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Washington Post, June 14, 2020
New generation of activists, deeply skeptical of Democratic Party,
resists calls to channel energy into the 2020 campaign
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
TAMPA — Hundreds of young activists were massing on the streets below
the downtown waterfront skyscrapers here this month for a silent
"die-in" to call for change in the wake of the police killing of George
Floyd when the city's mayor, a Democrat who has voiced support for the
movement, rose and asked to address the crowd.
But before Jane Castor could speak, she was greeted by an organizer
brandishing a bullhorn.
"Go home Jane!" yelled Bernice Lauredan, 28, an activist with Tampa
Dream Defenders. "You are not welcome here."
More than a thousand miles away, Dennis Maurice Dumpson has been helping
to organize strategy sessions with activists in Philadelphia, a city
where Democrats hope protests will ignite massive voter turnout and
propel presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden to victory in
battleground Pennsylvania. But Dumpson, 36, has no intention of
mobilizing his growing list of followers to help Biden or any other
politician. The most he intends to do for the Democrats, if anything, is
cast a reluctant vote.
"We've seen enough to know how this goes and how this plays out,"
Dumpson said. "I'm tired of going into the same old room with the same
old council member and the same state representative who have the same
old mind-set. It's why we keep getting the same old stuff."
Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis last month ignited protests in more than
750 U.S. cities, an avalanche of outrage that echoes the moral overtones
of the 1960s civil rights movement, with the added power of drawing
support from participants of all races in every corner of the country.
The uprising is also a potential boon for Democrats, inspiring thousands
of new grass-roots organizers, many in their 20s and 30s and new to
activism, just as the party seeks to mobilize young voters and other
core liberals to defeat President Trump and retake the Senate. Many of
the country’s top Democrats, including former president Barack Obama,
have exhorted the activists to channel their energy toward the election.
But the Democrats have so far failed to tap into the newly emerging
protest movement, even turning off some activists who see early outreach
efforts as hollow gestures, according to interviews with more than a
dozen organizers who have been leading protests across the country in
recent weeks. Many said they remain deeply skeptical of the traditional
political system and the Democratic Party, which they said has a history
of promising change and falling short.
Although the activists agreed that Trump is a racist who should be
defeated, many said they think neither party is equipped to address the
roots of the fury in America’s streets. That, they said, would require a
willingness to embrace changes that have historically been deemed too
radical by many mainstream politicians, such as defunding police forces
that routinely target black communities and rolling back drug laws that
lead to mass incarceration. Biden and Democratic lawmakers have said
they don’t support defunding police, though they have backed redirecting
funding for public safety programs.
“I don’t believe just having a ‘D’ by your name immediately makes you
the savior,” said Lauredan, the organizer who shouted down the Tampa
mayor. “And I would say that for every Democrat I know, we have to look
at solutions that are really going to invest in our communities. . . .
We need to change not just the surface-level issues.”
“[Politicians are] kneeling but not meeting with the organizations that
are responsible for moving voters on the ground,” said Alicia Garza,
principal for Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter
movement. “When October comes along, they’re going to say can we have
you on our [Instagram] live? Can we have you come to this fundraiser?
And October is too late to start courting people. October is the time to
begin capitalizing on the relationships you’ve made — not to start
building them.”
Obama took note of the emerging tension between activists and Democratic
political leaders earlier this month, when he urged protesters to get
involved in politics.
“I’ve been hearing a little bit of chatter in the Internet about voting
versus protest, politics and participation versus civil disobedience and
direct action,” Obama said. “This is not an either-or — this is a
both-and. To bring about real change, we both have to highlight a
problem and make people in power uncomfortable.”
But so far, efforts by some leading Democrats have done little to bring
the movement into the political fold.
Some activists, for instance, were turned off by the rollout last week
of the Justice in Policing Act. Co-sponsored by more than 200 Democrats
in both houses of Congress, the bill would ban neck restraints like the
one that killed Floyd and no-knock warrants like the one that led to the
death of Breonna Taylor. It also would make it easier to hold officers
accountable for misconduct in civil and criminal courts.
But Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a Philadelphia-based activist, had trouble
seeing past the kente cloth. The Democratic leadership walked out in
stoles made of the brightly colored fabric of Ghanaian origin. They also
knelt for 8 minutes, 46 seconds — the amount of time Minneapolis Police
Officer Derek Chauvin spent with his knee on Floyd’s neck.
Muhammad saw it as a performative photo op, specifically because leaders
intimated it may take months — and a new president as well as a Senate
majority — for the bill to be passed.
“It was uber-pandering. It was like super-pander, or pandering on
steroids,” Muhammad said. “You’re doing it to show some faux solidarity
with black people and you failed miserably.”
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking
African American in House leadership, said he was irked by the criticism
of the moment. He said he also worries that demonstrators energized by
Floyd’s death are too quick to criticize people who seek to enact social
change in a different way — or at a different pace.
“We all have a role to play,” he said. “My role is to pass legislation
and count votes. You can’t reject my role because it doesn’t go as fast
as you want it.”
