[Peace-discuss] Reflections on a recent Greenwald interview about BLM

[J.B. Nicholson]

Brussel, Morton K wrote:
> The BLM “movement", which arouses such fervent antagonism by David, has had worthy
> manifestations throughout the country, and elsewhere. I have not seen the evidence
> that they were financed/supported by Soros and/or specific groups. There were all
> kinds of participants in the protests, aroused by the killing of George Floyd.
> David seems to relegate the protests to a false issue; i.e., by ignoring willfully
> the crucial class and revolutionary issues. It’s as if the mass protests were bad,
> i.e., counterproductive. But they did reveal the pernicious actions of the present
> system and the Trump government, viz Portland.

I was watching Glenn Greenwald's latest interview 
(https://youtube.com/watch?v=I_2CVBN4mlo) which is with Andray Domise (described as 
"definitely a militant supporter of [Black Lives Matter]" at 2m40s). I think this 
interview eventually gets into something relevant to this discussion: BLM 
co-optation. I think this ends up backing up David Green's criticism of BLM 
(particularly when he wrote that "[BLM's] analysis is preposterous, with no material 
component whatsoever.").

I think that Greenwald is too generous to Domise in trying to find a nice way to say 
that BLM needed to have announced what they stood for a while ago.

I'm hesitant to recommend this video for running during either AWARE on the Air or 
News from Neptune because it's too long for what little value the interview has. The 
video is worth seeing for about 15 minutes worth of BLM critique starting around 23 
minutes in, and for the talk after about 1 hour in.

Here's some more detail on my take on BLM based on what I saw in this interview. I'll 
try to hit the highlights because, frankly, this interview felt to me like quite a 
slog to go through.



I still don't know what BLM stands for even after watching this talk. BLM's choices 
strike me as indistinguishable from ethics-washing neoliberalism (I'm not sure what 
the right term is here, but I think of "ethics-washing" for neoliberal interests to 
be akin to what the term "greenwashing" means for businesses that operate in 
anti-environmental ways). I'm all for cops not killing people, but there has to be a 
plan of action to make that come about. It can't just be a vision with implementation 
detail left unsaid which is what gives me the impression the practical, 
challenging-police-policy part is left out. And what's left (painting slogans on 
signs, floors, streets, and the phrase "defund the police") seem to me to be 
distractions.

It's not clear to me how Domise holds the views he does and is still a "militant 
supporter of BLM". I doubt even he could give the 10-point list of demands he said 
BLM might need. Domise said, "I don't even know where a [Black Lives Matter] 
manifesto would begin...they [Black Lives Matter] have on their website their policy 
goals, their ideology -- everything is already there" which doesn't address how 
little any goals are seen in the protests on the street, what the adversely affected 
need now, and that goals without clear strategy reads as lofty ideas with no 
implementation details.

Domise claims that BLM doesn't want to put effort into making "specific and cogent 
demands" because the media won't accurately echo BLM's demands. He claims this 
repeats an experience he had with his speaking to people at Occupy Wall St.:

> Domise: When I spoke to people at Occupy, they made a pretty convincing case to me
> that, well, yes: it would be a lot easier for people to digest at home if we had a
> crisp and tight set of demands. But then the question is, are those demands going
> to be good enough? Are they [the media] actually going to repeat what we say on
> the evening news? Even the things that we have been saying that we say right in
> front of news cameras when we're being interviewed. They're getting, let's say,
> like two-second snippets out of everything that we've just said and they're
> describing us as being not only leaderless but pointless as well. And I kind of
> got that; there is going to be that obscurantist mode that media takes that even
> when you've done the work of making these very specific and very cogent demands
> they're still going to make it seem like disorganized movement of the disaffected
> and apathetic anyway. So I kind of get that.

