The evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement

Veteran US socialist Barry Sheppard interviews Khury Petersen-Smith, a member of the International Socialist Organization and activist in the Black Lives Matter movement.

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I attended an important socialist conference in Australia over the Easter weekend, called Marxism 2015 and organised by Socialist Alternative. One of the many sessions was devoted to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. The speaker was Khury Petersen-Smith, a 32-year-old African American from Boston, and a member of the International Socialist Organization.

Following the conference, we discussed this new movement. Khury was a participant in the demonstrations in the Boston area. He described how the movement developed:

“There were some small actions in solidarity with the demonstrations in Ferguson, which occurred when a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown. But when a grand jury chose not to indict Wilson for the killing in November, the call went out for protests, and that night there were thousands of people who mobilised in Roxbury, the heart of Boston’s Black community.

“We marched to a nearby jail. There were other protests all around the city. That began a wave of protests throughout the fall [autumn] – every single day there were protests, whether hundreds of people or a few dozen high school students who walked out of classes, or some students from Harvard who did the same.

“The first call was put out by young Black radicals from a group called Black Lives Matter Boston. Other groups of young Black folks formed. I would come home and find out that a high school group had organised a protest. The next day another protest would be organised, but that would be totally separate. Lots of high school and college students, who may or may not have influenced each other. How we get these groups together is one of the tasks the movement faces.”

I asked Khury how the national demonstrations were organised. “There was some level of organising nationally – [such as] conference calls. But for the most part it was local, spontaneous, in reaction to local police killings. In some cases, existing groups that had been working against police violence for a long time, initiated. Others came into existence around the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who was murdered by a racist vigilante, George Zimmerman, in Florida. Most emerged this fall.organising nationally – [such as] conference calls. But for the most part it was local, spontaneous, in reaction to local police killings. In some cases, existing groups that had been working against police violence for a long time, initiated. Others came into existence around the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who was murdered by a racist vigilante, George Zimmerman, in Florida. Most emerged this fall.

“Ferguson inspired people. There is a national recognition that, in spite of what the politicians say, this is not just a Ferguson problem, this is an American problem, centred on local manifestations of police violence.”

I raised the experience in Ferguson, where there was ongoing organising after the August events. The young Black leaders who were mobilised in the initial protests didn’t go away, but strengthened their movement. They worked to build a national conference centred in the St. Louis area (Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis) in October, which drew hundreds of activists, called “Ferguson October”.

“That was an important moment that prepared the ground for the bigger protests in November”, Khury said. “There were many activists who went to Ferguson October. I remember thinking, ‘Why go all the way to Ferguson? We have organising to do right here in Boston.’ What I didn’t understand then was that meeting those activists in Ferguson was a learning experience.

“They had produced organising tools, such as videos documenting how they organised in the Black community. I know activists from Boston who went to Ferguson, who put out the first calls for protest in Boston in November. That October gathering was really critical, for sure.”

Reaction against progress

The civil rights and Black liberation movements of the 1950s to the 1970s made significant gains. In the last decades there has been a backlash against those gains, including an attack on Black voting rights and the gutting of affirmative action. There is also the notion among many whites that the US is now a “post-racial” society. “A key feature of racism in the US today is the denial that racism exists”, he pointed out.

The election of a Black president is often cited as proof. “It is true”, Khury said, “that without the civil rights movement Obama couldn’t have been elected. This was said about Obama’s election: ‘Rosa [Parks] sat so Martin [Luther King] could march. Martin marched so Obama could run.’ The idea was that Obama was the culmination of the civil rights movement. But the election of a Black president did not end the oppression of Blacks.

“The effect of Obama’s election was mixed. On the one hand there was the idea that ‘our guy’ is in, so things will get better, so we don’t have to mobilise. But the other side is that the expectation that things will get better – and then they don’t – laid the basis for the new movement to break out.”

One result of the civil rights movement was the growth of class divisions within the Black population. Some have even become junior partners in the ruling class. In this situation, a new Black establishment has emerged, including Black politicians in the two capitalist parties (primarily the Democrats). “Those Blacks [who are] part of the Black establishment are part of the American establishment”, Khury said.

“There is a Black president of the United States, and the head of the Department of Justice is Black. Even [civil rights leader] Al Sharpton, who takes a more militant stance, is part of the American establishment. He plays a part in the administration, making dozens of visits to the White House to advise Obama.”

