Learning from success is a sweet exercise, and white Americans who oppose racism can learn from the extraordinary gay rights gains that will be marked in Philadelphia this July 4 weekend. Fifty years ago Paul Kuntzler participated in America’s kick-off direct action, when 40 lesbians and gays picketed Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to demand freedom. Recalling for the Philadelphia Inquirer that defiant act on July 4, 1965, Kuntzler said, “I didn’t think, and I don’t think most of the people in the movement ever thought, we would see such astonishing progress.”
At the time I was too scared to join the Independence Hall gay protests, but I remember how thrilled my best friend and I were that they were happening. The boldness of Barbara Gittings and the others inspired me; I did become a gay activist, getting arrested at the very building where the Supreme Court officially surrendered last month.
I wish we were also celebrating our victories against racism these days. Confronting racism as a white ally started for me in 1949 when, at age 12, I destroyed my budding career as a boy preacher by giving a sermon against racism. The congregation was less than pleased. Undeterred, I deepened my commitment to prophetic spirituality and enlisted in the civil rights movement, where I earned my first arrest. Many activities later, I built a cross-race, cross-class coalition for the Jobs with Peace Campaign.
Even when campaigning on other progressive issues, I tracked the highs and lows of my “heart-movements” that were fighting for freedom from racism and heterosexism.
LGBT people borrowed the idea of pro-actively designing campaigns of confrontation from the civil rights movement. Not even the 1980s AIDS crisis, engendering a near-panic that the right wing tried to turn to their advantage, could stop our movement. In fact, ACT UP went on the offensive, escalated nonviolent confrontation, and forced the government and health industries to respond. The film “How to Survive a Plague” has lessons for all social movements.
Allies came forward in numbers, and still do. I can’t tell you how many times I saw brave heterosexuals take on homophobia during struggles to win concrete gains for lesbians and gays.
I should underline the phrase “struggles to win concrete gains.”
The main job of allies was not to search their hearts, to unlearn homophobia, to call each other out for betraying lingering traces of prejudice. As a gay man, I no more expected my allies to cleanse themselves of homophobia than I expect us white people to expunge racism from deep layers of our psyches. I didn’t need my allies to become saints. I needed them to become bold and take risks for me in our common fight to change the power institutions that maintain heterosexism — and racism. In other words, I wanted my allies’ behavior to be about the oppressed, not about themselves.
Making it ‘all about me’
When either heterosexual allies or white allies subtly change the agenda from social justice to attitudinal change, they center the attention on themselves. “Anti-racist” self-absorption seems to be the path of least resistance, especially for college-educated middle-class people used to devoting enormous attention to themselves. Allies preoccupied with second-guessing each other are too busy to confront the power institutions that wreak havoc in the communities of black and brown people.
We need to accept that it is deeply human to be ambivalent, to contain within ourselves contradictory impulses. When I’ve risked my life for others my clarity did not come from the erasure of my bigotry, arrogance, or fear; it came from making a choice and understanding that the choice just might matter.
The civil rights strategist Bayard Rustin influenced me in many ways. He used to say that we know people’s deepest beliefs not from their words, but from their action. In the 1960s white people showed we were allies by taking action – picketing racist realtors, boycotting to open jobs to black people, enlisting trade union friends to join the March on Washington, even sitting in and going to jail. That context of direct action was when the greatest progress against racism was made.
Rustin argued that the choke-hold of racism cannot be broken as long as joblessness and poverty continue. Now we can see how correct he was; black scholars, entrepreneurs, celebrities and even a president can’t really touch racism as long as fundamental institutions continue to generate it 24/7. Only powerful action campaigns can change institutions, and that’s where the responsibility of the allies belongs. What better role for the privileged?
Practicalities
The art of creating powerful nonviolent direct action campaigns has not been lost, but neither is it as close as the corner store. Here’s one example of a campaign that could be successfully waged by the thousands of white allies after reading Michele Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow.” Incarceration policy commonly places offenders in prisons far from their homes and families. This is only one of the idiotic practices in our U.S. system, but it causes great suffering. A black relative of mine has spent decades in various jails, with my family and me spending untold hours traveling around Pennsylvania trying to keep up his morale. I’ve met countless families whose limited means prevent frequent visits with their loved one; most of these are African American.
