For the last nine months, I’ve been organizing with the Black Lives Matter movement in Northwest Indiana. The movement, which started after the Ferguson mobilizations in August 2014, dropped off in the winter months (it was brutally cold in the Great Lakes Region), but has regained momentum in the spring of 2015, following police shootings in Baltimore, Olympia, South Carolina and elsewhere.
Working Backwards
Currently, Northwest Indiana – Black Lives Matter (NWI-BLM) has developed a list of demands. These demands include an end to police sweeps in the surrounding region, a citizen review board for police misconduct, community policing programs and a host of other reforms.
However, NWI-BLM has skipped some important steps in the process of developing these demands. Yes, the group has provided a list of demands. Some of them are radical; some of them are moderate. All of that is fine. But what are these demands based on?
To put differently, what is NWI-BLM’s values and vision? As Michael Albert reminds us, groups and movements should first agree upon a list of values. Those values, developed in a collective manner, should then dictate the group’s vision for the future. That vision should then guide the group’s strategy. That strategy will then determine the group’s political program and tactics.
In other words, NWI-BLM has skipped two initially important steps: developing collective values, and developing a collective vision for the future. Without these two key dynamics, our future actions will be impotent and confused, with scattered and lackluster results.
So far, the group has also failed to discuss process in a meaningful fashion. Yet, discussing process is difficult without a set of agreed upon values. Right now, decisions are made with a simple majority, while other decisions are made with a super majority of votes. Of course, it goes without saying that these processes and decision making mechanisms must be examined and expanded in the future.
So far, we have managed to navigate these shortfalls, but we’ll quickly need to backtrack if we hope to be successful in the future. Immediately, I plan on inviting organizers, intellectuals and activists from around the country to come and speak to the NWI-BLM. There are plenty of groups who are conducting meaningful and successful campaigns. We should learn from their efforts.
In my thinking, the more I can help younger activists avoid the pitfalls that I’ve experienced in the past, the better off and more effective they will be in the future.
Challenges
On a positive note, our group has continually grown in numbers. At first, there were only a dozen or so people who would attend NWI-BLM meetings. Yesterday, more than forty people showed up to our bi-weekly meeting, and the attendees were quite diverse: black, white, female, male, young, old, etc.
On the other hand, it’s clear that our group is lacking a Latino presence. However, this unfortunate reality doesn’t take place in a vacuum or bubble. To be clear, our region is extremely segregated, as we live less than an hour from the most segregated city in the United States: Chicago.
Some towns are 95% white, other towns are 95% black. That’s not an unusual reality in Rust Belt towns, indeed we face a collective regional challenge: desegregation.
Moving along, it’s also worth noting that none of the local political organizations or parties have attempted to co-opt NWI-BLM, at least not yet. In fact, not one union leader or Democrat has even bothered to attend our meetings or events in an official capacity. Sure, there are union members and Democrats who are a part of NWI-BLM, but their leadership and organizations have not reached out to our group.
Right now, that’s a good thing, because NWI-BLM does not need to deal with meddling from outside groups. Indeed, most of the people from NWI-BLM are first-time activists, young folks who’ve never organized before. They are not interested in working within the Democratic Party, or allowing union bosses to co-opt a truly grassroots movement — and that’s a great thing.
Yet, at some point, we must figure out a way to incorporate liberal groups into the organizing mix. How that looks, or how that will function, I’m sure will be determined in the coming months and years. For now, I think it would be wise for us to work with groups who are already committed to the cause, while encouraging groups that aren’t to join our efforts. At the very least, we will seek some form of working-solidarity.
Pragmatically speaking, NWI-BLM has already formed working committees. We have an outreach committee, a media committee, a fundraising committee, a direct action committee and several others. Now, people can utilize their specifically individual talents in whatever committee they wish to work with.
Here, NWI-BLM has a chance to conduct meaningful leadership development. Each event, each action, provides an opportunity to train people. For instance, setting up a fundraiser is a simple task that allows organizations to teach people simple skills. We can teach people who to contact for an event, how to find a venue, which allies to work with, and so forth. Each time we hold an event, it should be viewed as an opportunity to teach people new skills. And each event should fit into our larger strategy for victory.
Nationally, Black Lives Matter is a very scattered and loosely based movement. We’ve reached out to other Black Lives Matter groups, and we hope to work with them in a coordinated fashion in the future. Currently, however, there is no solid platform or unified vision. This is something we must work on if we hope to build an effective movement.
Our Enemies
So far, the local police and politicians have responded to our demands in various ways. For example, they are holding a pro-police rally in downtown Gary, Indiana in the coming days. As a result, NWI-BLM has decided to hold a counter protest in order to symbolically combat these cynical efforts.
Their reactionary response to NWI-BLM has been instructive, as we’re not a very powerful or large group, yet the police and political elites insist on combatting our organizing efforts with propaganda. In short, they’re already worried.
You see, many Rust Belt towns and cities have been run by Democrats for decades. Cities like Gary, Indiana have been run by Democrats since the end of the Second World War. They have entrenched interests and power structures that have stood the test of time. But their control is slipping. Things have only gotten worse in recent years and people are looking for alternatives.
The pro-police rally, which is expecting more than 100 attendees, will feature members of the local Republican Party, military veterans, bikers and of course, police officers. Of course, it would be reasonable to assume that the majority of the attendees will most likely be white males.
In the past, local residents informed me that activists who protest the police are often black-listed and unable to find jobs in the local region. Local business owners, many of whom identify with the local Democratic political machine, don’t take kindly to protestors who illuminate unjust realities in cities like Gary, Indiana. These college-educated entrepreneurs are scared of what the future brings. Namely, business owners don’t want protestors to make any waves that might impact their bottom line. Turns out, illuminating the killings of unarmed black people is bad for business.
Without doubt, many business owners would simply like to see massive gentrification. They seek to drive the black residents out of Gary and replace them with a wave of middle-class and working-class white people who can no longer afford to live in Chicago, but hope to obtain property at a reasonable cost. That’s the plan, whether the local businesses, cops or politicians admit it, or not.
But NWI-BLM also faces challenges from local white communities who overtly support the police. In primarily white towns and cities, residents have held pro-police marches, cookouts, fundraisers and the like. Without doubt, white working-class culture in the US is driven by fear and subservience. On the one hand, they fear the other: black people, Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, gays, women, etc. On the other hand, they are subservient to dominant institutions and forms of ideology. All in all, white communities see themselves as the standard bearers of American culture.
In this context, NWI-BLM faces multiple external threats: the prospect of being blacklisted from employment, police harassment and maybe most importantly, the prospect of violence and repression of non-state forces such as biker gangs, white supremacists or lone-wolf lunatics who constantly threaten Black Lives Matter activists online, over the phone and in person.
Building for the Future
Overall, the NWI-BLM movement is growing. It’s robust, diverse and vibrant, but lacking a significant Latino presence and organizational structure. Now, we have to go back, formulate our values and vision, and reformulate our political program, strategy and tactics.
That being said, meetings and events will continue. Committees have been formed and people are learning new and important skills. In the future, we will hold teach-ins and workshops in order to better educate and train existing and potential activists and organizers.
Furthermore, NWI-BLM faces the very real prospect of repression from state and non-state actors alike. While I don’t think we should focus too much of our energy on this particular dynamic, it’s something to keep in mind as we move forward with planning and actions.
Vincent Emanuele is a writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt. He’s a member of UAW Local 1981 and can be reached at [email protected]