The Atlantic: The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter

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The Atlantic: The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter

In July, Black Lives Matter protestors interrupted a Netroots Nation forum featuring Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, preventing the Democratic presidential candidates from speaking to the audiences assembled to hear them. Last month, other members of the movement interrupted a campaign stop Hillary Clinton made in Cleveland. As the activist Patrisse Cullors explained of her role in the shutdowns, “We are tired of being interrupted.”

The symbolism here—the grassroots movement, halting the momentum of politics as usual—is hard to miss. But the IRL activism speaks, too, to Black Lives Matter’s place in the history of the civil rights movement, and to the dilemmas it is currently navigating as it moves from a hashtag to a bona fide political organization. How does the movement think of itself, and its mission, and its strategy for effecting change? Does it want to work within the political status quo—a two-party affair premised on the notion of strategic frustration and incremental change—or does it want, instead, to disrupt the system from the outside?

It wants both, the movement’s co-founder, Opal Tometi, said at the Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday ... Black Lives Matter is “a decentralized network,” containing multitudes and populated by people and local communities who have their own idea of what Black Lives Matter is and should be.

I think where we are at is that we are open to a myriad of strategies and a myriad of tactics. We know that there are some people who will be inspired to work within the system as-is. We’re not going to condemn them or denigrate all those actions. We think that everybody, no matter where you are, no matter what your socioeconomic status is, whatever your job is—you have a duty in this moment in history to take action and stand on the side of people who have been oppressed for generations. And so we think that’s very crystal clear. Whatever means you need to take, we believe that folks should do that.

So Black Lives Matter, as Tometi said, won’t “condemn” or “denigrate” the actions of people who try to work within the existing structures of politics and culture. As a movement, though, to the extent that it functions as a single movement, it sides squarely with King. The tolerance of shallow understanding from people of good will, the awaiting of a more convenient season, the acceptance of order at the expense of justice—Black Lives Matter, Tometi suggested, has run out of patience with all of that.

And it will continue to run out of patience.