Outlining a nonviolent campaign to force change would include identifying the target in your state (i.e., the person or office that can change this practice), dialoguing with those most affected to share perspectives, creating a spectrum of allies and developing a plan to message and act in relation to the segments of the spectrum, planning a sequence of creative direct actions that escalate over time, anticipating counter-moves by the opponent and planning how to respond. The mantra must be: Take the offensive and stay on it. A handbook for every member of your group should be Daniel Hunter’s “Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide.”
How does such a campaign relate to the larger injustice of mass incarceration? The system as a whole is too entrenched to be abolished at this time. The bridge to a powerful abolitionist movement is created by a series of winning campaigns against elements of the institution; as the victories accumulate one by one, the movement grows and people grow confident that they can actually win. (Despair remains our daily enemy.) When the movement is large and bold enough, it will be a multi-racial and multi-class movement that takes down mass incarceration, just as the entrenched legal segregation of public accommodations was taken down.
That movement will, in turn, inspire other movements, just as the civil rights movement inspired so many other movements in the United States, such that author Dick Cluster wittily entitled his book “They Should have Served that Cup of Coffee.”
The positioning of white-led campaigns against mass incarceration in relation to those most affected includes interesting dynamics. Whites should take responsibility for dismantling the system piece by piece because whites built it in the first place. The new Jim Crow was not the idea of people of color – why should they have to abolish it?
Of course such campaigns involve extensive interaction across race and class lines. Whites taking action will find it easier to let go of shyness and fear while relating, just as happened in the civil rights movement. Abstraction, timidity and political correctness fall away in the realness of campaigning — college-educated white people get to join the rest of the human race.
A useful by-product of such a campaign would be learning how to handle the do-gooder impulse sure to arise among white people once the drama spills over into the mass media. I’m thinking of the churches, for example, that will volunteer to run buses to prisons at distant points to make it easier for poor families to visit their loved ones. Campaigners can learn to distinguish between charity and justice, and invite the churches to join them in using what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the sword that heals” — nonviolent action.
While a creative direct action campaign brings many positive results for all involved, including the opponents, the bottom line is removing a piece of the racist structure that imposes suffering on working-class people of color. It is about them, after all.
A historical note: Michael Beer pointed out to me that there were in fact nonviolent direct actions by LGBT people and their allies before July 4, 1965. Since writing the column I attended yesterday’s large 50th anniversary commemoration event at Independence Hall (on July 4) and the historical framing of the picketing fifty years ago became clearer. The few prior actions were reactive to particular abuses and/or specifically lifting up a grievance, like actions in Washington led by Frank Kameny whose major focus was federal employment. It seems that the Philly event was put together as a general lesbian and gay rights action organized by New York and D.C. leaders as well as Philly leaders and meant to go beyond previous and more specific events. As a nationally organized event it was then repeated each year until 1969, when the Stonewall Rebellion opened a new moment in U.S. history. The East Coast leadership of the Independence Hall actions decided to drop that series, concluding that that it was more important for gays and allies from Washington, Philly and elsewhere to go to NYC in June 1970 to NYC to lift up the importance of the Stonewall expression of pride and anger. (I’ll never forget those bus rides to NY!) And so the tradition of a June Pride Day began.
Yesterday’s Independence Hall commemoration was moving, not least because the most sustained applause by the crowd was in response to the call from the platform that we not rest content with the celebration of large achievement in Justice as about Just Us, but instead expand to people of color and other oppressed groups that have not enjoyed as rapid success as we have.
I love this focus on what creates effective action, and how to be an effective white ally. Thank you. I am learning so much…
“LGBT people borrowed the idea of pro-actively designing campaigns of confrontation from the civil rights movement.” I would say that, The LGBT & Civil Rights Movement adopted the idea of pro-actively designing campaigns of confrontation from the Militant Suffrage Movement lead by Miss Alice Paul.
Thank you George – I just could not resist giving my 2 cents
Thanks, Zoe, for making the connection with the amazing campaign by the militant wing of the woman suffrage movement. I don’t know how many LGBT people actually knew that history — our country lends toward amnesia about social change — but their campaign certainly inspired me. I was lucky enough actually to interview Alice Paul for a scholarly paper I wrote on her campaign, and I’ll never forget her fastidious attention to detailed and careful design. Her comment on the civil rights movement (which was going on at the time, only blocks from the Woman’s Party HQ where she lived), was that its actions were sloppy and improvised! I recommend Iron Jawed Angels, the HBO film about the campaign starring Hilary Swank. HBO inserted a bogus love interest, but that’s not surprising. The rest of it corresponded amazingly well to my study of the movement and interview with Paul herself.
