16 The Nation. October 9, 2017
should allay any doubts that black organizers can walk and chew gum at the
same time: Earlier in 2016, BYP100 participated in the successful citywide
campaign to oust State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.)
There have been fewer street protests calling for police accountability in
2017—partly because, in the wake of Trump’s ascent to power, there have
been protests about so much else. The anti-Trump resistance has no doubt
borrowed from the massive antiwar marches of the early 2000s and the Tea
Party protests in the first years of the Obama presidency, but BLM also pro-
vided a crucial blueprint, according to several of the organizers I interviewed.
BLM normalized confrontation and direct action, and recognized the under-
lying issues at stake. “Black Lives Matter begins this moment talking about
state violence, about militarization, fascism, authoritarianism,” said Dream
Hampton, an informal adviser to some movement organizers. “We had all
this analysis and framing that was absolutely correct.” And the fact that those
“Black Lives Matter” T-shirts, yard signs, and chants continue to be seen
and heard everywhere is further proof of the movement’s enduring impact.
“‘Black Lives Matter is only rivaled by ‘Make America Great Again,’” Hamp-
ton observed. “Don’t act like the phrase itself isn’t worth its weight in gold.”
I
n charlottesville, the phrase itself didn’t move jalane schmidt
much at first. “A hashtag does not a movement make,” she remembers
thinking. But once the “Vision for Black Lives” policy platform came
out, she was impressed. Schmidt had felt frustrated as she followed the
debates among local organizations regarding the city’s Confederate
monuments over the past year and a half, with conservative preachers and
a quiet, careful chapter of the NAACP serving as the official voice of black
Charlottesville. The city was becoming a focal point of white-supremacist
organizing, but the church leadership and legacy civil-rights organizations
There was also the question of whether their group
would be allowed to carry a BLM banner during the
“Unite the Right” counterprotests. Though the BLM
Global Network doesn’t require local groups to clear their
decisions about actions or tactics with the national group,
it does require new groups wishing to organize under the
Black Lives Matter mantle to go through a series of con-
versations and trainings before officially using the phrase
in their name. According to Schmidt, she asked Khan-
Cullors: “There are going to be all these white people
there wearing ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirts, but we’re not
allowed to [call ourselves a BLM chapter or march under
a BLM banner]?” The national group at first said no, then
reversed itself a few days before the events that would gar-
ner national attention for the eruption of violence and the
displays of white-supremacist hatred. The Charlottesville
group is still not an official chapter, but the BLM Global
Network amplified its call to action on the national orga-
nization’s social-media channels just before the weekend
of August 12. “Had that amplification been given sooner,
I think we would have had more individuals coming down
and helping us defend our city,” Straughn said. “I just wish
I had more of a personal connection with somebody who
could’ve got the ball rolling a little bit quicker.”
Khan-Cullors is open about her regrets. “It’s really un-
fortunate that we took too long” to respond to the black
activists in Charlottesville, she told me. “It’s always hard
to tell what needs a rapid response.” In my conversation
with her, what at first might sound like bureaucratic pet-
tiness came across instead as an expression of the difficul-
ties that any national organization faces as it goes through
the pains of rapid growth. The BLM Global Network has
reason to tread carefully when it comes to authorizing
new groups: It is now the target of two lawsuits brought
by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who claim
that BLM has created an unsafe environment for law en-
forcement. Groups calling themselves BLM chapters, but
lacking the training that Khan-Cullors and Mitchell of-
fer, have engaged in actions—such as inflammatory chants
picked up and broadcast by the media—that provide fuel
for such legal claims. “You need to know what you’re get-
ting yourself into once you start calling yourself a BLM
chapter,” Khan-Cullors said of the responsibility she
bears. “You’re going to get a lot of publicity. The right’s
going to come after you. You’re going to need security.”
A highly visible four-year-old movement and the na-
tional organization that emerged from it are bound to
stumble when it comes to providing resources, training,
and support to places across the country faced with crisis.
Nowadays, that feels like everywhere, and black organiz-
ers are meeting the challenge with a spirit of experimenta-
tion. Rather than creating chaos, they’re looking for a way
out of it. “We are reflective of the needs of hundreds of
thousands of people in this country who have been feeling
that the government cannot and will not do its job,” said
Shanelle Matthews, the communications director for the
BLM Global Network. Electoral organizing, street pro-
tests, disrupting Democratic events, and crafting new and
visionary policies are all ways to begin to meet the chal-
lenge, Matthews added. “However nimble we need to be
to approach that, that’s what we’re going to do.” Q“As much
as we need
to change
the people,
we need to
change the
process.”
— Angela Waters
Austin, Black Lives
Matter Lansinghad suggested ignoring their meetings and torch ral-
lies. So Schmidt decided that it was time to start a BLM
chapter. “We saw a need to have another vehicle for black
mobilization in town, given the situation that we had,”
she said. At 48, Schmidt is older than the typical BLM
activist; but as a queer black woman, she appreciated the
role that other queer black women had played as the
movement’s founders. Black Lives Matter was also the
organization that was most consistent and outspoken in
its claims to be unapologetically black. Schmidt thought
she’d found a good fit.
At that first unexpected chapter meeting in Miller’s
Downtown, held “right under the noses of the white su-
premacists,” Schmidt collected the names and contact in-
formation of local people interested in getting involved.
As she and other core members learned about more alt-
right and neo-Nazi rallies planned in their community,
they reached out to national BLM organizers for guid-
ance and support. David Vaughn Straughn, another core
member of the Charlottesville group, remembered his
frustration as he tried e-mail address after e-mail address
listed on the BLM website—for organizers in New York,
Chicago, Boston, Denver, and Washington DC, and on
and on—and received no response. Eventually he made
contact, and the fledgling chapter got on a call with Pa-
trisse Khan-Cullors, a BLM Global Network co-founder,
and Nikita Mitchell, BLM’s organizing director. But the
conversations around strategy never clicked. “Organizing
in a small Southern town is different from organizing in
a big city,” Schmidt said. “In a big city, you can use these
big, disruptive tactics and then fade back into the wood-
work of 3 million people. Here, the people we might piss
off—we’re going to have to work with them next week.”
THE FUTURE
OF