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How the Black Lives Matter Movement Is Mobilizing Against Trump

by BrodieGetty6520 Posted on February 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump repeatedly expressed hostility towards Black Lives Matter activists during his presidential campaign, particularly for their efforts to confront police brutality. Now, faced with a Trump agenda whose repercussions for African Americans could reach far beyond policing, BLM organizers say they are broadly expanding their mission.

Ever since a police officer killed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement has grown into a loose-knit web of like-minded groups nationwide that focus primarily on ending police brutality and the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans. Last August, a coalition of nearly 30 BLM groups, known as the United Front, released a policy platform calling for comprehensive police and criminal justice reforms, economic investments in black communities, and the mobilization of black voters. The shock of Trump’s election has turbocharged their sense of urgency.

Trump’s immigration order barring refugees and immigrants in particular “changed the rules of engagement,” says Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Oakland-based Center for Media Justice, part of the United Front. The new president’s agenda, she says, represents “an escalation of the war on black bodies and lives.” Approximately a quarter of Muslims in America are black, she notes; Trump’s order blocked immigrants from the African countries of Sudan, Libya, and Somalia, among others. “The issue is the culture that gets created that is anti-Muslim, anti-black, anti-brown, anti-woman,” she says.

“We have tons of black folks that are going to be affected by the potential cutting of DACA,” says Dante Barry, director of New York City-based Million Hoodies for Justice, referring to Trump’s plan to crack down on undocumented residents. “We’re going to have black folk that are going to be impacted by the cut of the Affordable Care Act.”

Following Trump’s election, I interviewed leaders and local organizers with seven groups participating in the United Front about their plans for confronting the Trump era. I also talked to an organizer with an eighth group, Campaign Zero, whose cofounders include Deray McKesson, perhaps the movement’s most visible organizer. All of these activists reiterated that police and criminal justice reform will remain a priority, but that other issues have become equally urgent.

In the wake of Trump’s immigration order, BLM organizers mobilized their networks to turn out at airports to protest. The groups also fired up their social media networks to amplify calls for the release of detained travelers. BLM leaders say their strategy will evolve as more details become known about what Trump plans to do on matters ranging from policing and reproductive rights to climate change and LGBT issues. They will focus on combating what they see as Trump’s hostile, retrograde agenda—and that of right-wing politicians emboldened by Trump—primarily at the state and local levels.

Immigration concerns are squarely on the radar for Million Hoodies, Barry says. The six current members of the group’s chapter in Greensboro, North Carolina—all college students—are drafting sanctuary campus policies that they plan to pitch to school administrations. The group is also in talks with at least one other local group about how Million Hoodies can bolster their efforts to protect undocumented residents throughout Greensboro. Last fall, Million Hoodies Greensboro also supported a local campaign to repeal North Carolina’s infamous anti-LGBT bathroom bill. “We just show up when folks need support,” member Delaney Vandergrift told me. “Showing up at protests and community meetings. Amplifying on social media. Making signs. Anything that local organizations already doing the work are asking for.”

Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, said her organization of nearly 40 chapters plans to expand its work on reproductive rights from a handful of southern US cities to other parts of country. The network hopes to replicate work like that of its chapter in Louisville, Kentucky, which is part of a repro-rights coalition that meets monthly and includes Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Kentucky. This week, following the opening of the Kentucky legislature’s next session, members from BLM Louisville and its partners plan to go to the statehouse in Frankfort to lobby against a bill that would require women to get an ultrasound before getting an abortion, according to Chanelle Helm, an organizer with the chapter. In the upcoming legislative session the group also plans to lobby against a Kentucky bill that would make assaulting a police officer a “hate crime.”

Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Campaign Zero rolled out a Trump Resistance Manual, broadening its focus on data gathering beyond police reform. The site includes descriptions of various Trump policy proposals and assessments of their potential impact; it encourages users to crowd-source information about ways people can get involved in local organizing around more than a dozen issues, including police reform, LGBT rights, education, and climate change.

“The crises are so large that we have to have the capacity to address more than one thing at a time,” said Sam Sinyangwe, a co-founder of the group. “In this moment when they’re trying to take away health care from 30 million people, we simply cannot ignore that in the interest of focusing on one issue.”

