The Counterpublic Papers vol. 1 no. 26

    Several years ago I’d hit like maybe three or four cities in succession…and woke up in Houston in the middle of the night in a pitch-black hotel room in a sweat knowing neither where I was nor how long I’d been there. As that didn’t happen this week, I’m counting this a victory.

    Or rather, under other circumstances I’d count this a victory. (I originally wrote “normal” but this is normal isn’t it?)

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    In the wake of the Dallas police attacks—I’m glad I found out about them in private rather than during my Detroit talk—one of my friends suggested that the whole thing might have been a government sponsored set-up. That black folk don’t do this type of thing. And to be fair it isn’t like government agencies haven’t tried to set up black organizers and activists before—I’m a bit surprised every year by the shock I get when I tell students about COINTELPRO but I guess I shouldn’t be. 

    But some black folk have military training. Some black folk have police training. And some black folk are pretty tired of police killing black folk without some type of justice. Christopher Dorner has pretty much been erased from our public memory but I think  his case bears resurrecting.     

    At the same time though, as the various organizations working under the banner of Black Lives Matter have been pretty thoughtful about the role non-violence disobedience plays in their work, we should be leery of any attempt to connect what happened in Dallas to Black Lives Matter protests. Another friend suggested that Dallas would likely place Black Lives Matters in police crosshairs, and that we would probably witness their demise as a result. I was particularly surprised by this comment as it came from a historian. 

    What we’re witnessing with Black Lives Matter organizing and with increased organizing against economic inequality…is the beginning of the beginning. What happened in Dallas will undoubtedly complicate organizing efforts on the ground, but there is no end in sight.

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    Last week I had the opportunity to attend a panel on Detroit and Capitalist Abandonment featuring to Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin (co-authors of the classic Detroit: I Do Mind Dying). The book examines the history of the league of revolutionary black workers. In talking about the league’s activity Surkin made a point that drove home something I’ve been articulating in one way or another for years:

“Their goal wasn’t to speak truth to power, but to speak truth to those without power. Power already knows the truth.”

    Four assumptions undergird the “speaking truth to power” conception. One assumption is that people don’t have the capacity to speak or act for themselves. One speaks truth to power because the powerless have been rendered mute and incapable of doing so. A second assumption is that power respond to moral claims. A third assumption is that power is not something that either can or should be attained. A final assumption is that the person doing the speaking prophetically represents those unable to do so.  

    (As an aside I know that the relationship between “power” and “truth” and the relationship between the powerful and the powerless is far more complicated than I’m writing, but fuck, this is a newsletter.) 

    The first assumption is straightforward I think so I won’t explain it. I will, however, state that it’s wrong. Even folk with criminal records living in states that don’t allow them the ability to vote have the ability to speak and to organize. Further there’s another assumption embedded in this first one that states that the speaker can effectively represent or speak for those unable to speak. Here I become a bit….well, conservative isn’t quite the word but it’ll do for now. Given that I’ve never ever ever cast a vote for Cornel West, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and have only been in conversation with each of them once or twice….I don’t know how they can conceivably seek to represent me. Unless they’re presuming that because they’re black and I’m black that we somehow have this black thing that makes them able to represent my wishes. And hell. I believe in the black thing. But I also believe in the class thing—they all make more money in a few speeches than I make in a calendar year, and this shapes the types of requests they make upon power as well as the types of assumptions they have about the powerless. And perhaps more importantly I believe in the accountability thing—how can they represent me if I don’t have the mechanisms to make them “unrepresent” me? If I don’t even have the ability to see what they’re representing me about?     

    The second assumption needs a bit of explanation. For “truth” to work in the “speaking truth to power” conception it must have a type of force that can compel “power” to act. And we know that this isn’t brute force—Cornel West isn’t using Mjolnir to bash Obama’s head in as he speaks. It seems to me that this force almost has to be a moral force. It’s the force of right. Two problems stand out here. First it works on the assumption that “power” doesn’t already know what’s “right”. Second it works on kind of a hope and change dynamic. But second it also presumes that “right” is more important than “interest” and it isn’t. 

    The third assumption needs to be unpacked a bit as well. It seems to me that “speaking truth to power” relies on a permanent division between “power” and the one speaking truth to it. This division can only come about for one of two reasons. Either the division is somehow structurally built in—the person speaking cannot take power—or the division is something the person speaking somehow believes in for one reason or another. Otherwise, why speak truth to power when one can take it? This assumption too is problematic. While wielding power is fraught, and there are structural hurdles preventing people without power from attaining it, there are no hurdles so big as they can’t be overcome. And the problems with wielding power don’t even begin to compare to the problems of being on the wrong end of it. 

    Anyway, there’s enough here that I’m pretty sure I’ll be expanding on all of this. But I think you get the gist. 

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     I love Baltimore. 

    But Baltimore isn’t Chicago. 

    And it isn’t even Detroit. 

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    The panel about the future of black politics after Obama was a good one. Chaired by Kenanga Yamahtta-Taylor, it featured Donna Murch, Barbara Ransby, and myself. I think the entire panel was captured on video but in my remarks I talked about three or four potential black political futures. In no particular order:

1. The Black Identitarian Future: We see an increased focus on racism and sexism but this focus ignores class politics, further embedding a black liberal “speak truth to power” elite…which (perhaps innocently) exacerbates intra-racial class inequality.

2. The Afro-Pessimist Future: We see an increased withdrawal from the state as communities in cities like Detroit and Gary return to the land as a result of a hollowed out municipal core. Think urban gardening sans any attempt to take the state. 

3. The Obama Future: We see significant growth in a black technocratic class that reproduces neoliberal reform, often wrapped in a cloak of black culture.

4. The Black Lives Matter + Occupy Future: We see increased organizing around class in black communities that causes cities to drift leftward. 

    The socialism conference as a whole was powerful enough that I plan on attending for the foreseeable future. Though I missed most of Saturday (see above) the panels were wonderful. 

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    Yesterday I was in Gary for the first gathering of what looks to be a regular black freedom school summit. The goal was to bring together a multi-generational group of organizers and activists in order to begin to build support for a movement designed to take back political and economic control of the city. Although much smaller—even at its height Gary had only about 160,000 residents and now stands at 80,000—Gary faces many of the same problems as Detroit and Baltimore. But there are particular elements that bear noting. Before Gary elected its first black mayor for example, it—like other cities in Indiana—was protected by a “buffer zone” of sorts. A group of citizens couldn’t just up and create a city outside of Gary because they didn’t like how Gary was governed. After Richard Hatcher was elected its first black mayor…Indiana state legislators removed it. Over the course of four decades a combination of wealthy individuals and wealthy institutions (U.S. Steel) have reduced Gary’s ability to determine its own path. The freedom school looks to chart another path though. We’ll see.

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    Hey. A lot of you actually open these things up. If you’ve folks you think might be interested please share and point them here.

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    Here’s a link to the conversation I had in Detroit with Stephen Henderson—it went so well I may be guest hosting Henderson’s show sometime in the future from here in Baltimore. I’m going to be on the Marc Steiner show tomorrow talking about recent events.  I’d write more, but given everything going on I think a nice long session of Diablo III is called for. With a shot of whisky.

    See you next week. Someone answered the question I posed last week and I’ll probably share the answer then.