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<h1 id="reader-title">What Does Black Lives Matter Want?</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Robin D. G. Kelley -
August 17, 2016<br>
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<p>On August 1 the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a
coalition of over sixty organizations, rolled out “<a
href="http://policy.m4bl.org/">A Vision for Black
Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom &
Justice,”</a> an ambitious document described by the
press as the first signs of what young black activists
“really want.” It lays out six demands aimed at ending
all forms of violence and injustice endured by black
people; redirecting resources from prisons and the
military to education, health, and safety; creating a
just, democratically controlled economy; and securing
black political power within a genuinely inclusive
democracy. Backing the demands are forty separate
proposals and thirty-four policy briefs, replete with
data, context, and legislative recommendations.</p>
<p>But the document quickly came under attack for its
statement on Palestine, which calls Israel an apartheid
state and characterizes the ongoing war in Gaza and the
West Bank as genocide. Dozens of publications and media
outlets devoted extensive coverage to the controversy
around this single aspect of the platform, including <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/11/black-lives-matters-movement-palestine-platform-israel-critics"><em>The
Guardian</em></a>, the <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/08/05/jewish-groups-decry-black-lives-matter-platforms-view-on-israel/"><em>Washington
Post</em></a>, <a
href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/black-lives-matter-platform-author-defends-israel-genocide-claim/"><em>The
Times of Israel</em></a>, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.735412"><em>Haaretz</em></a>,
and the <a
href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/mailbag/churches-reject-black-lives-matter-s-platform-on-israel/article_42a99819-8231-572f-83d1-82d7a753a8f8.html"><em>St.
Louis Post-Dispatch</em></a>. Of course, M4BL is not
the first to argue that Israeli policies meet the UN
definitions of apartheid. (The 1965 International
Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination and the 1975 International Convention on
the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
<a href="http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html">define</a> it
as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of
establishing and maintaining domination by one racial
group of persons over any other racial group of persons
and systematically oppressing them.”) Nor is M4BL the
first group to use the term “genocide” to describe the
plight of Palestinians under occupation and settlement.
The renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, for example,
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562">wrote</a> of
the war on Gaza in 2014 as “incremental genocide.” That
Israel’s actions in Gaza correspond with the UN
definition of genocide to “destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” by
causing “serious bodily or mental harm” to group members
is a legitimate argument to make.</p>
<p>The few mainstream reporters and pundits who considered
the full M4BL document either reduced it to a laundry
list of demands or positioned it as an alternative to
the platform of the Democratic Party—or else focused on
their own benighted astonishment that the movement has
an agenda beyond curbing police violence. But anyone
following Black Lives Matter from its inception in the
aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict should not be
surprised by the document’s broad scope. Black Lives
Matter founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal
Tometi are veteran organizers with a distinguished
record of fighting for economic justice, immigrant
rights, gender equity, and ending mass incarceration. “A
Vision for Black Lives” was not a response to the U.S.