Still, police reform remains crucial, and efforts at the state and local levels will be key. The new political reality of a Republican-controlled White House and Congress narrows the prospects for federal criminal justice reform, and leadership from the Department of Justice on police reform, as was the case under President Obama. “We have a federal government—and when I say the federal government I mean prospective Attorney General Jeff Sessions—who doesn’t believe in consent decrees,” said Barry, referring to the DOJ interventions mandating reform for troubled local police departments. “So I think particularly the Trump administration is not going to be useful or helpful for our communities.”

Trump has praised stop-and-frisk and the broken-windows policing strategy, both widely considered racially discriminatory. A budget blueprint for the next fiscal year prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation—a plan mirrored by budget proposals made by the Trump administration, the Hill reported—would also cut $58 million dollars in funding from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which handles police investigations.

Barry said he expects DOJ work on civil rights investigations into police shooting cases that weren’t finished under the Obama administration—such as the Eric Garner and John Crawford investigations—to stall. And worrisome for Campaign Zero’s Sinyangwe is the prospect that, under Trump, the DOJ might be more inclined to intervene in cases of police violence in support of law enforcement. “That’s a different situation that we’re not accustomed to in terms of the Civil Rights division,” he said.

This year, Campaign Zero will begin pushing for laws that empower state attorneys general to open civil rights investigations into local police departments, as is already the case in California, Sinyangwe said. The group will also push for local laws that require a vote by a city council before a police department can accept military equipment from the federal government. Trump has suggested that he will expand the DOJ program that transfers such equipment to local law enforcement.

BLM leaders aim to capitalize on the energy of the nationwide protests that have unfolded since Trump’s election. The local Sacramento chapter of the Black Lives Matter Global Network has canvassed neighborhoods and college campuses five times since the election and has a fast-growing email list, Tanya Faison, the founder of the chapter, told me.

In mid-January, Black Lives Matter groups around the country led multiple protests against pieces of Trump’s agenda that target immigrants, Muslims, and other people of color; the effort began on MLK Day and culminated with the mass anti-Trump protests on inauguration day. April Goggans, who is with the Black Lives Matter Global Network chapter in Washington, D.C., said BLM organizers have been “in awe” of the throng of supporters for their recent events. “It’s really important to us that every time we have a mobilization, that we have an intentional thing to call people into next,” Goggans said. “The days of just rallying and going home are over because there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

During the week of the inauguration, BLM groups hosted “Know Your Rights” trainings and “teach-ins” on Trump’s agenda, among other efforts to educate and involve more supporters. In collaboration with the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild, Goggans’ chapter held trainings that walked attendees through everything from protest permit laws in DC to what a person’s rights are when police give a dispersal order, and how to conduct yourself in jail if you do ultimately get arrested.

Goggans’ chapter plans to rally supporters this month to canvas in neighborhoods in southeast D.C.—an area shaken by increased gun violence in recent years, and where Goggans lives—to encourage people to oppose a push by the city’s mayor to hire more police as a key solution to violent crime. The plan is to talk to residents about initiatives like after school programs and donating books to schools, and “to listen to folks and ask, ‘What is your biggest concern about this? Or what things do you think will be helpful for the issue happening on your block or in your community?’ So that it’s not just giving information, it’s a sharing of information.”

Building that people power will benefit from more collaboration and resource sharing with non-BLM groups. Even before Trump’s election, some BLM groups had begun to build such coalitions. Last fall, some sent members to North Dakota to support Native American activists fighting against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, while others raised money and provided supplies for native activists on the front lines there. The Black Lives Matter Global Network has raised nearly $14,000 in support of the protest efforts at Standing Rock.

The potential for powerful grassroots alliances has only grown since Trump entered the Oval Office, BLM leaders say. “What we saw during the inauguration weekend is going to continue,” said Barry of the historic marches around the country involving myriad activist groups. “We’re all under attack. Each of us might be impacted very differently, but we now share a very similar political fate, and so it’s incumbent on all of us to really be in full coordination and solidarity with other movements.”

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How the Black Lives Matter Movement Is Mobilizing Against Trump

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Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns Use Black Lives Matter Language to Boost Turnout

by SharronMahoney Posted on November 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the election one day away, it’s already clear that black voter turnout won’t reach the historic highs it set when Barack Obama was on the ballot. Early voting numbers show that fewer African Americans have cast ballots in key battleground states like North Carolina than in the past two presidential elections. Recent incidents of police violence against African Americans have done little to help, deepening the distrust of the state and disillusionment with political leaders among some supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. And while Donald Trump has actively alienated black voters with his rhetoric, black activists have also criticized Hillary Clinton for backing the tough-on-crime policies in the 1990s that contributed to mass incarceration.

