WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
urban Charlotte, who lost her bid
for reelection after her GOP oppo-
nent falsely accused her of wanting
to cut police funding. “And when
they think we talk about taking
away their police departments,
and people become afraid, that is a
powerful message to overcome.”
Both Helm and Sloan said, for
them, the movement’s chief focus
should remain on ways to change
policy locally, where they think
they can have the most impact.
“The more that we as a move-
ment can focus on what is right in
front of us, the better off we’re
going to be,” said Sloan, a writer
and artistic director who got in-
volved in the movement in 2016.
“The presidential election has
very little to do with the work we
do on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
“Unless Joe Biden is going to walk
in here and fundamentally change
the way our city government
works, then whether he’s elected
or not doesn’t affect that.”
Some local leaders of the move-
ment also worry that Biden’s elec-
tion will make it harder for them
to maintain public support for
their demonstrations and subse-
quent political action.
Nikki Archuleta, a Black Lives
Matter organizer in Albuquerque,
said the protests this summer had
been infused by support from peo-
ple who viewed their participation
as a broader rejection of President
Trump and his policies.
“And now people are going to
get comfortable and say we have
Biden, we have Harris. Everyone’s
going to go back to the normalcy of
America before Trump, and that’s
what terrifies me,” Archuleta said.
Scholars who study protest so-
cial movements say it would be
common for Black Lives Matter to
keep evolving, at times struggling
to maintain its focus and public
support for its priorities.
Candis Watts Smith, an associ-
ate professor of political science
and African American studies at
Penn State, noted that the civil
rights movement really began to
form after World War II, but it still
took decades for activists to
achieve historic judicial and legis-
lative achievements.
“Americans have, on average, a
short attention span, especially on
hard issues,” Watts Smith said.
“Historically, Americans get riled
up and then they pull back, and
sometimes there is backlash. And
I would not be surprised if we
didn’t see a similar trend” with
Black Lives Matter.
[email protected]
[email protected]BY TIM CRAIG
AND ROBERT KLEMKOActivist John Sloan III saw the
swell of White faces in Black Lives
Matter protests after the killing of
George Floyd in June and girded
for the worst.
He acknowledged it was a sign
of progress, proof that the Demo-
cratic establishment was coming
around to his cause. But the 37-
year-old lead organizer for the
Black Lives Matter chapter in De-
troit was worried the increased
support would turn a cause an-
chored in grass-roots uprising
into a commercialized, main-
stream political movement. He
voted for Joe Biden anyway.
“Joe Biden was not my first
choice. Not my second choice. He
was not my third choice,” Sloan
said. “But I’m also a pragmatic
individual, and I think Biden is
going to be better than the Trump
administration for me.”
Sloan’s hesitant support for
Biden reflects a divide among ra-
cial justice activists about the
movement’s strategy under the
soon-to-be presidency. Some fac-
tions of the Black Lives Matter
movement — which spread global-
ly with decentralized leadership
and multifaceted goals — worry
that Biden embodies the cautious
brand of moderate, Washington-
centric politics they loathe. The
president-elect’s support for the
1994 crime bill, which dispropor-
tionately affected Black Ameri-
cans with mandatory minimum
sentences and other tough-on-
crime policies, has further fueled
their skepticism.
But Biden also campaigned as a
supporter of the movement, as-
serting in a fall campaign ad that
“Black lives matter. Period.”
“I am not afraid to say it,” Biden
declared.
Some longtime leaders of the
movement say that support offers a
rare opportunity to achieve lasting
policy changes, despite Biden’s repu-
tation for being a cautious politician.
“People went to the polls and
said, ‘Let’s solve some problems,’ ”
said Alicia Garza, a founder of
Black Lives Matter. “Donald
Trump was a barrier to that, and we
are getting rid of that barrier. And
now I think the expectation is that
this administration will deliver.”
After networks declared Biden
the projected winner of the presi-
dential contest on Nov. 7, the Black
Lives Matter Global Network, a na-
tional umbrella group for the move-
ment, issued an open letter demand-
ing a meeting with Biden and Vice
President-elect Kamala D. Harris.
“We want to be heard and our
agenda to be prioritized,” wrote Pa-
trisse Cullors, a founder of the
movement, in the letter. “We issue
these expectations not just because
Black people are the most consis-
tent and reliable voters for Demo-
crats, but also because Black people
are truly living in crisis in a nation
that was built on our subjugation.”
Launched after the death of
Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012,
the Black Lives Matter movement
has struggled since Trump’s elec-
tion to build a national agenda. The
movement’s demands for more po-
lice accountability were initially
overshadowed in 2016 by the out-
pouring of support for other left-
wing causes such as women’s
rights, immigration and gun con-
trol. Many of the movement’s early
leaders launched nonprofit or ad-
vocacy organizations at that time
or settled into new jobs in aca-
demia, with more focus on secur-
ing mainstream political power.