George
July 9, 2015
The so-called ‘gay rights’ movement in the United States is now, and has FUNDAMENTALLY always been, PRIMARILY a WHITE ‘movement.’ Peoples’s sexual orientation does NOT mean that they are somehow politically ‘progressive’ or ‘radical.’ Sadly, some of the most RACIST WHITE people that I have ever encountered, strongly identify themselves as a part of the so-called LGBT ‘communities’ (as if their sexual orientation somehow means that they are not racist and/or color privileged). This is a continuation of the same old (though now insidiously tweaked) U.S. paradigm of power. Black ‘Americans,’ be they ‘straight’ or otherwise, do NOT singularly step OUT of the so-called ‘closet.’ We, AS BLACK PEOPLE, were out of the euphemistical ‘closet’ the DAY WE WERE BORN — and having a droning, ‘Kill List,’ nominally ‘black’ person, as head of the U.S. Empire today, actually REINFORCES the above mentioned “paradigm of power”– again at the expense of the vast majority of everyday ordinary Black and other so-called ‘people of color.’ While there MAY indeed be some parallels, it is both inaccurate and deeply erroneous to EQUATE ‘LGBT’ activists to and with the so-called ‘civil rights’ and/or ONGOING Black Liberation struggles! Please do not belittle the horrorible brutal kidnapping and enslavement of over 100 MILLION Africans who were brought in chains and misery to the western hemisphere, and the ensuing and ongoing political, social, and economic struggle today, by equating it to the so-called LGBT ‘movement.’
The Lives Of Everyday Struggling Black People DO Matter — as do the lives and humanity of persons of ALL colors — regardless of their individual orientations. Political alliances should be based upon the principled actions of and by potential allies — NOT their sexual orientation, ETC.
Thank you.
Thanks, Larry Pinkney, for taking the time to comment and for sharing your passion. I agree with some of what you said and also disagree. I join with your bottom line: that alliances need to be principled, and I’ve tried to do that in my political life. I also agree that white LGBT people can express violently the racism that all of us white people are socialized into. Further, we agree that the humanity of all people deserves respect, whatever their color and sexual orientation.
Where you might have missed my point is that the heroic nonviolent period of Black Liberation struggle, especially 1955-65, was so brilliantly conducted through the use of a technology — what I call a “direct action campaign.” The civil rights series of campaigns inspired many others to use that technology in their struggles. Cesar Chavez, for example, led Chicano farmworkers in California in their first successful bid to build a union — through a nonviolent campaign. Chavez and I co-led a couple of workshops and it became clear to me that he was inspired by the campaigns of Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and others.
In fact, the activist/author Dick Cluster wittily entitled his book about a number of the U.S. movements inspired by the civil rights campaigns, “They Should Have Served that Cup of Coffee” — “they” being the racist oppressors who never imagined they would have to face wave after wave of protest by other groups including elders, mental health consumers, feminists, Puerto Ricans, and so on.
Where I disagree with you is putting different oppressions on a scale, rating some worse than others as if there is a competition among oppressed groups for who has been most violated. Competition among oppressed groups is the last thing we need! That’s what the economic elite loves: get us competing with each other so they can play the old game of divide and rule!
Instead of competing through display of our victimhood, how about we assist our own group to fight as well as it can and be pleased when other groups see how brave and smart we are and try to do likewise! It’s actually a way that oppressed groups show each other respect. And, it also helps us to learn to become allies of each other, which we need to be if we’re to topple what you call the “paradigm of power.”
George
July 17, 2015
TO: George Lakey
Honest and informed disagreement is both healthy and necessary in serious political struggle. Thank you for your response.
Contrary to your assertion, I did NOT state or imply anything about (in your words) “putting different oppressions on a scale, rating some worse than others as if there is a competition among oppressed groups for who has been most violated.” Rather, I wrote, “Please do not belittle the horrorible brutal kidnapping and enslavement of over 100 MILLION Africans who were brought in chains and misery to the western hemisphere, and the ensuing and ongoing political, social, and economic struggle TODAY, by equating it to the so-called LGBT ‘movement.’” This reality is a FACT, and has NOTHING whatever to do with what you referred to as “competition among oppressed groups.” Sadly, it is a fact that many White members of the so-called LGBT communities, etc., have yet to reckon with and acknowledge.