But several initiatives are trying to get African Americans to the polls by using the very language of this movement—despite its skepticism of politicians—arguing that even if some voters are unenthusiastic about the presidential race, the vote is a necessary part of building black political power and holding elected officials accountable at every level of government.

Taylor Campbell, campaign manager of #WeBuiltThis, a digital get-out-the-vote initiative focused on boosting black millennial turnout, says the campaign has tried to spread the message that voting is “an important part of our toolbox of organizing towards black liberation.” #WeBuiltThis, launched last month, has worked to reach young black voters through social media, visual messaging campaigns, and op-eds written by young black organizers on websites like the Huffington Post and The Root.

“A lot of times when folks want to engage black millennials, the way they engage is around the presidential election,” Campbell says. “We’re not talking about Hillary or Trump. We’re talking about the work that can be done, specifically at the state and local level, to effect change and to improve the material conditions of black life.”

Predicting the voting behavior of black millennials this year has been a challenge. Although Clinton is expected to win the overwhelming majority of the black vote, younger African Americans have been wary of her candidacy. That skepticism has fueled concerns that black turnout will be significantly lower than in 2008 or 2012—perhaps an unfair benchmark, given the enthusiasm Obama engendered. But at the same time, racial justice has moved into the spotlight as Black Lives Matter has created new outlets for black political engagement by sparking a national conversation about the role the government should play in matters of race and policing.

Those are the very issues that #WeBuiltThis and similar campaigns have highlighted, noting that voting is a way to hold politicians accountable on a wide array of issues important to black voters, from criminal justice reform to political negligence in the Flint water crisis. “There may not be excitement about politics and offices, but they understand that they have to be in the streets and the voting booth in numbers,” says Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization that assisted with the development of the #WeBuiltThis campaign.

Black activists have become a particularly powerful force in local politics. Earlier this year, frustration over the delayed indictment of the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald in Chicago led to the activist-driven #ByeAnita campaign, helping to oust Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, black organizers successfully denied re-election to the district attorney who failed to bring charges against the officer responsible for the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

That’s the type of change Color of Change PAC Director Arisha Hatch wants to see on Election Day. In September, Color of Change PAC, the political arm of a prominent online racial justice group, began organizing Black Battleground Text-a-Thons in cities across the country, culminating in the launch of its #VotingWhileBlack voter mobilization effort last month. “We’re trying to prove that if engaged, black voters will turn out to vote regardless of if Barack Obama is on the ballot, or regardless of whether there is a presidential race,” Hatch says. Volunteers with the initiative have sent more than one million text messages to voters in battleground states. In the final weekend before Election Day, the campaign hopes to reach an additional one million people.

Whereas Color of Change PAC has emphasized the importance of local and state races, the nation’s first black president has focused largely on the presidential contest. During a Thursday speech in Florida, Obama aimed much of his message at young black voters, telling them that by going to the polls they “can bend the arc of history in a better direction.” Older black organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus have framed voting as a necessary responsibility for black youth, often referring to the battle for the vote during the Civil Rights Movement as proof of their obligation.

But that approach might be limited in its effectiveness. “The classic argument that ‘our ancestors fought and died for the right to vote’ isn’t enough and doesn’t wash with millennials,” says Dominique Apollon, research director of RaceForward, a group focused on finding innovative methods of advancing racial justice. He says that older civil rights groups would be wise to acknowledge the disillusionment young black voters feel. After the shootings of many unarmed black men and women, he says, some young people “feel that they are in a state of emergency.” Over the summer, RaceForward conducted focus groups with young black activists in an effort to understand their perspective on voting. They found that while black millennials lacked enthusiasm about the presidential election, they were interested in local races, and it was easier to engage them with local politics.

The activists of the movement surrounding Black Lives Matter have frequently accused politicians of contributing to the recent crises and of being incapable of producing real change. But in the final weeks before the election, several well-known black activists, including DeRay Mckesson and Brittany Packnett of Campaign Zero, issued endorsements of Clinton, arguing that she would be better than Trump in protecting black lives. The get-out-the-vote campaigns have not endorsed a presidential candidate, but they similarly make the case that voting can be a path to achieving the movement’s goals.