Some formulated the Breathe
Act this summer, a federal policy
proposal that many Black Lives
Matter activists hope will become
a road map for congressional ac-
tion. The proposal calls for divest-
ing federal resources from polic-
ing and incarceration, greatly ex-
panding funding for low-income
schools, creating a universal basic
income for poor Americans, over-
hauling drug laws and ending
mandatory minimum sentences,
among other things.
Though many of the proposals
are unlikely to be supported by
Republicans, Garza said activists
believe Biden can signal his sup-
port for the movement’s goals
through budget and spending de-
cisions, including steering more
funding to predominantly minori-
ty communities as part of any new
coronavirus stimulus package.
“There is an opportunity right
now to bring people together by
really doubling down on what our
alleged values are,” said Garza,
who now runs the Black Futures
Lab, which seeks to bolster Afri-Black Lives Matter sees
divided stance on Biden
can Americans’ political power.
“And how you do that is through
resource allocation.”
Justin Hansford, who was an
activist in Ferguson, Mo., after the
police killing of Michael Brown in
2014, said the election presents an
opportunity for Biden and activ-
ists to work together. But Hans-
ford, now the executive director of
the Thurgood Marshall Civil
Rights Center at Howard Univer-
sity, said the “biggest mistake”
Biden could make would be to
assume that he can appease to-
day’s generation of activists by re-
packaging the reform proposals
that circulated during the final
months of President Barack
Obama’s second term.
While activists were then call-
ing for the “demilitarization of the
police,’’ Hansford said, today’s
generation will settle for nothing
less than “reimagining the police.”
The broad Black Lives Matter
banner now encompasses those
calling to “defund the police” by
shifting some law enforcement
funding to social services and
crime prevention strategies.
Biden and other mainline Demo-
cratic leaders have distanced
themselves from that slogan,
though they have backed other
changes that activists successfully
pushed in states and cities, includ-
ing bans on police chokeholds,
mandated body cameras and the
creation of police accountability
and review boards.Although Hansford expects
that Biden will continue to be
skeptical of far-reaching propos-
als such as cutting police funding,
he said he believes the new admin-
istration is open to steering more
money to diversion and anti-pov-
erty programs. Hansford also not-
ed that Biden has pledged to rein
in qualified immunity, which has
been used to shield police from
civil lawsuits.
“I don’t think it will come down
to Biden coming up with these
answers,” Hansford said. “It’s go-
ing to take his courage to bring the
right people to the discussion ta-
ble... b ecause you cannot expect
people who have been moderate
or establishment their entire ca-
reers to suddenly start imple-
menting the Black Lives Matter
movement ideas overnight.”
Biden may struggle to get some
of the movement’s most vocal local
leaders to sit at a table with him, if
they are asked.
After leading street demonstra-
tions this summer, the leaders of
some of the most active chapters
of Black Lives Matter say they are
wary of hasty efforts to form ties
with the incoming administra-
tion. They helped globalize a dif-
fuse, grass-roots movement in the
aftermath of Floyd’s death in May,
while focusing demands on local
law enforcement in Minneapolis,
Portland, Ore., and other commu-
nities nationwide.
Chanelle Helm, a leader of theBlack Lives Matter chapter in Lou-
isville, where members have spent
months protesting the police
shooting of Breonna Taylor, said
local chapter organizers fear that
Biden will rush to form relation-
ships with national leaders, while
glossing over local activists’ chief
priority — upending how policing
is practiced in their communities.
“If I wanted to sit around and
listen to a bumbling White man
talk about Black people, I live in
Kentucky, and I can do that on any
corner out here in any rural bar
stool,” Helm said. “I just don’t
know what we would even get by
meeting with him.”
Even so, Helm said organizers
for more than 30 Black Lives Mat-
ter chapters — including Nash-
ville, Memphis, Indianapolis, Chi-
cago and Philadelphia — have
formed a discussion group to con-
sider their own sets of demands
from a Biden administration. She
expects the agenda to focus heavi-
ly on building national support for
dismantling traditional policing
strategies, also known as the po-
lice “abolition movement.”
Biden will have to navigate ten-
sions over the movement’s mes-
sage after Democrats suffered un-
expected losses in congressional
and state legislative elections amid
attacks from Republicans over cut-
ting aid for police departments.
“People want to feel safe,” said
Christy Clark, a Democratic North
Carolina state legislator from sub-SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
A man holds up a Black Lives Matter flag in front of the White House during demonstrations in August.