I found this to be a very revealing quote because to me it says that BLM's organizers 
haven't yet learned that in life you can only control what you do, not what other 
people do. You're always better off explaining what you stand for as clearly as you 
can (even revising it later as you learn more or are better at explaining what's in 
your head). By the same token, this is why I find that the best evidence against 
BLM's choices are found on their own website: there they have full control over their 
own message. No other media gets in the way of passing their message on to us. Yet 
there I find nothing specific, actionable, and cogent. Real-world needs such as 
Medicare for All, rent forgiveness/control/strikes, a universal basic income, 
guaranteed housing, and a national jobs program are all class concerns that speak to 
what we urgently need (now more than ever) yet go unaddressed on BLM's website. 
Community control over police is a good idea but going about getting that is 
difficult, even after the recent police murders.

Later Domise said:
> Domise: I don't think you're ever going to be able to stop the process of 
> recuperation and co-optation regardless. You know, four years ago I don't know 
> that we would have seen corporations tweeting out and saying on instagram, or 
> putting in hashtags, "Black Lives Matter". But does that matter anyway? That
> itself is the process of capitalist recuperation: that is, willing to say the
> thing that you want to hear because it's going to adapt, it's going to organize
> itself in such a fashion that it's going to tamp out resistance to itself. So when
> corporations are tweeting out "Black Lives Matter" but then continuing practices
> as status quo they're still lobbying the federal government for money, they're
> still lobbying to keep the minimum wage low, they're still stamping out unions
> does that actually make any difference? And I don't know that words are going to
> be enough. I think it's going to be specific actions to limit the power of
> corporations, to get money out of politics, to give more power to people [...]

I found this revealing too. Here are some points that came to mind during this 
section of the interview:

- One problem with BLM is framing this in terms of "stop[ping] the process [of 
co-optation]" instead of asking why BLM's name is so easily co-opted by the 
establishment. Domise asked "does that [co-optation] matter anyway?": Yes, if those 
are BLM goals being minimized or rendered toothless in the co-optation. Domise said 
"I don't know that words are going to be enough". Words are enough to indicate what 
side BLM is on.

If BLM had published a series of clear, specific, and actionable statements on its 
own website detailing what needs to be done and how to reach those goals, perhaps it 
would be much more difficult to co-opt what BLM was saying. For example, I 
occasionally hear BLM activists advocate for raising the minimum wage but the action 
on that comes from other activists that don't have any visible connection to BLM. I 
see nothing on BLM's website actionably describing steps to raise the minimum wage, 
create more (presumably worker-run) unions, or organizing people to lobby their 
Congresspeople to not give big businesses more money (ala CARES Act largesse).

Domise's framing helps BLM to try to make the task of being specific and actionable 
seem insurmountable or unnecessary, even unwise. And the results from when BLM began 
and now appear to be that there will be no serious policy changes in police behavior. 
Without serious police policy change and proof of compliance with the new policy, it 
seems fair to ask what BLM's goals are and how are those goals being met?

- "Getting money out of politics" is a phrase I've heard before in progressive 
political interviews. I've yet to hear an interviewer require the speaker to define 
what that means or point out a direct conflict with freedom of speech. It seems more 
practical to me to come up with ways to deal with that than repeat this long-repeated 
but apparently inactionable catchphrase. Carl Estabrook came up with a way to 
accomplish this in the context of political candidates not being heard from on TV and 
radio: as a condition of keeping a public broadcast license, add a requirement that 
any public-airwave broadcaster must run during prime-time a 1-hour, uninterrupted, 
and uncensored piece from each ballot-qualified candidate who submits such a piece to 
be run. This allows political candidates running for office to get one hour of 
airtime that costs a campaign real money and helps the public who sees/hears it make 
a more informed choice when they vote.