“Black voters see the struggle, and we understand what currently is at stake in our lives and our communities,” says Dianis. “We can use the ballot box as the next way to build power.”

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Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns Use Black Lives Matter Language to Boost Turnout

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The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

by ZDQJocelyn Posted on August 1, 2016

The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

By on Aug 1, 2016Share

The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 50 groups including Black Lives Matter, released a detailed platform today to address the challenges that disproportionately affect black people — like environmental injustice.

A Vision for Black Lives identifies the public policies hemorrhaging the black community, and then provides possible solutions in the form of model legislation and policies.

The agenda comes in six parts, with sections that explicitly address the influence of the oil industry and environmental racism:

As part of the broader call to divest from criminalization and incarceration, the platform also calls for a divestment from fossil fuels. “Black people are amongst the most affected by climate change,” reads the agenda. Solutions include a strategy to invest in black cooperatives instead.
The call for economic justice also acknowledges environmental racism — including the way black communities have been built in close proximity to sources of pollution, like landfills and incinerators (and vice versa). Instead, the group calls for shuttering incinerators and financing renewable energy projects instead.
Black farmers face unique challenges, including flagrant racial discrimination. The platform suggests putting an end to black farm foreclosures and forgiving black farmer debt.

The platform focuses on policy as a tactic to address the myriad injustices black people face, including in the environment. Its release on the heels of the GOP and Democratic party conventions provides context for local, state, and federal campaigns aimed to meet the platform’s demands.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

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This Photo of Ohio Cops Posing with Black Lives Matter Protesters in Cleveland Is Awesome

by Soon9014mxz Posted on July 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the blazing sun of Cleveland Public Square, under the 125-foot-tall Civil War Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument, an awesome thing just happened—something that defies some peoples’ expectations of what would take place at the Republican National Convention.

Two Ohio cops accepted an invitation to briefly join a group Black Lives Matter protesters—mainly from New York City—in front of a big black-and-white “Cleveland” sign. They stood and posed for photos. The protesters laughed, then raised their fists. The cops smiled, and the scene ended with mutual camaraderie.

The moment occurred amid escalating tensions between law enforcement and protesters nationwide. Earlier this month, two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, were killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota—the latest in a series of controversial police shootings.

On Sunday, three police officers were shot and killed and three others were injured during a gun attack in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, an incident that occurred just 10 days after an ambush of Dallas police killed five officers and injured nine people.

“Sometimes these photos can look a bit cheesy,” I told one of the Cleveland protesters, Elhadj Bah, a 29-year-old political consultant from New York. “Why did you do that? What’s the point?”

“The key is to work together with everybody, law enforcement and all of that stuff. It’s not creating division or hatred,” Bah said. “Maybe we can all work together?”

“It changes their perception,” Bah added.

I couldn’t chase down the cops in the photo in time to get their reactions (or their names.) They were quickly lost to the milling crowds of Trumpians, protesters, musicians, and reporters. If you can identify them, let me know.

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This Photo of Ohio Cops Posing with Black Lives Matter Protesters in Cleveland Is Awesome

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Police Groups Blame Obama, Black Lives Matter for "War on Cops"

by NicholeClark8 Posted on July 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wake of Thursday’s shootings in Dallas, which claimed the lives of five police officers, law enforcement organizations across the country have used social media to show their solidarity with the Dallas Police Department and the families of those who were killed or injured.

But some police groups are also joining high-profile right-wing figures in issuing sharp criticisms of those they see as facilitating a “war on cops,” often taking direct aim at President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page Friday, the National Association of Police Organizations stated, “While we mourn and grieve and commit ourselves to supporting the survivors, we must also stand up and speak out against the senseless agitators and gutless politicians who helped bring about these murders.” The post also criticized the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights for its supposed refusal “to prosecute cop killers”:

In a Friday morning interview with Fox News, William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said Obama has not done as much as his predecessors when it comes to “condemning violence against the police and urging support for the police.”

In St. Louis, KMOX radio is reporting that Jeff Roorda, a top official in the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association, is standing by a controversial Facebook statement that he posted on his personal page hours after the shootings. The post includes a photo of a pair of hands covered in blood, with the caption “THIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, MR. PRESIDENT.” (The post has been deleted from Roorda’s page.)

