alternet | As the Obama era sputters to an end, new social movements
are erupting in rebellion against a bankrupted bipartisan order that has
doomed Americans to record levels of economic inequality, warehoused
black bodies in a rapidly privatizing prison system, torn thousands of
migrant families apart, outsourced unionized jobs to China and spread a
dystopian assassination program across the far reaches of the globe.
Activists confronting militarization on the US-Mexico border and
organizers protesting lethal police violence under the banner of Black
Lives Matter are sharing tactics with their counterparts from the
Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement challenging
Israeli apartheid on university campuses. The personal and intellectual
cross-pollination between these variegated struggles is producing the
most exciting surge of grassroots mobilization I have witnessed in my
adult life. Not everyone is happy about it, however, and it’s not hard
to understand why.
The structure under-girding movements
like Black Lives Matter is intentionally non-hierarchical, making them
difficult for institutional liberal political entities to co-opt or
control. Organizers eschew a programmatic agenda that demands alliances
of convenience with entrenched power, resorting instead to divestment
drives, civil disobedience and Situationist-style urban disruptions.
With their populist sensibility, they are capturing the sense of
betrayal that is mounting among millenials, and they show little
appetite for electoral contests that fail to answer the crisis. “I
decided it is possible I’ll never vote for another American president
for as long as I live,” the Ferguson-based rapper and activist Tef Poe
has said about his past support for Obama.
Organized
with little regard for the imperatives of the Democratic Party, and
often aligned against them, the wave of grassroots mobilization is
increasingly viewed as a wild beast that must be tamed. The
condescending rants delivered
against Black Lives Matter activists by Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton
are salutary examples of the irritation spreading within established
Democratic circles.
Few public intellectuals have
positioned themselves at the nexus of these emerging movements as firmly
Cornel West has. Earlier this month, I joined him on a panel at
Princeton University to support a group of students and faculty seeking
to pressure the school into divesting from companies involved in human
rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territory. His presence boosted
the morale of the young student activists who had suddenly fallen under
attack by powerful pro-Israel forces. Days later, West joined veteran
human rights activist Larry Hamm at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark for
a discussion on local efforts against police brutality. It was in
places like this, away from the national limelight, where West gathered
his vital energy and his righteous anger.
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