue. Yes, you all are liberal, and you want to do the right thing, and you've done the right thing in many areas, but you have a blind spot on racial justice. We need you stand with us because we are dying." That's how you properly get a message across and win over your natural allies, broaden the appeal of your message, and make your movement more inclusive.

[underahedgerow]

1. Yeah I messed this one up in a big way.

Last edited Tue Aug 11, 2015, 02:43 AM - Edit history (1)

Edited to remove the ridiculous statement that I made before doing sufficient homework.

Please accept my apologies.

[gobears10]

3. what the heck?

Jayar Jackson is African-American. Please do your research before posting nonsense comments.

[underahedgerow]

4. You're absolutely right, I totally jumped the gun and massively effed that one

up.

I am so sorry and I'm going to edit my post to reflect this in a feeble attempt to make myself look somewhat less than the total ass that I am.

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. Just what they need, advice from Cenk.

[daredtowork]

5. After the incident in Seattle

I've been thinking that the "Natural Allies" assumption is part of the flaw in progressive thinking - particularly when BLM isn't an organization of party politics.

Furthermore, I dare you to give this lecture on tactics to their face. Really, I dare you.

The whole point of #BLM is to be an alternative to status quo tactics as described above. You may not think their tactics will "work" - but they beg to differ and they are going to do what they are going to do anyway.

I just read a a book on the Free Speech Movement, and I was startled by how much it had in common with BLM.

[starroute]

6. But what message was it sending?

I can see having die-ins at shopping malls on Black Friday or disrupting tree-lighting ceremonies. Those things directly target consumer culture, middle class complacency, and the exclusion of the black community from the unexamined privileges of mainstream America.

But what are you targeting when you tell white progressives that they're indistinguishable from the Ku Klux Klan? The message, if there is one, is that even the best of the political mainstream isn't good enough and only deserves to have its nose rubbed in its own unworthiness.

That's not a message that's likely to resonate. It's one thing to guilt-trip people who are already half-aware that they're being self-indulgent and self-satisfied. It's another to go after people when they're pursuing what they see as a higher cause and tell them that cause is shit.

I can't recall the Free Speech Movement ever doing anything like that.

[daredtowork]

7. The FSM had an Obscenity Rally

That was pretty darned shocking to everyone. Actually only one of the leaders got involved with that and the rest of the FSM decided that actually went too far and discredited the movement. Nevertheless, they felt once it was done, they had to back it. Sadly, the result was the F-word fest that eventually led to the Reagan backlash.

EDIT: It was called the "Filthy Speech Movement" - http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt687004sg&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e8112&toc.id=d0e353

The impression I got from the interview was Marissa actually didn't care about the "white gaze" of Seattle which was so shocked that she thought of them as racists and white supremacists. Because Bernie was there, she was able to put on her show for a National audience at Seattle's expense. And now she thinks she was successful in starting a National conversation about Bernie Sanders and race.

[starroute]

9. I can't say I see any similarity

I don't recall the "Filthy Speech Movement" as being a thing -- but news traveled slower in those pre-Internet days. What I do know is that opposition to censorship was a continuing issue throughout the Sixties, quite independent of the political issues associated with civil rights and Vietnam. It was one of the dividing lines between hippies and the anti-war types until everything blurred together around 1968-69. It was crucial to the emergence of the gay rights movement, since any discussion of gay sexuality had been treated as pornographic. It was a gender issue, since ladies were not expected to either use four-letter words or be exposed to their use by others. And on and on and on.

In contrast, I don't see any clear dividing lines between what Marissa did and more conventional BLM actions. I don't see two different protest cultures converging and not quite coming out even. The goals are the same, the ideological analysis is the same, and the tactics are similar. The only difference is between briefly shutting down a highway or shopping mall to make a statement and shutting down a political rally in a way that makes it impossible for it to continue.

The former is street theater, but the latter borders on fascism. It's a blow against democracy itself on the part of someone who clearly doesn't believe in democracy. It's designed to shut down free speech rather than enhancing it. And creaking old relic of the Sixties thought I may be, I find that unacceptable.

[daredtowork]

11. The Filthy Speech movement was an important thing because it was the end of FSM

I only know because I'm reading a book about it now. A frat house had a charity event called "The Ugly Man Contest" that was won by an obscene entry. Soon thereafter a kid was on Sproul Plaza (the main public plaza where a lot of the action takes place) with a piece of paper with the F word written on it. A passing police car drove by, and since this could be seen by any pedestrian on the street, he called it in to campus police, and the kid was arrested under obscenity laws.