Officials with other police organizations have been less heated in their reactions to the shooting but have still implied that some of the blame lies with Black Lives Matter. Patrick Lynch, the leader of New York’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the Dallas shooting was the result of “national anger against police caused by erroneous information.” In 2015, Lynch faced public backlash after he said that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s support for Black Lives Matter-led protests contributed to the deaths of two NYPD officers.

On Thursday, while addressing the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile this week in encounters with law enforcement, Obama stressed that Black Lives Matter was not anti-police. “When people say black lives matter, it doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter,” he said. Prominent Black Lives Matter activists have condemned the shootings and offered their condolences to the officers and their families.

In a speech discussing the Dallas shootings earlier Friday, Obama was firm in his condemnation of the attacks on police officers, saying there was “no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement.”

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Police Groups Blame Obama, Black Lives Matter for "War on Cops"

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Civil Rights Groups Move to Expose Government Spying on Black Lives Matter

by AudreaDEIhfkzevp Posted on July 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Against a backdrop of surveillance of the Black Lives Matters movement ahead of the Republican National Convention, two civil rights organizations are aiming to further expose government tracking of the movement’s members. On Tuesday, New York City-based groups Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a joint Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security seeking documents, video and audio recordings, and other information on policies and protocols related to the surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists.

The request covers surveillance conducted in 11 cities that have seen large-scale protests over the police shooting or in-custody deaths of black people, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Oakland, Cleveland, and St. Louis, where protests erupted in Ferguson after the killing of black teenager Michael Brown in August 2014. (The request cites Mother Jones‘ reports on the Department of Homeland Security tracking protesters at a Freddie Gray-related rally, and the monitoring of social media activity by prominent Black Lives Matter activists Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie by a private cyber security firm.)

The groups filed the request because they believe surveillance of Black Lives Matter is more systematic than is currently understood and jeopardizes the activists’ First Amendment rights, says Rashad Robinson, the director of Color of Change. “The government has done a real coordinated effort about what’s happening among activists, but nobody is monitoring what the government is doing,” Robinson says. “The more information we have, the better we can go about the kind of pushback and systemic change necessary to stop it.”

You can read the full FOIA request here.

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Civil Rights Groups Move to Expose Government Spying on Black Lives Matter

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This New Film Will Change the Way You Think About the Black Panthers

by ShanaLushwrjug Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Stanley Nelson had just returned from a screening of his new documentary “Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution” at the Apollo Theatre, when he saw her—Beyoncé—backed by dancers adorned in jet black outfits, berets and blown out hair, dancing with authority before thousands of raucous fans at the centerpiece of mainstream American culture, the Super Bowl. “I was shocked and amazed by it,” Nelson recalled later. “But also, it was beautiful.”

The award-winning filmmaker had been swept up in a Black Panther moment. And in a way, so is the rest of the country. Much like during the late 1960s, protests over police brutality in the past year has given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. The film serves as a reminder that the issues the Black Panthers combated—poverty, economic disparity, tensions between law enforcement and the black community—remain relevant today.

The film, told mainly through the voices of the Panthers’ rank and file, captures the group’s rise and long, steady fall as a cultural and political force, from its infamous gun-touting demonstration at the California statehouse to then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s efforts to disrupt and destroy the Panthers’ national influence. Nelson’s doc also gets at the internal struggles as women rising through the Panther ranks pushed for gender equality.

The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, has largely been praised, although some insiders have taken issue with Nelson’s portrayal. Former Panther leader Elaine Brown dismissed the film as a “two-dimensional palliative for white people and Negroes who are comfortable in America’s oppressive status quo.” Nelson chose not to respond directly, saying simply, “I don’t think there’s anything about the Panthers that anybody can agree on. But I think in some ways, this film comes really close.”

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This New Film Will Change the Way You Think About the Black Panthers

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Uncovering the Painful Truth About Racism on Campus

by MyrtisLawyer Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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After a series of racist incidents sparked campus-wide protests at the University of Missouri, demonstrations have spread rapidly across the country, from Princeton and Claremont McKenna, to the University of South Carolina and Stanford. Students from dozens of colleges and universities have raised demands ranging from improvements in student and faculty diversity to the renaming of campus buildings, and even reparations. Several university heads and professors have resigned amid the upheaval.

Fully understanding the rising wave of campus protests over racial injustice requires looking back centuries, explains Craig Steven Wilder, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wilder spent more than a decade researching the fraught racial history of America’s colleges and universities—including their roots in one of the country’s most ignominous eras. “It’s difficult to celebrate diversity while standing in front of buildings that are named after slave traders,” he says.

