Grassroots Organizing and Black Feminists in the Trump Era
By now, anyone interested in and concerned about Black cultural and political life—about Black people’s very survival—in America knows the origin story of Black Lives Matter. They know that it emerged in 2013, created by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi as a response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the murderer of Trayvon Martin.16 They know that it rapidly gained momentum and adherents as more and more Black men and women were being killed by police, as more and more people of color were being flagged as threats to public safety by white people who found them “suspicious” and called the police with little or no reason. Cullors, Garza, and Tometi were well aware of the history of earlier civil rights groups and movements, aware, above all, that there was a pervasive, persistent pattern of men relying upon women’s labor, while never acknowledging it, much less centering it or their needs or wishes. To that end, Cullors, Garza, and Tometi were exceptionally deliberate when it came to clarifying how leadership in Black Lives Matter would be centered. They wrote:As organizers who work with everyday people, BLM members see and understand significant gaps in movement spaces and leadership. Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men—leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition. As a network, we have always recognized the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people. To maximize our movement muscle, and to be intentional about not replicating harmful practices that excluded so many in past movements for liberation, we made a commitment to placing those at the margins closer to the center.17
Cullors, Garza, and Tometi were clear that #BlackLivesMatter meant all Black lives. But, they pointed out, they are especially committed to “highlight[ing] the egregious ways in which Black women, specifically Black trans women, are violated.”18 The movement caught fire, fast, with BLM contingents and their supporters showing up en masse in response to the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. From there, the movement’s roots were firmly established and a global network of BLM chapters with an “adaptive, decentralized” structure began springing up with a tripartite goal: (1) to “end state-sanctioned violence against Black people,” (2) “to support the development of new Black leaders,” and (3) “to create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities.”19
Those goals seem innocuous enough for people who care about quality and the creation of a nonviolent society; however, it soon became clear that the movement founded by three Black feminists who were committed to intersectionality was threatening to the white establishment. Though it came as little or no surprise to people who participate regularly in protests and are familiar with the scenario of local police units filming protesters, in November 2017, it came to light that Black Lives Matter had been—and continued to be—scrutinized by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.20 The federal entities believed that Black Lives Matter was a militant group, describing it as a “black supremacist extremist” organization.21 An alternate term, “Black Identity Extremists” was used to describe individuals who were formally affiliated with or participated in Black Lives Matter actions.22 Meanwhile, around the same time, white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which their actions killed three people and injured dozens more.23 The white supremacy rally was downplayed as such by President Trump and did not appear to elicit the same degree of concern as nonviolent Black Lives Matter actions on the part of the FBI and other law enforcement entities. As Brandi Collins, campaign director for the advocacy group Color of Change, pointed out, “The subtext… is stunning. It tells us who the government is training to view as threats and the rightful targets of ongoing surveillance and which groups will be offered protection.” The groups offered protection, of course, were white supremacists actively engaged in harmful behavior that resulted in fatalities. The groups pegged as literal terrorists, as Patrisse Cullors wrote in her recently released memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, were those Black feminist-led, Black feminist-centered groups that were engaged in civil, First Amendment-protected activities demanding that, indeed, Black Lives Matter.
While Black Lives Matter became, and remains, the most visible and robust (and, to government agencies’ minds, the most threatening) means for Black feminists to engage in political action and discourse that moves the needle on policy outside the formal Washington, DC, halls of power, it is not the only group having an impact that centers Black feminist thought and ideology. Another powerful organization in that vein is Color of Change, a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose goal is to “amplify Black America’s political voice by building an online movement for racial justice.” Like MoveOn and UltraViolet, Color of Change mobilizes members to sign online petitions, pressuring politicians, corporations, media outlets, and other entities to change practices and narratives that are harmful to people of color. Launched in 2005, before Black Lives Matter, the organization has become increasingly prominent since the 2016 election, touching practically every aspect of American life and culture, from the criminal justice and carceral systems, to Hollywood entertainment and corporate greed. A majority of Color of Change’s permanent team is comprised of Black women, who work on local and national initiatives aimed at calling out and changing racist practices.