There is a HUGE difference between being wonderfully “inspired,” for example, by the Black Liberation struggles — versus attempting to CO-OPT and/or DISTORT the Black Liberation struggles — which is what too many (especially) White people in the LGBT ‘movement’ have attempted, and continue to attempt, to do. This is ultimately self defeating and unacceptable, and has NOTHING AT ALL to do with “COMPETITION among oppressed groups.” It reminds me of how certain White folks (be they ‘straight’ or otherwise) love music that is identified as emanating from Black people–but simultaneously despise Black people! Such contradictions must be addressed and rectified.
I REITERATE what I wrote on July 9, 2015: “Peoples’s sexual orientation does NOT mean that they are somehow politically ‘progressive’ or ‘radical.’ Sadly, some of the most RACIST WHITE people that I have ever encountered, strongly identify themselves as a part of the so-called LGBT ‘communities’ (as if their sexual orientation somehow means that they are not racist and/or color privileged). This is a continuation of the same old (though now insidiously tweaked) U.S. paradigm of power.”
As a Black ‘American’ (with a proud African and Indigenous Native heritage) I have been a grassroots political organizer for almost fifty years now, and I am honored and humbled to count as my good friends and political comrades, people of ALL colors of varying backgrounds, perspectives, orientations, and experiences.
It is history that must inform the present — not the other way a-round.
Larry Pinkney
To me, your writing, this article, and others that are coming out go to the point “what are we trying to do here?” or rather “What is our goal?” That helpful focus that campaigns invite us into, despite our differences. That’s something many of the folks who lived through Occupy (whether involved or not) seem to be yearning for: “How do we keep going when the territory feels so dangerous?” A Goal!
That’s what keeps coming up when I think about why do I take risks in EQAT as a Black person or as a cis-gender man in queer spaces. I’m here dedicated to doing something with the people I’m beside, and I’m going to mess up…over and over again. That doesn’t make my mistakes ok, but I am willing to take risks to make a better world, which means a better world for all of us. And the focus of a clear (campaign) goal helps me give that commitment some substance.
I appreciate your observation. I do however, stand by my written comment of July 9, 2015.
While “focus” is very important in any successful protracted struggle, there is the absolute need to adhere to encompassing PRINCIPLES with a thorough and clear historical and political understanding, if indeed the objectives of ANY struggle are to come to fruition.
I reiterate: “The Lives Of Everyday Struggling Black People DO Matter — as do the lives and humanity of persons of ALL colors — regardless of their individual orientations. Political alliances should be based upon the principled actions of and by potential allies — NOT their sexual orientation, ETC.”
Thank you.
“… college-educated white people get to join the rest of the human race.” Don’t see it happening in my…or my great-grandkids…life.
I’m white…and due to having American Indian friends, I’m still alive.
My attackers were white, upper-middle class…and determined to kill me because we were very poor (myy grandmother raised me). I was also eligible to join MENSA when I was four…which put me at a DISTINCT disadvantange socially. I met my best friend when she was asked to walk me home when I was in 4th grade, & she in 6th (a kid hit me in the eye with a rock. She was my doctor’s adopted daughter.)
I live in a building that’s primarily black…and I see how they’re treated on a daily basis by building management, the cops, and white people in general. It sickens me…those people are family to me.
God bless you…you’re an optimist. Having developed PTSD from the literal torture I received at the hands of my classmates, I’m skeptical.
I have forgiven all of them…but the scars to my psyche remain.
I plead guilty — to being an optimist. It’s an occupational trait of an organizer. We can’t do our work without optimism.
But note how I hedged my bets a bit, to stay grounded. I didn’t write “All college-educated white people WILL join the human race.” I wrote that they “get to” — which means, the movements we build can open the door. It’s still up to them to walk through the door, and of course many will choose not to assert community, to let go of their individualism or arrogance or whatever’s going on for them, and get in here with the rest of us taking risks to build a better world.
But after all, I’m an organizer. Keeping that door open is a big deal to me.
George
July 15, 2015
TO: George Lakey
There is no need to “plead guilty — to being an optimist.”