“What does it get us for anybody to be insulting to Nancy Pelosi,”
Clyburn added later, referring to the House speaker who, along with
other lawmakers, appeared in kente cloth. “We asked Nancy Pelosi to
identify with us, to carry water for us. She made a gesture that
identifies with us and we insult her.”
Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, who ran unsuccessfully for the
Democratic presidential nomination and is under consideration to be
Biden’s running mate, said she shares the activists’ concerns that
change will come too slowly.
“But my optimism overrides that fear, because we are seeing people take
to the streets who seemingly have nothing in common, but have this issue
in common, and are unifying and coalition-building around this issue,”
she said.
Other top Democrats have looked for ways to tap into the movement.
Biden has expressed solidarity with the protesters — vowing to combat
systemic discrimination, meeting with the Floyd family and saying in a
video message to his funeral that America must “turn away from racism
that stings at our very soul.”
A Biden spokesman, Jamal Brown, said the former vice president is
sympathetic with the frustration of activists as they combat racism in
policing, housing, education and other aspects of society.
“He understands these problems won’t change overnight, but [it’s] not
worth giving up the fight,” Brown said, adding that Biden has worked for
civil rights causes over the course of his career.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), whose bid to take
the majority in his chamber relies on mobilizing voters in a handful of
races targeting vulnerable Republican members, said he has been in touch
with some grass-roots organizations. He said many activists know that
change requires their engagement in the country’s political debates.
“They understand you have to accept the idea that you have to push
Washington around,” Schumer said.
Schumer added that he has sought advice from Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.), whose two unsuccessful presidential campaigns were able to
excite a movement of young activists.
“What are the things that we can get to motivate people?” Schumer said
he asked Sanders, though he would not detail more of their conversation.
Nina Turner, a chief surrogate for Sanders’s presidential campaign, said
those conversations seem redundant. The senator’s bid for the presidency
identified many of the policies activists are asking lawmakers to enact.
“There are already a list of things. There’s no need to study, no need
to have a task force; the ideas are already out there,” she said.
“You’re either going to do universal health care or you’re not. You’re
going to legalize marijuana, take it off of Schedule I, or you’re not.
You’re either going to have a $15 minimum wage or you’re not.”
Tension around the pace of progress and disappointment in establishment
politicians was also a hallmark of the civil rights protests of the
past, said Matthew F. Delmont, a Dartmouth College professor who focuses
on African American history. Malcolm X warned people that neither
Democrats nor Republicans had adequate plans to help black Americans in
his “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. And Martin Luther King Jr. called on
his followers to not accept political stalling.
“It’s always come down to the question of time,” Delmont said. “Dr. King
had so many great sermons or speeches about time and how that group of
activists just could not wait. People feel the same way today. You can’t
wait for Biden to get elected. You can’t wait four years. We can’t wait
on politicians if we want to see these things change.”
But while civil rights protesters of the 1960s were able to direct
pressure on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to win landmark
legislation rolling back state-sponsored discrimination, today’s
protesters face the challenge of seeking changes that extend beyond the
political realm — rooting out racism baked in at all levels of society
over the course of centuries, or what Delmont called the “unresolved
policy issues from the 1960s movement.”
Some activists mobilized by Floyd’s death say they would have a hard
time overcoming long-standing disappointment with Democrats.
Marjaan Sirdar, a Minneapolis activist who lives a few blocks from where
Floyd was killed, noted that his city has seen years of Democratic
leadership that promoted initiatives to advance racial equality. At the
same time, Sirdar said, the city was not working hard enough to root out
racism in its police department.
“The Democrats created this problem,” Sirdar said. “Anybody can pay for
a $200, $300 training and learn how to sound anti-racist. They learn the
language of anti-racism and they just become better gatekeepers of white
supremacy.”
Michele Rayner-Goolsby, a lawyer who has advised activists and is now
running for a Florida state House seat, said she understands
demonstrators’ distrust of many politicians but thinks a Biden election
would be a step forward, particularly if he selects a black woman to be
vice president.
“I hear the concerns of folks, and I don’t want to discount those
concerns, but I also think we can’t get lost or caught up in the
minutiae of he doesn’t do this or he doesn’t do that. We literally have
an anti-black president in office right now.”
Stephanie Keene, a Philadelphia organizer who wants to abolish the
police and prison system, said many who are inspired to protest this
year see politicians as part of the problem.
“Some people are like I’m . . . done accepting what the Democratic Party
has offered us. It’s not getting better,” said Keene, 37. “This current
moment is a reflection of the United States’ inability to meet any of
the demands black people have put forward. I wish they would stop
holding black people responsible for the failures of the Democratic
Party. Why aren’t y’all responsible for not giving us a candidate worth
voting for?”
Dumpson, the author and activist from Philadelphia, said he, too, is
wary of politicians “not really wanting to really sit down with us,” but
is not yet ready to check out of the political system entirely.
That is why, he said, Biden will have his vote but not his enthusiasm.
“We act like Trump is the only opposing force, but there’s also the
opposing force of people not wanting to really sit down with organizers
and agitators and solve problems,” he said. “But the reality is that
somebody is going to be president next. Now it’s about who is the person
that can be in the presidency that you can work around the most.”
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