The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 34

I had a meeting with a young Baltimore organizer this week after seeing her at the Cathy Cohen conference at UMd College Park.

Gave me the chance to say a bit more than I was able to say in the few minutes I had on the panel.

Barbara Ransby, Jocelyn Sargent, Kim James, Regina Freer, Tracye Matthews, and Kim Smith. These are, I believe, the six women Cohen spent most of her time working with while a Michigan graduate student. They were all core members of the United Coalition Against Racism (although I’m not particularly sure about Kim James). Tracye Matthews is now the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Culture at the University of Chicago (the center Michael Dawson—Cohen’s dissertation advisor—and Cohen run together). Ransby is Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Kim Smith is an MD who at one time practiced medicine in Chicago. Regina Freer is Professor of Politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Jocelyn Sargent is the Executive Director of the Hyams Foundation, and Kim James is an evaluation officer at the Kellogg Foundation (where Sargent once worked). Matthews and Ransby received their PhDs in history at the University of Michigan. Cohen, Freer, James, and Sargent received their PhDs in political science at the University of Michigan. 

(I have a PhD in political science because when I was an undergrad at Michigan Regina Freer told me I should consider graduate school. I hadn’t even considered a PhD until she put the bug in my ear. I blame her. You should too.)

Ransby came to Michigan from Columbia around 1985 or so. While at Columbia she’d worked on the South Africa divestment campaign, probably one of the first such university campaigns in the country. As soon as Ransby came to Michigan in 1985 she either founded, helped found, or became one of the leaders of the University of Michigan’s Free South African Coordinating Committee (FSACC). 

(In the late seventies Reverend Dr. Leon Sullivan, an African American pastor and civil rights movement activist, came up with what he called the Sullivan Principles while on General Motors board. He devised a set of principles known as the Sullivan Principles used to dictate how General Motors—and other firms—would work in segregated South Africa. The principles—which called for integrated workplaces—conflicted directly with South African work practices, so any company that adopted the principles more or less had to stop working in South Africa. Around the same time Sullivan created the Sullivan principles, shareholders began to put pressure on institutional investors to kill all South African investments. This took a more aggressive turn around 1983 or so, after South Africa passed a new Constitution calling for an even more complicated form of segregation.)     

FSACC put pressure on university officials in a few ways. They built “shanties” (the poor ramshackle housing that many poor black South Africans used for shelter) on the campus diag and held impromptu teach-ins there. They consistently harassed university officials…and if they didn’t actually take over the administration building physically they at the very least thought about how to do so. 

The work she performed for FSACC ended up serving her as an anti-racist activist. She, along with Cohen and the women I mentioned above, formed UCAR. Although the University of Michigan didn’t have many black students at either the undergraduate or graduate level, those black students experienced consistent harassment. After a number of deeply problematic incidents that had black students under siege, UCAR and the third Black Action Movement (BAM III) took the university over during the 86-87 school year in an attempt to fundamentally restructure it.

(I’m writing about UCAR because of Cohen’s conference. But I cannot really talk about this period without talking about BAM III, as the two organizations complemented one another. Along those lines as much as I owe my career to Ransby, Cohen, and Freer, I also owe it to Errol Henderson, JD Simpson, Baron Wallace, and Chuck Wynder.)

After negotiating with student activists (and Rev. Jesse Jackson) Michigan created a plan to diversify the campus, they created an Office of Minority Affairs, and gave the Black Student Union an annual budget of $35,000. Ransby, Cohen, and the others then went on to create the Baker Mandela Center, an anti-racist institute. I don’t know where they received the money from, but it lasted several years before shutting down. Angela Davis was one of the board members. 

At every stage, Ransby and Cohen organized with an eye towards institution building, embraced a collective semi-horizontal organizational structure, and worked together cell-like for decades. 

I met with the student so she could get a sense from me of how I did it. Of how I was able to do whatever it is I do and remain sane.

Instead I used the occasion to talk about Barbara and Cathy. The wonderful thing about that conference is that we were able to celebrate someone who deserves celebrating. But the challenging thing with the conference, with that particular model, is that it ignores perhaps the most important thing about Cohen. Her project was always a collective project. It wasn’t about her, but about a broader collective.

….

Obama took a check for $400,000 as part of his attempt to get back into the game. He’s getting pushback from left sources, but not from any in black circles just yet. Which ends up creating a dynamic where black folks rush to support him given the racism he’s experienced. 

Listen. The presidency takes a toll on anyone who’s ever held the office. You don’t believe me, look at pictures of Bill Clinton before and after. The toll it took on Obama has to be particularly intense as he had to bring the world back from the brink of economic crisis—I believe the accounts suggesting we were perhaps a weekend away from the end of the world as we know it—and had to do so being black. (I remember when Tyrone Willingham became Notre Dame’s first black head football coach, having had to take over the program when it was in shambles. I thought Obama was Willingham times 10000.) 

But he took this job. 

Another line of argument would focus on the fact that other presidents did the same. And they have, going back before Gerald Ford even. Hell, Ronald Reagan took a check for $2 million from Japan when Japan was the closest thing to an economic enemy we had. In fact every president except for one ended up going that route, using the speakers circuit to line their pockets. At best they did so in order to raise money for their philanthropic endeavors—Clinton stands out here. But even in this instance there’s really only one sector with the consistent ability to pay six and seven figure honoraria. Wall Street. And no matter what message Obama delivers in those spaces, Wall Street gets access. 

There’s always been an aspirational aspect to black politics. We’ve always aspired to citizenship. Always aspired to get the same rights many (if not most) whites take for granted. Like the right to not quake in fear if my son texts me that he’s been stopped by the police. But there’s an aspect of that, for lack of a better word, aspirationism, that I find deeply problematic. My project has never been about getting that $400K check. 

Ever.

A long long road ahead. Put your night goggles on.