Discussion for article #239501
She’s right. Like I said in a post yesterday, they should have come asking her position on specific legislation that starts to address their concerns. This is actually a great answer, even if it’s not what some in the movement want to hear…
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There will also be racist, closed-minded people, no matter who hard they or anybody else tries. That’s just the sad reality. But there’s a lot that can be done through specific legislation to mitigate the damage that those people can do and to raise up the people that they’d like to keep down.
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I liked the respectful tone by both sides here. Can we get more of this? Respectful dialogue?
And on top of that, good answers. Reminds me of that aphorism – politics is the art of the possible.
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Democracy has never been about people being virtuous. It’s about protecting people because they are often not!
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From the Real SouthSide of Chicago, The Black lives matter movement is Self-serving/promoting Hypocrisy, Arrogance and Vanity, if the over 90% Black on Black Murdered lives really mattered to these pretentious self-righteous Hypocrites we’d be tripping over them in my neighborhood!
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I would say that I don’t really like the idea BLM being a monolithic movement anyway. I marched after Ferguson for weeks but I never felt the need to be a part of any close knit organization because I wasn’t there for anything other than to have my voice heard with others protesting the killings of unarmed blacks by the state. They can miss me with everything else, which I have my own thoughts on.
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Will BLM activists eventually get around to asking the CBC how they FEEL about contributing to the mass incarceration of black lives?
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She’s right. The BLM people seem terrifically dedicated and sincere, but they need to get organized and more savvy politically if they’re going to have some serious impact.
Politicians listen to rich contributors and constituencies with high levels of voting. People and groups that don’t have the bucks need to focus on voter registration and turnout – and, meanwhile, continue to work on changing hearts.
(BTW: “BLM” is a terrible initialism in the national political world, 'cause to those of us in that world, the first thing that comes to mind is the Bureau of Land Management.)
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May want to check out the clip of them on Maddow with Melissa Harris Perry. This guy came across as an absolute ass. Somehow HRC is at fault for all of her husband’s policies in the 90s? He also commented about the Bernie Sanders interruption commenting that there is a “covert anti-blackness in the democratic party.” Saying that the liberals were willing to throw two African American women under the bus because a white male wasn’t being allowed to speak.
Um… No. Those two idiots that interrupted Bernie Sanders were at a social security event that Sen. Sanders was invited to speak at. An event that had little to nothing to do with BLM and one they were not invited to speak at.
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The answer can’t always be the one which will satisfy, but HRC has a great deal of support among black voters and has a good number of black women on the first tier of her campaign team.
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Her bit about “changing hearts” seemed pretty incoherent. She starts by saying “I don’t believe you change hearts.” Then goes on to say they might change some, but it won’t do any good. If all she meant was that you can’t change “every” heart, well that’s a rebuttal to an argument literally no one is making.
Of course she’s right that you have to change laws and policies. But “changing hearts” is often exactly what it takes to make it possible to change laws and policies in any significant way. Just look at the same-sex marriage issue – absent many “changed hearts” there is no way we’d be where we are today. Especially ironic, as Clinton herself claims to have had a change of heart from just a few years ago when she was opposing same-sex marriage.
I have serious doubts as to whether Hillary Clinton has any kind of clue about how social change actually happens. But, what should we expect from someone who has lagged, not led, on issues like LGBT rights, the Iraq war, Wall Street reform, etc.
[Edit: Before any of you waste your keystrokes, let me add that, yes, I’d still vote for her over any of the occupants of the GOP clown car. But it’s going to take a lot of prodding, by BLM, by the Sanders campaign, by environmentalists, by labor, and many others, to push her beyond her comfort zone as a timid, triangulating “New Democrat.” I mean just look at the Keystone XL thing – she won’t even state a position, just that she’ll let us know later, if she’s elected. That is not leadership.]
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It won’t garner nearly the headlines. Protesting/meeting with congressional critters just doesn’t compare to doing the same with Presidential candidates. Or even sitting Presidents.
They protested Obama at the Selma march, and it hardly drew more than a ripple in the media coverage.
The sad fact is also, that Blacks protesting Blacks draws a collective yawn from the media. Blacks protesting GOPers is only slightly better because its a “duh” moment. Blacks protesting white Dems, however, plays into all sorts of memes…Dems in disarray, Racism in the Democratic party, How badly does this hurt Hillary and should she just go ahead and close down her campaign now?
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H.Rod, keepin’ it real.
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I understood what she was saying. She is saying that changing policy comes about by changing laws, changing the system, not merely by changing attitudes. She isn’t ruling out that changing attitudes is a good thing, but to address the issues that BLM is bringing up, its going to take a lot more than that.
In essence she is saying changing the laws is her job, changing attitudes is theirs, but if they really want to address systemic racism, they are going to need to work with her.
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I applaud the BLM for making Black inequity and social justice a priority for all parties. I believe their efforts are sincere and will prevail, eventually. At the same time, I agree with HRC, BLM will not change all hearts and minds, though Clinton appeared frazzled and defensive. This sadly, coupled with some white progressives antagonistic scorn of BLM tactics at Sanders Rallies exposes continual covert racial schisms in the democratic party. The democratic party unfortunately takes voters of colors support for granted. Sometimes i think the Democratic mantra should be, “Don’t ask questions, vote Democratic.”
Makes sense to some extent, but the president does not make the laws, Congress does. The president can play an important role, by making proposals and, perhaps most importantly, by use of the “bully pulpit.” And the latter is all about helping to change public attitudes and apply public pressure on Congress. If she thinks the job of the president is just (or even primarily) about proposing and signing laws, then she’s missing a big piece of the picture.
Clinton’s response points to a very serious problem with left of center politics: it is not goal or agenda oriented. It has a disdain for real organizingg and crafting an agenda based on issues.
This is the legacy of the American left since the 1960s: it did achiecve cerrtain goals–ending the war in Viet Nam, pushing for black equality, feminism, gay rights,etc. But it has never created or sustained any organizational apparatus, say a party, to push an agenda, all the left knows how to do is demonstrate. Case in point on Occupy Wall Street. It raised an issue: inequality, but was gone in less than a year. It creatd a fetish of occupying locations, which made it very vulnerable to dislodge.
BLM tends to want to crash meetings, but it doesn’t seem to have any goals beyond stopping police violence. Okay.
How? In our federal system, most police issues are handled at the state and municipal levels. Can BLM craft an agenda that would deal with? Will BLM craft a demand that states and localties keep stats on police shootings? Require officers to wear body cameras?
Can BLM meld into a flexible national organization in which local initiatives are acted upon, but has national implications?
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Where you at that Sanders rally in Seattle? Some of the people in the crowd were hurling racial insults at those two women.
Why should they vote in the midterms? What the heck have democrats done for the base lately?