It definitely isn’t the Civil Rights Movement of my mother or of Martin Luther King. Since the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, young people are protesting and marching, and in some cases they’re looting and burning. We’ve seen it before; actions that’ve shocked the nation, but did little if anything to bring about change. Those were moments, no movements.
The beating death of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police was a moment, not a movement. The aftermath was horrific, but it failed to bring about and broader, nationwide reforms.
The same can be said for the 1979 death of Arthur McDuffie by police and the protest it sparked in Miami, and the 2001 shooting death of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas in Cincinnati, and the eruption that followed. Both moments, without a resulting movement. However the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 and the beating death of Matthew Shepard in 1998, were both defining moments that turned into movements for change.
Fredrick Harris a professor of political science and the director of the Center on African American Politics and Society at Columbia University, says by itself, the death of Michael Brown, or the death of Tamir Rice, or Eric Garner wasn’t enough to make a movement, but the collective of these and other execution of Black men at the hands of police appears to have set off a movement.
Even if Harris is willing to officially proclaim this a new civil rights movement, the American media, and even Americans, have been slow to acknowledge the past three years of protests as a “movement.” This doesn’t look like what “they” define as a movement. Missing is the big name organization and the charismatic male leader. Where is the comparable Southern Christian Leadership Conference and where is the Martin Luther King.
After the death of King in the mid ‘60s, the headlines read “Who Will Lead Them?” Black America sat down and waited for their next leader to arrive. That was the reform model they were used to, so they flailed along for decades, accomplishing more individually than as a group.
During the ‘80s the Moral Majority took a page out of the African-American play book. Using the church and a charismatic leader, they yielded great political power and brought about change. Today, that conservative model for change has been replaced with the Tea Party. Today, the Tea Party is one of the more successful political movements, but the group functions without any clear organizational structure and without a clear and definitive leader.
Certainly this new civil rights movement didn’t purposely model themselves after the Tea Party, but they did implement the kind of grassroots organization that has been effectively brining about change in the new millennium.
So instead of looking for one big group with a dynamic leader, this new civil rights movement is composed of a number of loosely connected organizations. Possibly the biggest of the groups is the #BlackLivesMatter group. This group was form in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin. Today, there are several chapters of this organization spread across the country.
Not that it matters, but this organization was founded by two Lesbian females and a Nigerian woman. Several of the organizations have been founded by women and there are a lot of queer (a new urban term for female gays) and feminist in leadership roles within this new movement.
Another prominent group is the Black Youth Project 100, a national organization of young Black activists with chapters in Chicago; New York; D.C., Oakland, and New Orleans. Then there’s Ferguson Action, an organization that sprang up in response to Michael Brown’s shooting. Then there are the Dream Defenders and Hands Up United, just to name a few.
If you are looking for a lead organization headed by the charismatic male, you’re not goinh to find it. As with the Tea Party Movement on the other end of the political spectrum, decentralization is part of the point. Ferguson Action activists make this explicit: “We are connected online and in the streets. We are decentralized, but coordinated. Most importantly, we are organized.”
What Do You Want?
Three years post Trayvon, people were starting to accept what’s happening as a movement, but people are troubled by the movement’s lack of clearly stated goals and objectives. Yes Black Lives Matter, but what do you suggest we do about it?
Early on, the clear call was for body cameras for police. In the midst of Ferguson, with police rolling up in armored tanks provided courtesy of the U.S. Government, the call was for the demilitarization of community police departments. Beyond that, nothing was clear.
Born out of police shootings, the movements focus remains mostly on improved policing. In Dec. 2014, following a summer of protests across the country, the movement drew a major response. That’s when Pres. Obama signed an executive order to initiating the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The Task Force members received expertise, testimonials, and information from stakeholder and the public with a goal of identifying the best practices for running law enforcement department. This May, the Task Force issued its final report and this week Pres. Obama held a White House meeting to highlight some of the best practices that came out of that report.
Because this was a Black President responding to the demands of a Black group, the Executive Order drew little attention. However, the power of the movement to bring about this executive order, should not be underestimated.
Recently, drawing from the recommendations of the president’s Task Force, a group, identified as “We the Protesters” issued an outline of policy solutions titled “Campaign Zero.” Finally the movement has a platform, or manifesto to help guide their demands for change.
Not a real problem
Even with an agenda in hand, the new Civil Rights Movement still has a perception problem. The country’s perception that there really isn’t a problem.
Prior to Ferguson and the new Civil Rights movement, there was a widespread belief among White Americans, as well as many Black ones, that the hairstyles, clothing, music and speech of poor and working-class Black youths are the causes of aggressive police reactions — basically, that the kids are asking for it. This belief reflected a long-standing tradition of respectability politics, in which progress against poverty and discrimination would come from Black people behaving differently, better.
In a nationwide 2008 poll by ABC News and Columbia University’s Center on African American Politics and Society, 44% of Black Americans said they believed that the reason African Americans faced difficulty moving ahead was because they lacked individual initiative. Only 37% said that the lack of Black progress was caused by racism in society.