The fundamental assumption and belief undergirding Black Lives Matter and Color of Change, as well as other groups and efforts not mentioned here, are that grassroots action can have a significant impact, and that women—Black women, specifically—are central to that action. But their centrality is not invisible or unacknowledged. Instead, it is driving and shaping the very conversation, identifying and cementing action priorities, and determining the scope and nature of action and desired outcomes. It is not asking for permission, but rather, setting the parameters for engagement and inclusion, refusing to accept an incidental, footnoted acknowledgement of effort and intention. This is a marked shift, for example, from the Black feminist of the Black Panther Party era. As Melissa Brown writes in “Black Women as Agents of Change in the Obama Presidency,” Black feminism in the post-Obama era means embracing the concept of embodied intersectionality to achieve “grassroots organizing and civic engagement” while harnessing the power of technology to reach formerly disenfranchised people, especially queer women, and to give them opportunities for direct activist engagement.24 Further, Brown notes that decentralized leadership, a form of leadership which neither positions nor privileges a single or small group of individuals as idealized figureheads, is essential to this model of Black feminist engagement in our current political and social climate. The essential premise of this approach to Black feminism in the Trump era? Every person is needed, and every person has the agency and resources to be involved in feminist responses to current conditions.
Black Feminists Running for Office
Black Lives Matter and Color of Change may be the two most prominent means for “ordinary” Black feminists to engage in political action, but the traditional pathways to power remain alluring to a number of people. In the wake of Trump’s election to office and his blatant, unashamed moves to stack his administration with white supremacists and casual racists, there has been a groundswell movement of “ordinary” women running for elected office.25 The offices they are pursuing vary. Certainly, there are many federal-level posts in electoral contention, with twice as many women running for Congress in 2018 as ran in 2016.26 But it’s outside the Beltway where things are getting really interesting, especially in the Southern states, where Black women and, in particular, Black feminists, have long been at the extreme margins of social and political life.
According to The Observer, “nationwide, nearly 600 Black women are running for elected office….”27 It is a number that has been described as u
nprecedented. US Senator Kamala Harris, in the foreword of “The Chisholm Effect: Black Women in American Politics 2018,” wrote “Black women are central to a strategy for potential progressive gains in 2018,” and she added that she was excited and proud to see so many Black women running for office.28 The room for growth, she noted, was immense, given the fact that while Black women constitute 7.3% of the US population, they represent less than 1% of statewide elected officials, and zero governorships in the entire history of the nation.
As this book goes to press, American voters are witnessing a thrilling moment. Not only have women generally shown up en masse to run for elected office. Black women, in particular, have thrown their proverbial hats in the ring. As of this writing, the group Black Women in Politics has documented 375 Black women running for elected office across the USA.29 One of the most fascinating and important elections is that of Stacey Abrams, a Democratic State Representative in Georgia. Abrams is running for governor of Georgia. As this book goes to press, Abrams has clinched the nomination of the Democratic party for that position, and continues to actively campaign for the election, which will occur on November 6, 2018. If elected, she will be the first Black woman governor in the history of the USA.30 The groundswell of Black feminists running for office—and their increasing viability for winning—has given rise to organizations like Higher Heights, which “was founded by Black women for Black women’s political growth and equity, [with] a winning plan for building collective political power and expanding Black women elected leadership in 2018, 2020 and beyond.”31 Centering Black feminists, Higher Heights not only supports Black women candidates; it provides Black women and woman-identified voters with information and tools they need to make informed decisions.
The Future Is Female…Black Female
While the Trump presidency and his gang of white supremacist cronies are inevitable downers and necessitate our ongoing concern, attention, and activism, the locus of our attention should be focused primarily on these groups and efforts: Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, and the fierce and fearless Black feminists, especially in Southern states, (Stacey Abrams) who are running for electoral office. The future is female—Black female—and in a moment when this administration would upend everyone’s liberties, it is crucial that we both protect and assert this fact continuously, without ceasing.