On the other side are the mass of Black people, who still suffer the same conditions that prompted the uprisings of the 1960s, as well as two new forms of oppression: mass incarceration and police occupation of the Black ghettoes. The backlash against the gains of the 1960s and the old and new forms of Black oppression are the framework in which the new movement has emerged. In this connection, Khury explained the wider meaning of Black Lives Matter:

“This has to be put in the context of the facts of everyday life for the majority of Blacks – the killings by the police, but also the higher levels of unemployment, poverty, infant mortality rates, lower access to health care and housing, mass incarceration. In the mass media these things are never framed in political terms, but in terms that Black people have brought these things down upon themselves, that they are doing something wrong.

“The ideology that comes with mass incarceration and the war on drugs, that if you are branded a criminal you don’t matter, your schools are closed because you don’t matter, transit is cut in the Black communities because Black lives don’t matter, that Black lives in general don’t matter. So the slogan of Black Lives Matter is a broad one, including that Blacks deserve better education, deserve jobs and better jobs, deserve to live in neighbourhoods that aren’t segregated, and so forth.

“The conservative response to Black Lives Matter is to say All Lives Matter or Blue [meaning cops] Lives Matter, ignoring the real prevalent ideology that Black lives do not matter.”

Concerning the mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, documented in Michelle Alexander’s The new Jim Crow – mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, Khury pointed out: “Her book has become popular, but from below. Her book is not discussed much in the major media. But when she speaks, her meetings are packed, especially by young Black radical students. This helped lay the foundation for the new movement.

“I grew up in the era of mass incarceration and the war on drugs, and it is hard for me to imagine a time when there wasn’t a mass police presence in the Black neighbourhoods. There has always been incarceration, biased toward Blacks, but not on this scale – where 25 percent of the world’s prisoners are in the US, [and] wildly, disproportionably Black and Latino.

“It’s not just the number in prison – but the number who are forced, after prison, to wear ankle bracelets; the number on parole or probation, trapped in the broader penal system. One of the things Alexander points out is that, in many states, if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony, you lose the right to vote.

“In Chicago, she says, 80 percent of Black men have lost the right to vote. Social control, repression and intimidation go along with mass incarceration. Blackness and criminality are linked in the dominant ideology to the point where, if a cop kills a Black person, the immediate response is ‘What did he do wrong? What did she do in the past?’

“We have been dealing with this for a long time. Part of the reality of daily police harassment and violence is people can get used to it. I’ve been stopped by the cops some 50 times. At some point you learn how to talk to a cop, to try to avoid being arrested, beaten or shot. But if you are attacked, that ultimately has nothing to do with your behaviour.”

There has been a counter-mobilisation to the new movement. “I think things are really polarised in the US. The movement on the one hand galvanised people against police terrorism. But it was also an opportunity for the other side to mobilise in an open way. When George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, he received a great deal of support among the far right, but it wasn’t particularly public.

“When Michael Brown was killed there was a public rally by the Ku Klux Klan in St. Louis. The cops wore armbands with ‘I am Darren Wilson’. In New York the Police Benevolent Association mobilised against the protests against the police choking to death Eric Garner, charging that the protesters were to blame for an unrelated killing of two police officers.

“The head of the PBA publicly stated that the police were now ‘on a war footing’. Rallies defending the cops have been organised, including in historically white racist enclaves in Boston. There are people pulled to that side, and people pulled to our side, including whites.”

I noted that young whites have been joining the Black-led protests. “There is a trajectory that goes back to the Travon Martin killing”, Khury responded. “At that time, polls asking the question, ‘Was race involved?’ showed Blacks overwhelmingly saying ‘Yes’. A lot of white people said ‘No’, but many said ‘I haven’t been following this closely enough to know.’Khury responded. “At that time, polls asking the question, ‘Was race involved?’ showed Blacks overwhelmingly saying ‘Yes’. A lot of white people said ‘No’, but many said ‘I haven’t been following this closely enough to know.’

“That shocked me, because for me and people I know this was the most important thing happening. An important moment was when Zimmerman was acquitted – eyes were opened for Blacks and non-Black people too.

“Fast forward to Ferguson. Having already seen Trayvon’s killer get off, and then see Wilson get off, that had an impact well beyond Black people. In the small town of Westford, Massachusetts, which is 95 percent white, an 11-year-old white girl put out a call for a Black Lives Matter protest and 70 showed up! Among younger people, it has been noted that they have more progressive attitudes generally. Now this new movement has given a venue for these new attitudes among a section of young whites to express themselves.”

One of the tasks Khury identified for the new movement is to reclaim the real history of 400 years of Black struggle, including those from the civil rights struggle era such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, Black Power, the Black Panthers. Also, there is the task of more deeply analysing the root causes of Black oppression.

Socialists have an important role to play too, in explaining the intertwining of Black oppression, from slavery to the present, with the rise and maintenance of US capitalism, and in trying to link the struggle to a broader anti-capitalist and pro-socialist movement – the conclusion both King and Malcolm X were coming to when they were assassinated.