This divide mirrored the lack of consensus among African Americans about how to deal with racist police practices. Either keep your head down at all times in public to avoid run-ins with police officers , or demand that you be treated as equals under the law, just like anyone else, without needing to strive for some flawless ideal.
Already, the movement is changing attitudes In the wake of Ferguson, many Black and White Americans alike have awakened to the idea that a lack of respectability is not the problem; the problem is policing practices in Black and Brown communities.
Still, defining what is and isn’t racism remains difficult. In the old civil right movement, the problem was clear. Jim Crow Laws, lunch counters where you couldn’t sit and jobs you didn’t have access to put racism in your face.
With the passage of a series of Civil Rights bills and advances across the past 50 years, even post Ferguson it’s hard to get some people to buy into the need for a new civil rights movement, says Rinku Sen, executive director of the Applied Research Center and publisher of colorlines.com.
“’Civil’ refers largely to political rights, but communities of color need change in economics and culture, the kind of change that hasn’t yet been encoded in the law,” writes Sen. “People should not be subjected to exploitation on the job, but labor laws, including those against discrimination that are in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, don’t get us anywhere near workplace justice.
Sen points to on the job systems that promote friends, generate gaps in wage earnings and limits movement up the corporate ladder for people of color. More than civils rights the problem is a need for cultural change that has totally happened since the first Civil Rights Movement.
Instead of calling this new movement a Civil Rights Movement, Sen says the movement can be better defined as a racial justice movement.
“Using the racial justice frame allows us to fight off the seductive, corrupt appeal of colorblindness, which currently makes it difficult to talk about even racial diversity, much less the real prize of racial equity,” writes Sen. “Such language also allows us to move beyond the current limitations in civil rights law to imagine a host of new policies and practices in public and private spaces, while we also upgrade existing civil rights laws at all levels of government.”
Justice does seem to be a theme of the movement, with regular chants of “No Justice, No Peace,” and the anniversary of the Million Man March titled “Justice or Else.” While this new movement’s focus of “justice” is on crime and policing, Sens concept of justice is even broader. She definitely expands the meaning of justice to include economic justice, justice around health, in fact, justice in all aspects of our life.
Focusing on a narrower topic, especially one so big, may be more effective for this new movement, but it leaves a void. Who will step up to lead for change around all of the other areas where injustice still prevails?
Working Outside the system
Just like the well-publicized split between King and his non-violent movement and the young radicals who supported violence and justice at any cost, an obvious split exists between this new movement and the old guard. The old guard has settled into a mode that finds them working for change from within the system, while this new group works by agitating from outside. The new guard wants little if anything to do with the old guard organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League. And while the old guard follows a traditional political path for change that involves them involved with their political party, and supporting candidates and by all means voting. This new guard prefers to show up and loudly close down political forum.
Among this movement’s most powerful tool is digital activism. While old school activist begin to warm to the power of social media, the new school movement says the process has been effectively working for years. There was nothing spontaneous about the Travon Martin story or the Michael Brown story or others going viral. That was the work of activism, just a different kind.
“Black Twitter” — has emerged as a powerful forum for activism and debate. It has helped sway public by challenging racially biased interpretations. For example, Black people on Twitter and Facebook posted images of themselves in formal clothes alongside pictures of themselves in informal attire, asking whether they deserved to be under suspicion because of the way they were dressed. They posted individual and group photos with their hands raised in a gesture of surrender — as witnesses reported Brown did when he was shot — with hashtags such as #HandsUpDontShoot and #Blacklivesmatter. They use social media to coordinate vigils for victims of police brutality, to organize rallies across the country, and to post links to live-streaming sites that show the Ferguson protests in real time.
Social media has become the game-changer of Black activism, filling the void left by the weakening of traditional civil rights leaders and organizations that used to play a vital role in interpreting events for the Black community, but now have little credibility with a younger generation.
The old civil rights movement had allies across racial lines, with some White northerners supporting the cause and showing up to march. However this new movement is a diverse coalition for change. The movement works closely with the LBGT community and White, Brown, and Red people are also connecting with the cause. Connecting around the issue of police misconduct seems easy. The challenge becomes on how far and to what other issues will those alliances reach.
A final challenge for this new group is staying power. Progress and change takes time. The 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott lasted a year until victory was declared, and congressional legislation banning racial discrimination in public accommodations and voting did not pass until a decade later. It took 17 years for LGBT activists to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Change does not come overnight.
Even with the President’s Task Force Report as a roadmap for change, actual changes could take time. Even within police justice reforms, it could take time to repeal stand-your-ground laws, for the demilitarization of local police, a requirement that cameras be worn by police on duty and to pass a comprehensive federal racial-profiling law.
But it could take even longer to change racial biases. While the old guard passed laws only time and culture have gnawed away a racial bias. However, that’s something this movement seems determined to work on. While their work seems less directly connected to political decision-making than the old guard would expect from a social movement, with slogans like #BlackLivesMatter they are working to change perception.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato knew that if you could change the garden of symbols in which people grow up – that is, their intuitive sense of the beautiful and ugly, of the good and bad, of the fair and unfair – you would change their choices, and therewith the world. What Black is Beautiful was to the ‘70s, #BlackLIvesMatter is to this new movement.