The Counterpublic Papers vol. 3 no. 6

So last week the New York Times reported that a group of black executives plan to form a PAC to address a range of social issues including but not limited to education, employment, and voting rights. Their plan is to raise money for candidates that support their agenda. In as much as changes in campaign financing has made fundraising even more important, I’d rather black executives (who tend to be more liberal than their white counterparts) get into the mix. And though there is a wealth gap that’s pretty daunting when you think about it, there are groups of black people with capital. With real capital in some cases.

But it seems to me that if they were really about it, what they’d be doing isn’t creating PACs for the purpose of fundraising for candidates. Even if they aren’t just looking to fund black candidates simply raising money for candidates won’t do a damn thing about this:

     For the new jacks, the above picture is an image of “The Red Nation”—which is contiguous and could be its own nation—and "The Blue Archipelagos", which looks kind of like the Caribbean. At best, fundraising for candidates will change the face of the Senate around the edges, but won’t do anything to contest these maps. And for those of us concerned with electoral politics—and even though I don’t think it’s the end all be all I do think it’s important—dealing with the reality of these maps is the thing we should be most concerned with.

We don’t change these maps through candidates. We change these maps through movements and institutions.

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I think I’ve mentioned here that a friend of mine has been talking about foreign interference in American affairs through social media for years. As the wagons circle around Trump he predicted that we’d see a range of liberal institutions come under assault as all types of lurid details about their life are announced. Sure enough. NPR. Hollywood. The academy. There will be more to come. And it’ll mostly be on the liberal-left end of the political spectrum. I don’t question the legitimacy of these news events—I believe they’re legitimate. I’m just concerned that we’ve only got a little bit of room from which to propose how to restructure these spaces in a way that makes this type of domination untenable. And a lot of room in which to castigate these institutions (and others like them) as fundamentally unworkable.

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My son send me a tweet a couple of hours ago about Hilary. And although there’s only one Hilary, kind of like there’s only one Kareem, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Until I read an excerpt from Donna Brazile’s book…arguing that Clinton basically took control of DNC finances long before she was the official candidate. There’d been some reporting about this before, but it’s a stunning read. Here’s the most important quote: “Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly.”

The person who supposedly pioneered the strategy of getting regular folk to contribute small amounts to the party, the person who wanted to transform the way we thought about government the way that Reagan did in the eighties—and while people strongly criticize Obama for turning to Reagan as a figure I tend to read him more charitably on this issue—the person who wanted to bring together red and blue….put the only political party with the capacity to do that in debt. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. It’s been bankrupt.

But I didn’t know they were…well…bankrupt.

(oh. file this under “lester spence loves black people”—don’t tell anyone you heard it from me, but I heard that Donna Brazile sprained her ankle in a Soul Train line at the Obama White House. I’ve been to some parties….but if there was ONE party I wish I could’ve been at, I wish I could’ve been at that one.)

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Finally. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book out and the reviews are coming in. They’re basically making the same argument they made about Between the World and Me—they’re arguing that the book isn’t hopeful enough. And that Coates is the wrong spokesperson for the race. And finally that Coates has no faith. Melvin Rogers’ piece in the Boston Review represents a good example.

This approach to me, and I’ve my own review coming up soon, is…well…not to go back to the Democratic Party, but bankrupt.

What does “hope” and “faith” have to do with the fact that the percentage of state tax revenue eaten up by tax incentives has increased 300% since 1990? What does “hope” and “faith” have to do with increasing reliance on TIFs in urban development initiatives? It isn’t just that invoking “faith in the transformative possibility of self and society risks naïveté”. It’s that turning to hope or faith puts a significant burden not just on affect but on individual action separate and distinct from institutional action.

As the institutions around us crumble under the weight of corruption, that’s the common sense move. In fact, some would argue, a radical one. I asked last week, whether it’d be a better look to talk instead about “enthusiasm”. That question is still worth asking, but in general I’d rather us think through why we need hope in the first place.

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Open Source reached out to me about the Amazon HQ scramble. They put together a wonderful 45 minute piece on the subject that’s worth listening to.

On that note I’m out. For those of you new to this, my name is Lester Spence. This is The Counterpublic Papers. Lightly edited. More or less weekly. And I try my damnedest to keep it under 1000 words. (As can be seen here I usually fail.) If you know folk who’d be interested, send them here.

See you next week. I’d write “hopefully”….but fuck hope. (And listen to Moses Sumney.)