The Free Speech Movement had essentially won at that point (having used a lot of direct action tactics similar to BLM). However a couple of the FSM leaders thought it was an injustice that a lower class kid would get arrested for his social protest over the F word while everyone looks the other way when Frat kids break obscenity laws. When they couldn't get anywhere through proper channels, they threatened to hold an "Obscenity Rally". The administrators tried to warn them that if they did they would be giving away all the gains of the Free Speech Movement to reactionaries.

The next day they held a rally that included cheers, plays, literatures, an edition of SPIDER magazine with the F word on the cover, and just about everything you can imagine dealing with the F word. The Young Republicans (who were part of the FSM United Front Alliance) ordered "F- Communism" T-shirts.

There was a conservative backlash among certain faculty on campus who had already been furiously writing editorials and appealing to their friends in the State Legislature about what allowing political advocacy on campus (what FSM was all about) had led to in terms of the decline of education and morals. This even included a letter of inquiry regarding birth control policies on other campuses! Quel horreur!

The Regents of the University of California were on the phone in no time demanding expulsions over all the "moral license" and "degradation" on campus. The President of the UC system was outraged at the interference but also angry that the FSM had pushed things this far. He handed in his resignation. There was some bureaucratic theater which resulted in the faculty begging him to keep his job and ultimately launching inquiries and reports that rolled back the FSM. Reagan came a year later claiming that something had to be done about those kids at Berkeley where he could point to the Filthy Speech Movement as an example of how bad things had gotten.

Sadly, if you look at it as a class issue and a Constitutional law issue, the kids were right.

[starroute]

13. There were more important things going on by then

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt987006rv&&doc.view=entire_text

One week later, however, John Thomson, a nonstudent who had been active in radical political circles in New York City and who had moved to Berkeley after the Free Speech Movement wandered onto campus holding a 5 by 8 inch piece of notebook paper in front of his chest. On the paper he had written the word "Fuck." He sat on the Student Union steps, near the street.

A Berkeley city policeman caught sight of the boy and the sign from his police car as he turned the corner. He reported a violation of obscenity laws, stressing the visibility of the sign to pedestrians and vehicles at least fifty feet away. Notified of the violation, campus police came out to arrest the sign bearer. That was March 3. . . .

On March 9, after news accounts had noted that both faculty committees declined to handle the case, Edwin Carter, chairman of the Board of Regents, called President Clark Kerr. Although no record was kept of the conversation, Kerr apparently understood Carter to be giving him an ultimatum, ordering him to expel the students immediately. Kerr was quite upset. To him this apparent fiat raised not only the issues of due process for the students and of nonintervention by the president's office in campus affairs, but also—and more serious—the issue of meddling by the Regents in the daily operation of the university.


http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1965.html

March 2, 1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder begins as over 100 American fighter-bombers attack targets in North Vietnam. Scheduled to last eight weeks, Rolling Thunder will instead go on for three years. . . .

March 8, 1965 - The first U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam as 3500 Marines land at China Beach to defend the American air base at Da Nang. They join 23,000 American military advisors already in Vietnam.

March 9, 1965 - President Johnson authorizes the use of Napalm, a petroleum based anti-personnel bomb that showers hundreds of explosive pellets upon impact.

[daredtowork]

14. The situation was certainly complicated!

Circling back - I was originally pointing out that there was a "Filthy Speech Movement" that was a big deal at the time. Kids did do outrageous "street theater" in the name of politics. They directly defied the administration and did a lot of things people told them wouldn't work and would "alienate the voters". They did it to demonstrate the hypocrisy and because they couldn't get things done any other way. That's why it reminded me of BLM.

[nc4bo]

12. Complacency.

The word I've been thinking of for the past few days finally pops into my head.

Can white liberals/progressives be seen as being complacent in the eyes of black folks and blackmfolks' issues??

[mmonk]

8. BLM has given no indication they are interested in coalition building.

That has been my impression. I do think, though, many in the movement itself might be including Symone Sanders. But the face of the movement seems more into rejection of that.

[geek tragedy]

10. I don't think we white folks should be telling the BLM folks how to run their movement.

If they want to go out and call Bernie Sanders the Grand Dragon of White Liberals or whatever nonsense they've cooked up that day, that's their right and as white folks shouldn't be giving them decorum lectures or offering advice on coalition building.

But, that doesn't mean white folks are required to take what they're saying seriously, or that it's impermissible to roll one's eyes and make the "cuckoo" gesture.

Police racism and violence are very serious issues, but that doesn't mean every person who puts #blacklivesmatter in their Tweets is some kind of insightful leader entitled to respect and reverence.