Regarding this exchange when Greenwald pressed Domise to say what BLM stands for:

> Greenwald: [...] What, to you, are those really meaty critical issues, like? What
> are the goals of this movement whether unrealistic but nonetheless worthy to
> strive for and advocate, or actually realistic?
> 
> Domise: I mean...If I was to say, for example, that the goal is the abolition of
> police in the carceral state, a lot of people will say 'well, what does that even
> mean?'. Well, it means the abolition of police in the carceral state. It means no
> more prisons. It means no more police officers. It means that we are able to
> manage our own affairs. 'Well, how do you get rid of police in the carceral
> state?' You cannot have a system that doesn't produce criminals unless you get rid
> of the system altogether which means ending capitalism. That means realigning our
> social arrangements such that we are operating under a socialist system. Is having
> a social system going to solve the cultural state? No absolutely not. There are
> societal problems that we're going to have to address at the micro level. So then
> the question becomes, well, how do solve all these problems at once and you have
> to take steps towards it. So the tough part and getting to people to radically
> reimagine our system of social relations is people are a lot more comfortable, or
> I shouldn't say comfortable, but they're a lot more willing to move away from pain
> than they are toward pleasure and the pain of unfamiliarity, that is, what does a
> system look like without police, if you read "The End of Policing" for example,
> there are many examples and many suggestions for which a system that doesn't have
> policing actually looks. You know, who do we bring in in the place of these armed
> agents of the state, the people that have the monopoly on the use of violence? But
> getting people to actually read a book or getting people to understand a different
> form of social relations -- people talk about, like you know, capitalism and
> socialism et cetera as if it's economics, it's not, it's how we related to one
> another. And I don't quite know how you do that. [...]

and later when Domise offered some "steps that we can to get there if we're talking 
about specific policy solutions":

> Domise: Well, I don't even think that taxing billionaires more is even going to be
> the answer. I think having a strict set of guidelines, that is: a CEO and the
> executive board [of a] company cannot earn more than this multiplier of their
> workers. That bringing back labor power to the workplace where workers can
> collectively organize without being undermined by their bosses. [Example of an
> unnamed worker-led union being fired immediately after unionizing, and he says the
> US needs "a real left party" if we're going to pursue policy changes through
> electoral politics which he has abandoned]


- Domise's policy points are all given in the hypothetical. This left me unclear as 
to whether this is what BLM stands for or if this is what Domise wants independently 
of BLM.

- It took almost an hour to get to this point. That is way too long to get to 
something approaching a description of what BLM might stand for.

- Assuming, for a moment, that this is what BLM stands for, BLM is not spelling this 
out to their audience in their protests or on their website. But this is an example 
of a message which establishment figures would not have echoed (co-opted) if 
establishment figures knew that that's what BLM stands for.

- I see some goals (such as having no police) but no means to reach those goals. This 
particular example is troublesome (see what David Green mentioned -- Chaz/Chop was an 
unmitigated disaster). Chop was arrived at undemocratically as well. While having no 
police might be realistic, it clearly needs to be thought through more than it was 
with Chop. And it's the responsibility of someone who advocates for an end to police 
to be clear about how police tasks will be handled.

- "[A] system that doesn't produce criminals" would seem to mean decriminalizing the 
actions that we call criminal, but which actions are those? To me this too needs some 
more consideration. I suggest understanding why criminal acts occur and addressing 
those issues more specifically: if, for example, people are stealing food to feed 
their families, perhaps we should provide everyone with good food gratis. Another 
example of something to consider: Portugal decriminalized all drugs and is using 
police to help addicts get rehabilitation. This appears to have significantly reduced 
drug abuse. That seems more specific and actionable than what I heard Domise say, 
certainly something worth looking into for those who understand and advocate for the 
goals Domise described. I'm sure there are other 'threats of a good example' we ought 
to consider.

- a more minor point: I think that Domise should get used to repeating what he wants 
people to know instead of glibly repeating the exact same words again (as he did in 
his own example of "abolition of police in the carceral state" and what that means), 
or laughing at the idea that we need policy decisions (which Domise did just before 
the last quote above), or pointing to a book (such as "The End of Police") followed 
by criticizing his audience for not reading that book. It's reasonable to expect 
people to ask you to explain what you mean when you're addressing something 
unfamiliar. I think there's a great agreement that we don't want to see the police be 
a killing squad. How to get there in a sustainable way and understanding the 
tradeoffs in denying the police that power will need some thinking through and some 
explaining.

-J