54 newyork| november25–december8, 2019still like this. I didn’t think we’d get tear-
gassed in the middle of the street.”
So when 2016 rolled around, there
were a lot of thinkers that we respect who
said things like, “We can afford to lose an
election. We can’t afford to lose our val-
ues.” There are people who will never,
ever, acknowledge these statements
today, but that was happening at the same
time that Trump was performing this
election that we had never seen before.
What do you mean?
It was sort of an all-digital, all-rally
campaign, which is so different. We’d
never seen that before. It was theconflu-
ence of black people being disillusioned
with the system and white people being
racist and galvanized. Look at thepolling:
The protests actually pushed white peo-
ple for the first time to believe that sys-
temic racism was real—a majority of
white people. So it wasn’t like the protests
shifted it the other way. But by 2016, you
saw the confluence of voter suppression
and the disillusionment of blackpeople.
I don’t think of these things as equal,
because the disillusionment of black peo-
ple doesn’t outweigh in any capacity the
sheer number of white people that voted
for him. And then you saw this racist dog-
whistling that people just didn’t take seri-
ously. Even the smartest people were like,
“This is so obviously wrong that people
would never vote for him.” All those
things happened at the same time. And
then we get Trump.
You got some flak at the time for sup-
porting Hillary Clinton.^4
I’ll never forget. You would’ve thought
that I came out and said I hate black peo-
ple and I hope everybody dies.People
were so wild in their response to me
about Hillary. The idea was he’ll never
win, I am just pandering by supporting
her, I’m just trying to get hired in the
administration. I was like, “No,I think
this man could win.” So what I won’t do is
sit on the sideline while he wins. I’m at
least going to try and do something to
influence the election.
You got a lot of similar criticisms when
you ran for mayor of Baltimore.^5
What I realize now, five yearslater, isissue are literally just replaying the fact
that the police kill you and get away with
it. And you’re like, “Well, we’ve seen that
in real life. I don’t think I need to see ten
movies about that.”
Is the fight for racial justice the defin-
ing story of this era?
This is undeniably the age of activism.
I think there are a lot of people who didn’t
know that their voice was special. They
never participated in politics and didn’t
think their perspective was valued. All
that changed in this decade. One of the
images I’ll never forget, we werein Mil-
waukee, the police had just killed some-
body, we were marching in the streets. It’s
after work, but it’s not night yet? We
walked by this day care, and all these little
black kids are at the window watching the
protesters walk by. That, to me, is the
image of this decade. There are kids for
whom this is their orientation to the
world, seeing people reclaim their power
in a really public way—it’s the only world
they’ve ever lived in.
Do you think that’s a durablesenti-
ment? I can point to momentsthrough-
out the past century when awaveof
public enlightenment toward aparticu-
lar realm of injustice has beenfollowed
by a backlash.
This will be our test, right?
What do you think?
I’m still living in it, so I don’tknow. I
want to believe that we’ll lookbackand
say this moment changed society.I want
to believe that we’ll look back andsay this
moment was a catalyst for us inreshap-
ing the way people think aboutsafetyin
communities that was not rootedin
policing. Time will tell, but I lookatTwit-
ter now and I remember, in 2014,when
something happened aroundrace, it
would be a small set of us who’dbelike,
“I think that was racist.” And thenpeople
were like, “Y’all are always sayingevery-
thing’s racist.” Now somethinghappens
and we don’t have to chimein at all,
because the crowd just got smarter.Peo-
ple who had no analysis before arelike, “I
think that’s prob—,” and you’relike, “Yes,
that was problematic.” That’s actuallya
beautiful thing. ■that there are a set of people who have
been professional organizers, like orga-
nizing was their career way before 2014,
and this is a fault line within the move-
ment. The phrase is “I believe in organiz-
ing an organization.” That is what they
say, as if, if you don’t create an organiza-
tion, then you’re not really an organizer.
I just don’t believe that.
In 2016, there was the sense that the
black political agenda was personified by
BLM. But fast-forward to 2020 and
there’s a lot of conversation about, okay,
where’s the black vote going to go? So
far, it’s been Biden, who’s this guy who
has a history of endorsing everything
BLM stood against, yet he hasall this
black support. Do you think there are les-
sons to be learned from that?
Trump has been so dangerous. I think
people are so nervous, like, “We just have
to win.” But I also think one of the things
the Trump presidency has exposed is that
there are actually so few writers, think-
ers, who are helping us decipher the
moment and consider how to move for-
ward. A lot of thinkers are just repeating
the moment back to us. So instead of say-
ing, “Here’s the thing that happened,
here’s what it means in a broader context,
and here is how we can think about the
next thing,” it’s like Trump tweeted this
and let me write about why Trump’s
tweet is intense. That’s what the public
intellectual has become.
What would the counter to that look
like?
What a public intellectual does, to me,
is help us think through things in a way
that we can potentially not do on our own.
And I think that’s just absentin this
moment. The art is no longeraspira-
tional; the art is not helping us imagine a
better world. The art is repeating back the
trauma we have lived through, replaying
these images of death or these images of
victimization or these images of pain.
They are not inspirational in almost any
sense, not helping us think about a future,
how to get through the pain,how to
respond to the pain. And I think those
things matter. Most of the movies that
attempt to engage the police-violenceProtests after Brown’s death.1 2 The Black Lives
Matter network
was founded in
2013 by Alicia
Garza, Patrisse
Cullors,andOpal
Tometi,in
r
k on
M3Martin was killed in 2012by
neighborhood vigilanteGeorge
Zimmerman in Sanford,Florida.4 The
endorsement
camebarelya
weekbefore
theelectionin
a Washington
Postop-ed.5 Hefinished
sixthin the
Democratic
primary
withjust
2 percentof
thevote.
FOOTNOTES
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