Wilder spoke to Mother Jones about how that history came to light, and how it informs current politics and the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mother Jones: What went through your mind when you first heard about the protests at Mizzou and Yale?

Professor Craig Steven Wilder. Courtesy of MIT

Craig Steven Wilder: I had just given a talk at Yale. One of the things that came to mind was the reemergence of a student activism that is increasingly important on our campuses and also in the broader social conversation about racial inequality and racial justice. If you look back at what’s happened over the past few years, with both Occupy and Black Lives Matter, you’ll see a heavy student involvement. The fact that they’re now beginning to articulate a kind of common vision seems to me predictable.

MJ: In 2013, you published Ebony and Ivy, a book about the role slavery played in the founding of America’s earliest colleges and universities, dating back to the 1700s. Do you see any connection between the racial injustices then and the protests we are seeing now?

CSW: It actually dates back to the early 1600s, to the founding of the very first English academy in the American colonies. I don’t see a direct linear connection between those things, but there is a connection. Institutions are a product of their histories, like Georgetown has experienced. We have campuses that are filled with buildings named after founders and early participants in the founding and establishment of universities who both owned and traded human beings. It’s difficult and awkward to celebrate diversity while standing in front of buildings that are named after slave traders.

An advertisement for a slave auction on a ship owned by a charter trustee of the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Gazette/Courtesy of Craig Steven Wilder

MJ: For those who haven’t read your book, tell us more about how slavery played a significant role in the growth of American universities.

CSW: Every college that survived the American Revolutionary war did so by attaching itself to the slave economies of the Atlantic world. It’s those economies that sustained them. Slavery wasn’t just an aspect of their early history—slavery decided which colleges would survive. When Harvard was founded in 1636, it was founded just before the Piqua war breaks out—the war between the Puritans and the native communities of Southern New England. Which culminates in the massacre of several hundred Piqua, and the survivors are sold into slavery in the Caribbean. The ship that sells them is the first to transport slaves out of the British colonies. It returns with African slaves to New England. The year that it returns, Harvard gets its first slave on campus. Yale became a college that expanded in the 18th century by finding more intimate connections to slavery, including owning a small slave plantation in Rhode Island that it leased out to a series of slaveholding tenants. The rent from that estate helped Yale establish its first graduate program and its first scholarship.

There’s an academic revolution that happened in the quarter century just before the American Revolution. There are only three colleges in the British colonies until the 1740s. William and Mary in Virginia, Harvard, and Yale. Then, between 1740 and 1769, seven new colleges get established. That’s the moment when the slave trade is peaking. New wealth is being produced in the Americas that allows the various Christian denominations to establish colleges to help cement their presence in the colonies. Engineering schools in the pre-Civil War period were largely funded by people who were making significant amounts of money off the products of slavery: cotton manufacturers, textile manufacturers in New England, and sugar refiners in places like New York.

You spend a whole bunch of time in the university archives and then you walk outside to put coins in the meter or to grab a sandwich, and you’re walking past buildings named after the people who are in those records. The slave traders and slave owners. Those legacies are very real.

MJ: When did we first begin to see universities confront these legacies, and where?

CSW: It’s just before 2003, when Ruth Simmons, an African American woman who had been president of Smith, is selected as the next president of Brown University. President Simmons decided to challenge the university and the trustees, and the alumni body, by establishing a commission to look directly at Brown’s relationship to the slave trade, and to bring forth a report on it, to make it public, with suggestions of ways of addressing that history. Northern universities in particular have been terribly effective at hiding their relationship to the slave trade. So that was a moment of tremendous courage.

It didn’t happen in a complete vacuum. A couple years before Simmons became Brown’s president, Yale had its 300th anniversary, during which they often commission a history. Yale’s history focused heavily on its contribution to the abolitionist, anti-slavery movement. A lot of Yale graduates became abolitionists, but the university was actually anti-abolition in its official position. Even more important, Yale had a much longer history with slavery, like all of the universities did, than it did with abolitionism. A group of graduate students and staff pointed this out on a website, “Yale, Slavery, and Abolition.” There was a huge backlash. People accused them of attacking the university by bringing up things that were uncomfortable to deal with at the moment when people should be celebrating.