Footnotes
1See, for example, Community Party USA (http://www.cpusa.org/article/donald-trump-white-supremacist-in-chief/), Presente.org (http://presente.org), and Washington Monthly (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/08/19/babysitting-the-white-supremacist-in-chief/_) for just a few among innumerable examples.
2https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2017/05/03/donald-trump-has-been-lying-about-the-size-of-his-penthouse/.
3https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/166806.
4https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133566/donald-trump-doesnt-read-books.
5https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/michelle-obama-ellen-degeneres-melania-trump-inauguration-gift/index.html.
6https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/michelle-obama-ellen-degeneres-melania-trump-inauguration-gift/index.html.
7https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/full-text-donald-trump-inauguration-speech-transcript-233907.
8https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/politics/trump-white-house-briefing-inauguration-crowd-size.html.
9https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2017/live-updates/politics/live-coverage-of-trumps-inauguration/lgbt-rights-page-disappears-from-white-house-web-site/?utm_term=.346eaf0aaff2.
10https://qz.com/1204953/the-white-houses-spanish-language-site-is-still-missing/.
11https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9ad4178962d2.
12https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html.
13https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1551806X.2018.1396122?needAccess=true.
14Ibid., p. 19.
15https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716210389702.
16https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
17https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/.
18Ibid.
19Ibid.
20https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/documents-show-monitoring-black-lives-matter-171128110538134.html.
21Ibid.
22Ibid.
23http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/state-of-emergency-in-va-after-white-nationalist-rally.html.
24Brown, M. (2017). “Black Women as Agents of Change in the Obama Presidency.” In How the Obama Presidency Changed the Political Landscape, eds. Larry J. Walker, Erik Brooks, & Ramon B. Goings. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
25https://www.npr.org/2018/02/20/585542531/more-than-twice-as-many-women-are-running-for-congress-in-2018-compared-to-2016.
26Ibid.
27http://observer.com/2018/05/black-women-politicians-new-york-united-states/.
28http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/chisholm_effect_black_women_in_politics.pdf.
29https://blackwomeninpolitics.com/.
30https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-stacey-abrams-really-turn-georgia-blue/.
31http://www.higherheightsforamerica.org/about_higher_heights.
© The Author(s) 2019
Duchess HarrisBlack Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trumphttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95456-1_8
8. Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Time—Black Feminist Politics in the Trump Era
Duchess Harris1
(1)Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN, USA
Duchess Harris
Email: [email protected]
The Trump presidency, still, incredibly, in its infancy as this edition of the book goes to press, puts into stark relief the barriers that still stand between Black women and specifically, Black feminists, and their full participation and power in the American political process. The examples of Trump’s overt and barely concealed racism are too numerous to document in detail; indeed, they are daily threats and active assaults on people of color and immigrants, generally, and on Black women in particular. Trump has had moments where he has professed his love for Black people—or, as New Republic writer Juliet Kleber has written, “his version of the “I have black friends” spiel,”1 most notably pointing to his appointments of Omarosa Manigault and Ben Carson to positions within his administration as “proof” of his “color blind” politics. Anyone who proffers even the most cursory analysis of his policies and actions, however, understands that Trump and his administration represent a constant, unyielding act of sustained white supremacy.
Despite the racist onslaught that is our daily news and life in the age of Trump, Black feminists are, once again, taking up the mantle of leadership and asserting that they must be central to the narrative and practice of the ongoing American political experiment. The most visible of these figures is 79-year-old Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), who has been unrelenting in her criticism of the Trump administration and in her insistence that the president must take accountability for his words and actions. As adept a Twitter user as Trump, if not more so, Waters has used the social media platform, as well as other tools and resources, to continuously assert that Trump should be impeached, and that he and the members of his administration are beholden to the law they seem so determined to flout.
Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump Page 25