Notes From The Field: The Strategy Of Struggle

"We won't go back" rally at the capitol in Augusta, Maine on 11/18/16

"Love trumps Trump's hate" is the message on the sign partly visible on the left of this photo from yesterday's rally at the state capitol in Maine. About 50 people were in attendance and the dozen or so who spoke were, by and large, very young. So encouraging to this aging activist who was only able to be there on a work day due to a medical procedure early that morning (that's why I'm sitting down).

Two things I learned yesterday: 1) young people have been radicalized by the election of an avowed homophobe, misogynyst and white supremacist who publicly mocked a reporter with disabilities; and 2) there's a campaign to contact electors of the infamous electoral college -- which has been used to rig elections in the U.S. for generations -- to change their pledged vote before casting it on December 19. You can get the list of their emails to ask them yourself on this website: AsktheElectors.org.

I learned from this young mother whose son ran up to join her as I took her photo after she spoke.

Me: Are you proud of your mom?
Him: Yes.
Mom: I'm proud of him! He made his own sign for today.

A local tv news station covered the rally organized by college student Emma Donnelly. Their coverage completely ignored the real news, which was the strong presence and voice of young activists -- very young in some cases. Instead, the corporate "news" invited an old white man who supports Trump to disparage the protests sweeping the nation.

Hearing children speak from their hearts, stumble over their words and be less than eloquent at the megaphone while the audience was patient with their process left me feeling encouraged and hopeful about the silver lining in these dark, dark times.

I think we would all do well to be guided by the thinking of organizations that have been on the front lines during two Obama administrations. You know, the times when things were supposedly ok. Except for racialized state-sanctioned killings and environmental destruction all over the planet.

Black Agenda Report's Glenn Ford shared this wisdom on the BAR blog this week in a history minded post called "None Are My Presidents":

On November 6, after their annual march on the White House, the organizations of the Black is Back Coalition ratified a 19-point document that puts self-determination at the heart of the broadest range of issues confronting Black America: 

“Every central demand, every strategy of struggle, must be formulated with the goal of self-determination in mind. Otherwise, the movement will allow itself to be drowned in reformist schemes and projects that bind Black people even more tightly to structures of outside control.” The points range from “Black Community Control of Police,” to “Halting Gentrification,” to “Nationalization of the Banks.”

Now you may be thinking, isn't emailing the electors a reformist scheme? And wouldn't I in fact be implicitly asking them to vote for the odious warmonger that the Democrats nominated? 

Yes, and yes. But the email took less than five minutes to send. That's about as much time as I'm willing to spend on reformist schemes. I didn't want the warmonger, either, but the rise in hate language and hate crimes since Trump got enough electoral votes to be president is horrifying. 

Here's a facebook post from Shay Stewart-Bouley creator of the blog Black Girl in Maine:

BlackgirlinmaineNovember 14 at 5:01pm · 
Today I was verbally accosted in downtown Portland, ME by a middle aged white woman in a nice coat with cute lipstick. She looked like a basic middle aged white woman hence when she started speaking, I was caught off guard. I was standing on Fore Street, across from the Hyatt, catching up with an old colleague when this woman came up to us. 

Initially she asked what was this place? I assumed she meant the establishment we were standing in front of, so I said it looks like a bar. Then she pointed her gaze at me and asked me where was I from? From there she proceeded to ask me me where I lived? At that point, I realized that I was having a potentially racialized encounter and her next question confirmed it. She asked me where did the Blacks (her exact words) live in Maine because there was no ghetto here. She got louder as she repeated herself at which point the white man I had been with said, I think that is enough, these questions are not appropriate. She asked one final question, what would I do if she got aggressive with me? I told her this exchange is over and slowly backed away from her. 

She didn't hit me, she didn't call me a ni**er, but her words and her stance made it clear that she felt entitled to my space and that she had the right to ask me whatever she wanted to. 