But whatever the motivations, it’s simply true that these universities have a much deeper relationship with slavery, which they’ve successfully avoided. Brown gave a template for how to wrestle with this history.

MJ: We’ve also seen a backlash against the protests at Mizzou and Yale. Where do you see this coming from?

CSW: I once gave a radio interview in which one of the callers accused me of digging up the past. Which is a strange accusation to make against a historian—that’s the job description. What that accusation really is, is the protest of someone who’s uncomfortable with a certain historical truth. I think there’s a fear of where this will lead.

When I was doing the research for the book, you have these references to enslaved people who are on campus. At Princeton, after the president died, his slaves were auctioned off from the president’s house. The founder of Dartmouth showed up to New Hampshire with eight enslaved black people. He’s got more slaves than faculty. He’s got more slaves than active trustees. I’m not the first one to have seen this. But a lot of historians have made the decision that what they were seeing isn’t all that important to the story they were telling.

Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, leased its slaves to bring in additional revenue. Library of Congress/Courtesy of Craig Steven Wilder

When these investigations first started, one of the fears was that any acknowledgement that slavery played in the histories of institutions would lead to calls for reparations. That’s an extraordinarily cowardly position to take. The truth can’t be held hostage to our fear of consequences.

MJ: Has the lack of diversity among university faculty and students had anything to do with the time it has taken to accept these truths?

CSW: I think in the past 25 to 35 years, the increasing diversity of American colleges and universities has created the conditions for beginning to unpack some of this history and to challenge it on campus. On historically white, predominantly white university campuses, we’ve developed a tendency to celebrate diversity and to talk about diversity as a positive good, particularly for marketing purposes, and how we should be ranked with competitors. But at the same time, there’s been a reluctance to do the very difficult work of managing a diverse community of people and thinking about what it really requires to sustain a diverse community of people.

The business of dealing with diversity has gotten harder to do as colleges and universities have gotten more corporatized, as costs have inflated, and as we’ve turned to our upper administration to deal with the business of raising money, building campuses, expanding endowments, and primarily focus on the fiscal health of the institutions. One of the things we’ve created is a generation of higher education officials who don’t necessarily have the skill set to manage diversity.

MJ: How do the ongoing campus protests tie in with the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged more than a year ago?

CSW: Actually, I believe that the campus protests are influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of these students got their initial experience in organizing and political action from BLM. It is, unfortunately, not difficult to see how the social crises that produced BLM also play out on campus. These movements are grassroots reactions to social injustice.

I also think this is a moment where we need to look at the health of our university system more broadly—is it performing the role we think it’s supposed to? And as the students come to experience their own campaign’s successes and failures, their goals will evolve. The original Montgomery bus boycott had very modest aims. It wasn’t until community action began to experience its own power that the aim of desegregating the transit system emerged. Even in a movement that broad and spectacular and historically significant, you have this evolution. So what I see happening with the students is that—much like the student athletes over the past several years who’ve been pushing for compensation and recognition of the roles they’re playing, and the money that’s being generated off their labor—their aims have been evolving over time.

Diversity is not disconnected from those broader conversations. It needs to be embedded in those broader conversations, which is how we hold ourselves accountable over time. It’s how we avoid this habit of pretending to be surprised by things that we know are bubbling up on our campuses.

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Uncovering the Painful Truth About Racism on Campus

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Trump Blasts O’Malley: "Disgusting, Little, Weak, Pathetic Baby"

by StevieMcMillan Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in July, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley apologized for saying “all lives matter” to a group of Black Lives Matter activists who had interrupted one of his speeches.

“That was a mistake on my part, and I meant no disrespect,” the Democratic presidential hopeful said. “I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment, and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”

Great, a well-spoken, sincere apology from a white guy who, if given the benefit of the doubt, probably just didn’t know any better. Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

In an interview on Fox News that is set to air Saturday night, Donald Trump blasted O’Malley’s apology.

“And then he apologized like a little baby, like a disgusting, little, weak, pathetic baby,” Trump said. “And that’s the problem with our country.”

Though many will groan at an adult hurling insults at another adult for realizing he made a mistake and attempting to correct himself, O’Malley may be loving the Trump exposure, considering he has been known to participate in some good old-fashioned trolling of the real estate tycoon himself.

Mother Jones has reached out to the O’Malley campaign, and we will update if it responds.

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Trump Blasts O’Malley: "Disgusting, Little, Weak, Pathetic Baby"

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