OPTIMISM, like the ‘FAITH’ of the revolutionary, are essential qualities that those consciously engaged in principled and protracted struggle, need to possess and hone. However, optimism and revolutionary faith must always be fused with the understanding and acknowledgement of the very real and formidable obstacles that organizers actually face — with a view towards finding the ways and means to CREATIVELY overcome. In the words of Amilcar Cabral, “Tell no lies to the people and claim no easy victories.”
Larry Pinkney
July 15, 2015
TO: Lake Wolf White Crow
“Education” means different things to different people. To me, “education” has very little (if anything at all) to do with the systemic BRAINWASHING process carried out by most U.S. colleges and/or universities etc., that some incorrectly refer to as “education.” To paraphrase the words of the late great composer/singer/philosoper Curtis Mayfield; many so-called ‘college educated’ persons are, in reality, “educated fools from educated schools.” They are not educated — they are miseducated.
Wear the “DISTINCT” social “disadvantages” that you have endured (and to which you referred) as the BADGE OF HONOR that they are — because it is persons such as yourself who embody the very essence of what humanity’s struggle is actually all about: i.e. PERSEVERANCE, DIGNITY, PRINCIPLES, and the ultimate attainment of egalitarian JUSTICE!
Onward then…
Larry Pinkney
Thank you, George, once again, for a very impassioned, humane, and thought-provoking article. It speaks powerfully and provocatively to a lot of the issues I – a straight, white, middle class, university-educated, cismale – have struggled with and continue to struggle with in my activist work.
My early formative experiences as an activist were attending a college with a strong emphasis on social justice, and also on identity politics.
As I understand it, the sometimes stated, oftentimes unstated theory behind working to unravel subconscious racism in white people (or subconscious sexism/misogyny in men, subconscious homophobia in straight people, subconscious classism in middle and owning class persons etc.) is that unexamined privilege poisons our ability to work effectively as allies. Even well-intentioned men will shut down, silence, and otherwise subordinate or drive away women comrades simply by following traditional male scripts; similarly for middle class people (a phenomenon I remember you’ve written about earlier in this column); and so on for a plethora of other privilege types, including race and orientation. This sort of thing is going to happen anyway until we reach full liberation, but the theory (again as I understand it), is that people of privilege need to work on these subconscious biases, both to minimize the number of abuses we cause by following our privileged script, and to keep us aware of when we’re following that script so we hopefully don’t sabotage our own and our group’s effectiveness.
This theory has been somewhat bolstered for my by accounts (including, unless I badly misremember, some of your own historical writing about social movements) of unexamined white, male, straight, middle class, and other privileges undermining action groups and movements.
On the other hand, I see and agree with your criticism that too much focus on unlearning deeply ingrained prejudice and demanding nothing less than perfection from follow privilege-holders is a recipe for myopic paralysis, and just one more of the many, MANY strategies privileged people – and especially white, college-educated, middle-class people like myself – have developed to avoid the tough work of participating in struggles to win concrete goals.
I guess I’ve personally seen it as something of a balancing act: devote enough energy into unlearning my own subconscious racism (and other prejudices) that I know how not to abuse or drive away people of color whom I want to work with, but not so much energy that I become obsessed with perfecting myself and my fellow white people and have little or none left over for the activism necessary to win anti-racist goals. Does this sound reasonable to you, or am I still approaching the problem from the wrong direction?
Thanks, Lincoln, for the push-back, which helps us go a level deeper. I agree with so much of what you say. What’s comradely about running our oppressive scripts on people we yearn to work together with? I understand you wanting a balance, therefore, of action and unlearning the scripts. I’d add that there might be ways not simply of balancing, but making those two activities synergistic.
My concern stems from my observation (which is admittedly limited) of what I see around me, which is a whole lot of introversion on the part of white anti-racists and very little action — not a balance.
In response to the second wave of feminism six of us men formed a collective we called Men Against Patriarchy, and ran workshops and conferences helping men to unlearn oppressive scripts. It was extremely valuable, because the men who came were already in relationship with women (family, friendship, lovers, comrades) and therefore had multiple arenas for action already in their lives. There was no way they could become self-absorbed in anti-patriarchal political correctness: they were in the fire every day!
Contrast that with the white ant-racists you know: ARE they in action such that they have immediate application of their steps toward liberation? Do they even work closely enough with people of color for the workplace to be an arena of action, say in confronting the boss? Close enough in friendships? Lovers? Close to black organizers who are demanding them to risk for racial justice because learning to be “cool” or “hip” does not do anything to increase the life chances of black children born today?
