Black Democrats convened in Detroit this weekend to talk about Black voter turnout and Black candidates. It’s great that so many Black people are running, but my favorite line was the part about advancing the Democratic vision for America.
What vision?
Voters aren’t irrational. They often don’t vote because they say it doesn’t do any good. Politicians and activists decry this stance, saying that if you don’t vote you can’t complain. They should listen, though. Voters realize that there is no real, credible alternative to the GOP, which has a very clear vision for itself. Why invest the time and energy into voting when you’ve got nothing to vote for?
The article never articulates any sort of vision, but it does end breathlessly excited about the prospect of some very powerful Black legislators gaining a lot of power for the Black Caucus if the Democrats retake the House.
Bully for them, but what are they going to do with that power? Do they know?
I was tooling around the WordPress blogs today and I found a rhapsodic post for people to join this website, ColorOfChange.org. I’d give you a link to the post, but, bizarrely, this afternoon the person took their whole blog down, and it looked like it had been going for a while.
Anyway, ColorOfChange.org purports to stand up for black folks who haven’t had anyone to stand up for them before. It’s a website that arose in response to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans and all over the Gulf Coast. On the web-site, you’ll find petition campaigns on all sorts of issues around racism and and the voting franchise for black people.
It’s all well and good, but the fundamental sentiment rubs me the wrong way.
First of all, what do you mean by “finally someone will stand up for poor black folks?” People have been standing up for black folks and black folks have been standing up for themselves for years. It hasn’t been enough to prevent them from continuing to get the shaft, but it has made a big difference.
The point here is that when there have been decades of good work by black and largely black organizations to stand up on issues that matter (groups like The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, ACORN, the Black Panthers and countless black labor organizations and local groups), where do a couple of schmoes get off starting a website and acting like it’s all going to change because they get some new petitions going on the Internet?
It smacks of opportunism and ego. Look, as far as I’m concerned, the world doesn’t need any more organizations. We’ve got too many organizations – especially not more with a nationwide agenda – with too many redundant missions already. Funders and leaders need to start pitching in with existing organizations and, when they see a niche that isn’t getting filled, fill it but do it under and existing rubric. Complement an existing network of power that supports the underclass, don’t undercut it!
Organizations compete with each other for money and people, the two pillars of whatever power they are able to bring to bear.
When I hear about people starting new organizations, it always smacks of ego to me. Why couldn’t these two guys who started this thing have used their talents and abilities to build a similar effort within the NAACP, for example, a group well equipped to get a lot of name recognition behind the cause.
In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the latter guy, Van Jones, really ought to know better. I think he used to organize for the IAF in New Orleans and in Ft. Worth. He knows how organizing really works and he knows how much organizations compete with each other. He also knows full well that there was some very good organizing going on in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and it wasn’t for lack of organization that black folks got hit so badly by the storm.
The former guy, though, explains it all. James Rucker used to work for MoveOn.org. Need we say more? I’m always surprised these days by the number of people who don’t remember how MoveOn got started. MoveOn started as web-petition to end the Clinton impeachment proceedings following the Lewinsky fiasco. I’m not sure MoveOn proved anything else, but it did prove the power of the Internet to exploit opportunism around a big scandal.
Look, if you want to help black folks post-Katrina, then give your money to and sign up with any of the many organizations along the Gulf Coast that had sense enough to start organizing there before the storm.