My father in recent years has shared many details about his childhood in Blytheville, AR under Jim Crow. It wasn't that long ago in America, that a white person could come up to a Black person and demand that we give up our seats, call us ni**ers and do what they wanted with no fear. 

We are rapidly moving back to that place and while we sit around thinking about it and trying to work through our collective angst over Trump, there is a segment of white America that now feels emboldened to do what they want.

I have spent all afternoon thinking about what would have happened if I had slapped that white woman, given her boldness, I think she would have earned it. But a Black woman hitting a white woman is multi-layered and complex and frankly I am too busy for a visit to the local lockup.

The other thing that I have pondered today is that while I have been expecting backlash, I had a preconceived notion of what it would look like. Never did I expect it to look like a woman who I would do business with or look like a possible friend.

I am okay, as okay as one can be. Life goes on as does the struggle. But as the young folks say shit got real. America under Trump is about to be a place that many of us have never borne witness to and we need to acknowledge it.

Our system is beyond reform at this point. Only revolution will save us.

The U.S. has lost the consent of the governed. But look at all the love young people are bringing to our ongoing struggle. I stand (or sit if I need to) with them.

#Trump = #Brexit ? I Guess We Should Have Seen This Coming?

My granddaughter's mother wants to bring a sign she created calling for peace and love to our weekly vigil on the bridge in Skowhegan. But she is afraid to bring her toddler to the spot where hateful language has been heard and threats have been made by supporters of president-elect Trump in recent weeks.

A reporter for the local paper wants to cover the story of our response to the election. Why us? Maybe the fact that we've been there, creating a public space for communicating about the political reality for years now, gives us some gravitas.

My neighbor Barry Dana, a chief of the Penobscot Nation, received a dozen answering machine messages at home this week calling him and all native people “scum bags” and mentioning one of his daughters by name. Maulian Smith is the leader of the ongoing effort to get Skowhegan Area High School to retire its racist "Indian" mascot. Authorities were called about the phone harassment and an investigation is underway.

But when will this family feel safe again? This begs the question of whether or not they felt safe before.

Maulian has reported nasty messages mentioning her own daughters -- young children -- from haters here in Maine. She often posts humorous dialogues between the two girls trying to make sense of what they see around them. One of them told her sister recently after seeing Trump on tv, He isn't white, he's orange."

In retrospect, the election of Donald Trump with his hateful rhetoric against Muslims, women, people of color, and homosexuals is best seen in light of Brexit. White working or unemployed people slipping from middle class to working poor are scared and angry. They are lashing out against the system that has so dimmed their prospects.

The British were surprised to wake up the day after a referendum to leave the European Union and find that the stoking of these fears by mass media had affected the vote. Such a vote is an attempt at communicating: Something is wrong here! Neoliberals, pay attention: your economic policies are crushing my family's dreams of self-sufficiency!

Nearly half the electorate in the U.S. simply did not vote in the presidential election. The majority of the half who did cast a ballot did so for another candidate.

But this doesn’t negate the fact that a sizable percentage of voters in the poorest areas of the U.S. voted for the candidate who has claimed he will force all Muslims to register as such.

I just took a pledge to say that I, too, will register as Muslim if this dark time ever arrives.

As a history major I always wonder what such people understand about the mass murder of Jewish people and others deemed undesirable by Nazis in the 20th century.

Source: The Free Thought Project

When you see a photo of water protectors in North Dakota with their number written on their arms by militarized police arresting them for standing their ground, does it call up memories of concentration camp inmates with tattoos? It does for me.

The best part of teaching history is sharing the many, many stories of those who stood up to fear and chose love and solidarity instead. The villagers of Chamonix, France hid hundreds of people fleeing the Nazis at great risk to themselves. The Danish people employed foot dragging and subterfuge to stall deportment of their Jewish population, allowing time for most to move to safety. Janusz Korcak, the Maria Montessori of Poland, went to the camps with his beloved children rather than leave them to face hate alone.

Dark times contain within them the possibility of bringing your own glimmer of light out from under cover and shining it for those most in need. That would be us, now. Let it shine.