Category: View from the Battlefield

When people come together into a collective or into a social movement, our personal baggage collides with the political baggage. This is when our organizations become consumed with containing the drama, extinguishing the fires and dodging the political arrows.

Our movement is anemic on study; it’s easier to argue about opinions than to assert a historical analysis based upon facts. Memes can be clever in delivering a short, powerful message but they are no substitute for a disciplined dive into theory, ideology and philosophy.

Our movement can’t seem to engage in healthy, principled debates nor do people feel open to expressing legitimate disagreements. We have developed some crafty tactics to shift or shut down debate.

Organizations whose theory of change is rooted in organizing the working class as the key link to transformative change seem to be in short supply. If there’s no base building going down among the working class, I’m unsure of how our movement is going to grow, challenge structure and take power.

Work is how we carry out the plans emanating from our strategy and tactics. The way in which we carry out that work is connecting to an ideological worldview; it is a vivid reflection of our belief that our struggle is both worthy and winnable.

Over the past decade or so, I have watched us running to protests from one city to the next. We may get a cop fired here or there or temporarily stop a pipeline. Where’s our vision for state repression? We don’t have a national strategy on one of the most persistent and rampant issues in the U.S.

It is important to truly know what vision is to our movement because it presupposes that not only do we see a future, we have made a commitment to fight for that future. It's also important because it gives breath to strategy and tactics.

In building our own united front against Trump, we don’t need to repeat the ugly, racist mistakes of the past. We need a re-alignment of social forces who are uncompromising on principles - like the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party.

Now is the time for parents, teachers, civic leaders and concerned citizens to put pressure on local school boards and principals as to how state law on criminal assaults should be interpreted. It can’t stop there.

Videos have not proven to make such cases a slam-dunk because of the same kind of police interpretation presented in the Rodney King case. Add to that the almost indisputable claim of an officer feeling “threatened” and a visual accounting of the incident as evidence of criminal action literally evaporates like a Snapchat photo.