Last weekend at Hempfest, the Sanders campaign had a booth passing out buttons and flyers. Hempfest is probably the only place you’ll ever see an anti-tax protestor in a Bernie t-shirt next to other campaign volunteers.
#SeattleHempfest this anti-tax protestor in a Bernie Sanders t-shirt is right next to the Bernie booth pic.twitter.com/pOBbqSbBny
— Lee Rosenberg (@Lee_Rosenberg) August 15, 2015
I stopped by for a bit and chatted with an older volunteer. When it comes to the long battle to reform drug laws, Sanders is better than many politicians, but still not that close to where I think he could and probably should be. As I left, they handed me a homemade printed flyer and I shoved it in my pocket. When I got home, I noticed that the flyer listing out his campaign’s positions had a line saying simply “All Lives Matter”.
This wasn’t official campaign literature, just a small flyer a volunteer made, but it was pretty tone deaf considering what happened about a mile or two from there the weekend before. Saying that ‘All Lives Matter’ in a political sense right now isn’t just some vanilla statement, it’s a response to the millions of African Americans fighting for a level of respect from the police and the criminal justice system that’s afforded to others. Responding with All Lives Matter is an attempt to brush over the fairly substantial gap that exists in how various forms of the government interact with black communities.
Our politics are defined by our fears. The Black Lives Matter movement is a response to the very legitimate fear among African Americans that they’ll become victims of the police or the court system. Many white Sanders supporters recognize that as a legitimate fear, but for most, it’s not the political issue that drives them. Most Sanders supporters are driven by their own fears over an economic system that favors the wealthy and often fails to provide basic economic protections for everyone else. And it’s the latter fear that’s been drawing large crowds to see Bernie, while Black Lives Matter rallies continue to be met with riot gear and spotty media attention.
I have to admit that my first impression after two activists stole the microphone from Bernie Sanders at Westlake was that it was obnoxious. I understand the powerlessness those activists feel when they see more abstract economic issues dominating the political conversation on the left, while the issues that many in their communities face are far more dire and direct. But the reality is, who the fuck cares what I think. It has no bearing on my attitude towards Black Lives Matter. I’ve long been beating this drum. I’m not really the target audience here. I’m not even sure Bernie was the audience that day. The audience was the cross-section of America who doesn’t personally experience the insecurity and fears that black America experiences and who doesn’t really think about it much.
For many of those who’d stood out on a hot Saturday afternoon to see Bernie talk about social security, the disruption of the event was an annoyance. The hope of the activists is that the crowd will weigh their own annoyance against the injustices faced in the black community and come away with some perspective. Does this work? Maybe. But it seems a lot more likely to work at a Bernie Sanders rally than a Donald Trump one.
I’ve been calling this strategy inconvenienceism. I hope someone can think up a better word for it, but that’s the best I’ve come up with. From blocking highways to disrupting public events, this strategy relies on an optimistic take on human nature, that most people have the ability to put aside their own discomfort to think harder about someone else’s. The name is an attempt to draw a contrast between it and terrorism, a strategy that comes from the same pit of powerlessness, but clearly doesn’t work to endear people to your cause.
Does inconveniencism work? It got the Sanders campaign to add a pretty solid racial justice page to their issue list. They hired black activist Symone Sanders and encouraged people to chant “We Stand Together” if there’s another disruption. So it certainly had an impact on the campaign. But does this really translate to better policies down the road? Or will it harden pockets of antagonism within the campaign inner circle and make the hard work of reform even harder?
When I was talking to the volunteer at Bernie’s Hempfest booth, I was tempted to ask him if he ever worried about pot activists disrupting one of his rallies. It was a funny contrast to me. Bernie’s official position isn’t much different from Hillary Clinton’s or even Rand Paul’s. He believes that states should be able to legalize, but hasn’t come out and said that they should. If a group of pot activists grabbed the microphone at one of his events and demanded clear support for legalizing pot across America, how would that play out?
I can’t think of a single instance where drug law reformers of any kind have used inconvenienceism as a tactic in the way that Black Lives Matter has. But maybe that’s why drug law reform has been such a slow process. Perhaps it would’ve sped things up and gotten us to this point sooner. Or maybe it would’ve played into negative stereotypes and hardened opposition. I have no idea. And I don’t think anyone else really does either. It’s a phenomenon that seems extremely difficult to study with any kind of scientific certainty.
My best guess is that it’s mostly a sideshow and has little effect on achieving real reforms. When Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter activists last week, she seemed to echo that belief:
“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,” Clinton said. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.”
What was understandably frustrating for Black Lives Matter activists is to hear this from someone who has long supported policies that created the crisis in our black communities in the first place, and still seems reluctant to engage in any self-reflection over it. But it highlights the fundamental challenge for this movement and others like it. It’s extremely difficult to get the powerful to fight for the powerless, or even to see the world through their eyes. I think many whites feel that Bernie Sanders can be an exception to that rule. But I don’t think many non-whites do. And I think how that dynamic goes forward will end up deciding the Democratic nomination.
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