Reflecting on “BLM as an Organizing Strategy” with Mercedes Fulbright and DD Jackson
Black Lives Matter as an Organizing Strategy with Mercedes Fulbright and DeeDee started off with a question our class recently grappled with - what does an organizer do? As someone who has never been formally involved with organizing, I cannot answer this question to its fullest extent because I do not have firsthand experience with being an organizer. However, I can listen and learn. DeeDee’s answer was particularly striking to me because it framed organizing in a way that I hadn’t heard before... organizers solve problems that can’t be solved alone, she said. This is a piece of knowledge that I found to be recurring throughout the entire conversation. It was a helpful framework for understanding just how interdependent the work of organizing is upon the people who do it.
Moving to the discussion of defunding the police, the concept of solving problems together came up again. Mercedes discussed her work prior to the BLM conversation following the murder of George Floyd. She spoke about the shift in consciousness that occurred this summer that translated into popular demand for defunding the police - here again, was this theme of needing others to solve problems that can’t be solved alone. In discussing the specific language of “defunding” the police, Mercedes made an interesting point that although there are many different ways to discuss this topic, chant-ability is high on the list for why defunding the police is a good term to use. I thought this was particularly interesting because it highlights the work of organizers beyond just making changes in policy or having meetings with various government leaders. Organizing takes place on the ground and reaching a broad audience through many different avenues, such as chanting, is important.
For organizations using BLM as a strategy, DeeDee first pointed to unity in the community as a starting place. For me, this tied directly back to the discussion of defunding the police becoming popular demand as a tangible action for the community to focus on following George Floyd’s murder. Without this unity, the message wouldn’t have been as widespread. For some people, these conversations have been going on for years and these concepts are not new. For others, the unity that caused the widespread social media discussion of BLM and defunding police was necessary to reach certain members of the community that otherwise may not have known about these discussions. As Mercedes stated eloquently, the digital age allows us to truth tell in many different ways. I am still learning about social justice and organizing and I honestly think that the point about the digital age is very applicable to my personal experience. Without such discussions on social media, I’m not sure that I would even know about the complexities of activism or have felt such a strong urge to take this class. Writing these statements screams white privilege, and I am aware of that… I am not proud that it has taken me up to my senior year of college to realize the importance of engaging in these conversations. But, I think it speaks a lot about the power of the digital age. In a small white suburb like the one where I’m from, these conversations weren’t at the forefront of our conversations, and even at a liberal arts college, these conversations weren’t always at the forefront of my educational experience (one of the many consequences of a PWI like WFU).
As I move forward in my experience with organizing and social justice activism, I am starting to understand more about the differences between BLM and the movement for Black lives that were discussed during this conversation. The movement for Black lives was described as a network and an ecosystem, much like the description of organizing as people solving problems together that can’t be solved alone. In contrast, BLM is more of an overarching idea that has been framed as more of a hashtag. Again, I think this highlights the discussion of social media and the digital age. The reachability of the BLM hashtag over the summer reached a lot of people that otherwise would probably not have been engaged in these conversations - it acted as a call to action. But, this is still much different than the actual action that must be taken in the movement for Black lives. As DeeDee said, there are not many models for this work and there is no over it but through it. I think this mentality of first recognizing what needs to be changed and then actually doing the groundwork of working to change those things is an important consideration for me to keep with me as I grow.
The end of the conversation was particularly striking to me…. In imaging what the future will look like, I think an interesting phrase was coined - “that peach cobbler feeling.” For me, this was a really powerful moment to understand just how encompassing the work of organizers is. In discussing all of the sensations of social activism, I better understand the impact of this work beyond policy change, and hearing the peach cobbler feeling description has impacted me by causing me to really take a step back and think about what I want the future to look like beyond action items. I have never thought about organizing as a feeling, I have only thought about it in terms of physical actions being taken and tangible change being made. But, I have quickly realized from this discussion that the work of organizers goes far beyond the teamwork required to make change. I really like using the framework of imagining the future in terms of sensory experience as opposed to checklist items that feel more like a resume bullet point than an experience itself.