Maybe unconsciously the white anti-racists who operate in a bubble understand how untested they are, and therefore police each other in an effort to “test” the degree to which they have unlearned racism. Wrong test. I have been in a workshop where the people of color (almost half the group) challenged the whites to risk having meaningful relationship, to become vulnerable, to climb down from the heights of protective language and become real.
“Looking good” to OTHER white anti-racists is a diversion from the real struggles in the world, diverting back into making it all about us white folks. Working with and allowing friendship to grow across racial lines for a cause that tangibly and concretely lightens the burden of racial oppression, instead of being about us, is for the liberation of us all.
George
Thank you for expounding upon this further, George, and for clarifying your position.
My own perspective on these issues is probably even more limited than yours. I’ve certainly seen (and probably been guilty of) instances what appeared to me to be white introversion and point-scoring. However, I’ve also seen – both in the context of the school I attended, and a struggle for racial justice in my hometown in which I’ve been involved off and on for the past several years – how well-meaning and even fairly educated white people such as myself can slip into problematic patterns of behavior which drove a wedge between us and our comrades of color. In some of those instances, it has seemed to me that a degree of introspective soul-searching and confrontation with our own internalized racial superiority was a necessary part of the process which allowed us to move forward and continue the struggle. In other cases, I think a lack of such a willingness to address the extent to which we are a part of the problem contributed to underlying tensions never getting resolved. And I’ve seen a fair amount of “calling out,” which to my eyes was usually unhelpful, and perhaps even counter-productive.
Basically, I’m still trying to sort out what constitutes best practice in such circumstances, and while I don’t think I’ve hit an answer which I’m completely satisfied with (and won’t until I’ve seen for myself these things playing out “in the field”), I found your original post and your clarifying remarks very helpful in thinking it all out. Once again, thank you.
I find it useful to trace my own steps of realization, perhaps a sort of ‘continuing revelation’, when it comes to liberation work, particularly undoing my racism. Early on, when I saw white people I thought should know better (ie, Quakers enslaving people) I became angry, unforgiving, unaccepting. After all, a lot of Quakers did NOT behave that way. I got frustrated when Friends answered defensively, ‘well, they treated them well…’ Anger happens, I believe, when we feel cheated: we feel cheated because what our expectation of Quakers was is not what the facts show. Integrity has been broken.
Anger has a place. But simply exploding in anger does not improve the situation without assessing, learning and strategizing. At a stage where I knew I was helping to maintain a racist structure, I had to begin a practice of looking at what I was doing and what I could do to be aware.
I know that I cannot by myself undo racism. But I can join with others committed, and identify where I can work and what I can work on. And when I am ‘called out’ on my actions, I can respond: Thanks for pointing out my racism; I’m anxious to learn from this mistake and will pay more attention…..etc .
You know, this is what ‘confessing sin’/missing the mark and ‘repenting’/taking aim again is all about. It is a spiritual path.
Your piece refocuses attention where it needs to be if the movement for racial justice is to be strengthened. As you illustrate so clearly here with the example of how successes have been won in the gay and civil rights movements, what is needed is joining together for direct action for the purpose of attaining concrete gains. In my experience as a “white ally” there is a paralysis that sets in when the focus is too centered on white people’s analysis of their own racism. We fall into a kind of catch-22: embrace the idea that racism is “in our DNA” and we are endlessly culpable, yet somehow root out this bit of our inherent racism, this bit of racist DNA, before we are qualified to take a stand against racism. As you wrote, sainthood is not a precondition for undertaking direct action for justice. Placing the emphasis on concrete action is not to deny the necessity for introspection and analysis, particularly of how power dynamics across race play out. It is to affirm that we must not become stuck with entrapping rhetoric about guilt and even self hatred. It is also to affirm that transformative personal change comes about through our collective work, as we learn to risk ourselves for what we believe in.
Hello, Mr. Lakey.
I agree with your article as it applies to organizers. For everyone else the broad “national discussion” involves a couple of ideas that are becoming platitudes by now, and I really don’t see the need for discussion. If people want to help the Black-Lives-Matter movement, why don’t they just volunteer with the NAACP or other civil rights organization. Or donate. The White Allies are stuck in analysis paralysis already.