14 The Nation. October 9, 2017
AP PHOTO / STEVE HELBERland governor Martin O’Malley stumbled with a tone-deaf
proclamation that “Black lives matter. White lives matter.
All lives matter.” Once Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
had the floor, “he talked over the protesters, got defensive
about his racial-justice bona fides, and stuck to his [stump
speech],” Joe Dinkin wrote on The Nation.com. After
trying and failing to disrupt a New Hampshire campaign
appearance by Hillary Clinton, a BLM Boston member
asked her a halting, long-winded question that did the
favor of making her response—“I don’t believe you change
hearts. I believe you change laws”—come off as refresh-
ingly sensible.
At the time, some progressives criticized these moves,
blaming BLM for undermining Democratic candidates
when the obvious threat, in their eyes, came from the
Republicans. But to many black organizers, these dis-
ruptions were a principled way to hold candidates who
claimed to represent their interests accountable. When
I asked her whether she wished that Black Lives Mat-
ter had endorsed Hillary Clinton in the general election,
Garza pivoted away from Clinton entirely and talked
about how the Democratic candidates had bungled their
BLM moment at Netroots. “When he was pressed, I
wish that Bernie had said, ‘Of course black lives matter,
and here’s what that means for me,’” she offered. Had
Sanders discussed how “we function under a gendered
and racialized economy” and done more to build rela-
tionships in communities of color, his run for president
would have received more support, she added. The
problem, in other words, is with candidates who alienate
black voters, not with BLM’s refusal to play nice.
As the midterm elections draw near, organizers are lay-
ing the groundwork for two new initiatives—the Electoral
Justice Project and the Black Futures Lab—that they say
will address this alienation and transform the ways that
black communities participate in the 2018 elections and
beyond. And for Byrd and Garza, each of whom is behind
one of these efforts, it is not the ascendance of Donald
Trump that demands a new kind of black political power.
(After all, despite the pressure that BLM
activists put on Democratic candidates
during the campaign season, 94 per-
cent of black women voters backed Hil-
lary Clinton, as did 82 percent of black
men. Black turnout “did come down,”
Kayla Reed, a movement organizer in
St. Louis, acknowledged. “But Demo-
crats are not investing in areas where
they have a base.”) Instead, organizers
told me, to understand the movement’s
new energy around elections, you have to
understand Tishaura Jones’s failed cam-
paign for mayor of St. Louis.
In March, Jones—then treasurer of
this largely Democratic city—narrowly
lost the party’s mayoral primary, 30 to
32 percent. Just six weeks earlier, she’d
been polling at 8 percent in a field of
seven Democrats. The winner was the
only white candidate in the pack with a
sizable following. That Jones came from
behind to lose by just 888 votes suggested that she’d been
underestimated by the mainstream media and more estab-
lished politicians. But the young black St. Louis residents
who’d been energized by the protests in nearby Ferguson
weren’t surprised by her near-win: They had been work-
ing hard for Jones behind the scenes, sensing support for
her in black communities citywide and finding ways to
build on it.
Members of the St. Louis Action Council, which was
formed in the wake of the Ferguson protests, had started
teaching themselves the ins and outs of voter organizing
a year earlier, when they’d gotten involved in the race
for St. Louis circuit attorney, the city’s top prosecutor
job. They asked the candidates their positions on issues
like cash bail, juvenile detention, and marijuana decrimi-
nalization, and decided to endorse State Representative
Kim Gardner. Today, they claim some credit for getting
Gardner into office, thereby helping to elect the city’s
first black circuit attorney. “From Kim’s campaign to
Tishaura’s campaign, we grew,” said Reed, who directs
the St. Louis Action Council. “People trusted us more.”
In advance of the Democratic mayoral primary, Reed’s
group partnered with other local community organiza-
tions to hold a January debate, during which they quizzed
the candidates on issues like economic development and
displacement, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the rela-
tionship between the police and black communities. Ac-
cording to Reed, some of the questions were an effort to
determine how the candidates’ goals aligned with “A Vi-
sion for Black Lives,” the detailed policy statement that the
Movement for Black Lives released in August of last year.
(Reed also leads the Movement for Black Lives’ electoral
organizing committee. The Black Lives Matter Global
Network is one of more than 50 allied organizations that
comprise M4BL.) For the young black organizers, Jones
stood out: Her platform included a plan to place social
workers inside police departments, and she rejected calls
to hire additional officers. To Reed and others, Jones was
embracing a “divest framework” that echoed “A VisionBattleground state:
The white-supremacist
“Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville left one
counterprotester dead
and dozens injured.“You need
to know
what you’re
getting into
once you
call yourself
a BLM
chapter. The
right’s going
to come
after you.
You’re going
to need
security.”
— Patrisse Khan-
Cullors, Black
Lives Matter Global
NetworkTHE FUTURE
OF