BAR | It is painfully evident from the video of last week’s meeting between a #BlackLivesMatter delegation and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that the organization is philosophically incapable of making demands on the political representatives of the rulers of the United States. #BLM’s leadership is either confused as to the nature of political demands, or has decided to reject the most fundamental lessons of mass movement politics – indeed, of human social dynamics. Political movements are defined by their core demands. The video of #BLM’s closed-door encounter with Clinton in New Hampshire, August 11 – after the five activists had been prevented from attending and, presumably, disrupting her campaign event – should become a staple for future political education classes on what happens when would-be movement operatives enter the lion’s den unarmed with political demands: they are humiliated and eaten alive.
#Black Lives Matter does post a list of “National Demands ” on its website, including “that the federal government discontinue its supply of military weaponry and equipment to local law enforcement,” and that the U.S. Justice Department “release the names of all officers involved in killing black people within the last five years.” Mixed in with these demands are pledges to “seek justice for Michael Brown’s family,” to develop a network “aimed at redressing the systemic pattern of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US,” and to “advocate” for a decrease in federal spending on law enforcement, accompanied by an increase in social funding.
The commingling of demands and lists of future projects is, itself, indicative of lack of clarity on what constitutes a demand. However, it is clear that the organization’s campaign to disrupt presidential candidates involves only one demand: that representatives of the corporate electoral duopoly “acknowledge whether they believe that Black lives matter,” in the words of #BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, who interviewed on MSNBC on the same day as the New Hampshire debacle.
The main aim of #BLM, besides the huge airplay generated by the confrontations, is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals for changes in the criminal justice system. Julius Jones, founder of the Worcester, Massachusetts, chapter of #BLM and Clinton’s main interlocutor at the New Hampshire encounter, told The Daily Beast :
“Each one [of the candidates] is being made to offer their racial analysis in the United States. We require that they have an understanding so to that list we need to strongly add analysis because we live in a pluralistic society."
“The main aim of #BLM is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals for changes in the criminal justice system.”
In the logic of #BLM leaders, solicitation of reformist proposals from candidates of the two oligarchic parties constitutes a kind of demand. The group doesn’t even require that candidates endorse #BLM’s own posted, reformist demands, such as decreasing spending on police or releasing the names of killer cops. Instead, the candidates are “made to offer their racial analysis” and to produce proposals tailored by the candidate’s own staffs.
The strategy – if one could dignify it as such – is inherently impotent, which is why corporate lawyer and war criminal Hillary Clinton found it so easy to reduce Jones and his colleagues to school children at an elementary civics class.
Although millions of people have already seen the video, it is important to carefully examine the exchange between Clinton and Julius Jones, since the meeting marks a crucial point in the trajectory of both #BLM and of the larger movement to which Alicia Garza and her colleagues contributed a name. The contradictions of #BLM’s strategy will have profound impact – at least in the near term – on the future of the struggle against state oppression of Black people in the U.S. We need to learn from this disaster.
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