presidential election, nor to unfounded criticisms of
the movement as “rudderless” or merely a hashtag. It was
the product of a year of collective discussion,
research, collaboration, and intense debate, beginning
with the Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland
last July, which initially brought together thirty
different organizations. It was the product of some of
the country’s greatest minds representing organizations
such as the Black Youth Project 100, Million Hoodies,
Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Dream Defenders,
the Organization for Black Struggle, and Southerners on
New Ground (SONG). As Marbre Stahly-Butts, a leader of
the M4BL policy table explained, “We formed working
groups, facilitated multiple convenings, drew on a range
of expertise, and sought guidance from grassroots
organizations, organizers and elders. As of today, well
over sixty organizations and hundreds of people have
contributed to the platform.”</p>
<p>“A Vision for Black Lives” is a plan for ending
structural racism, saving the planet, and transforming
the entire nation—not just black lives.</p>
<p>The result is actually more than a platform. It is a
remarkable blueprint for social transformation that
ought to be read and discussed by everyone. The demands
are not intended as Band-Aids to patch up the existing
system but achievable goals that will produce deep
structural changes and improve the lives of all
Americans and much of the world. Thenjiwe McHarris, an
eminent human rights activist and a principle
coordinator of the M4BL policy table, put it best: “We
hope that what has been created carries forward the
legacy of our elders and our ancestors while imagining a
world and a country profoundly different than what
currently exists. For us and for those that will come
after us.” The document was not drafted with the
expectation that it will become the basis of a mass
movement, or that it will replace the Democratic Party’s
platform. Rather it is a vision statement for long-term,
transformative organizing. Indeed, “A Vision for Black
Lives” is less a political platform than a <em>plan</em>
for ending structural racism, saving the planet, and
transforming the entire nation—not just black lives.</p>
<p>If heeded, the call to “end the war on Black people”
would not only reduce our vulnerability to poverty,
prison, and premature death but also generate what I
would call a <em>peace dividend</em> of billions of
dollars. Demilitarizing the police, abolishing bail,
decriminalizing drugs and sex work, and ending the
criminalization of youth, transfolk, and
gender-nonconforming people would dramatically diminish
jail and prison populations, reduce police budgets, and
make us safer. “A Vision for Black Lives” explicitly
calls for divesting from prisons, policing, a failed war
on drugs, fossil fuels, fiscal and trade policies that
benefit the rich and deepen inequality, and a military
budget in which two-thirds of the Pentagon’s spending
goes to private contractors. The savings are to be
invested in education, universal healthcare, housing,
living wage jobs, “community-based drug and mental
health treatment,” restorative justice, food justice,
and green energy.</p>
<p>But the point is not simply to reinvest the peace
dividend into existing social and economic structures.
It is to <em>change</em> those structures—which is why
“A Vision for Black Lives” emphasizes community control,
self-determination, and “collective ownership” of
certain economic institutions. It calls for community
control over police and schools, participatory
budgeting, the right to organize, financial and
institutional support for cooperatives, and “fair
development” policies based on human needs and community
participation rather than market principles.
Democratizing the institutions that have governed black
communities for decades without accountability will go a
long way toward securing a more permanent peace since it
will finally end a relationship based on subjugation,
subordination, and surveillance. And by insisting that
such institutions be more attentive to the needs of the
most marginalized and vulnerable—working people and the
poor, the homeless, the formerly incarcerated, the
disabled, women, and the LGBTQ community—“A Vision for
Black Lives” enriches our practice of democracy.</p>
<p>For example, “A Vision for Black Lives” advocates not
only closing tax loopholes for the rich but revising a
regressive tax policy in which the poorest 20 percent of
the population pays on average twice as much in taxes as
the richest 1 percent. M4BL supports a massive jobs
program for black workers, but the organization’s
proposal includes a living wage, protection and support
for unions and worker centers, and anti-discrimination
clauses that protect queer and trans employees, the
disabled, and the formerly incarcerated. Unlike the
Democratic Party, M4BL does not subscribe to the
breadwinner model of jobs as the sole source of income.
It instead supports a universal basic income (UBI) that
“would meet basic human needs,” eliminate poverty, and
ensure “economic security for all.” This is not a new
idea; some kind of guaranteed annual income has been
fundamental to other industrializing nations with strong
social safety nets and vibrant economies, and the
National Welfare Rights Organization proposed similar
legislation nearly a half century ago. The American
revolutionary Thomas Paine argued in the eighteenth
century for the right of citizens to draw a basic income
from the levying of property tax, as Elizabeth Anderson
<a
href="http://bostonreview.net/editors-picks-us-books-ideas/elizabeth-anderson-common-property">recently
reminded</a>. Ironically, the idea of a basic income
or “negative income tax” also won support from
neoliberal economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich
Hayek—although for very different reasons. Because
eligibility does not require means testing, a UBI would
effectively reduce the size of government by eliminating
the bureaucratic machine of social workers and
investigators who police the dispensation of
entitlements such as food stamps and welfare. And by
divesting from an unwieldy and unjust prison-industrial
complex, there would be more than enough revenue to
create good-paying jobs and provide a basic income for
all.</p>
<p>Reducing the military is not just about resources; it
is about ending war, at home and abroad. “A Vision for
Black Lives” includes a devastating critique of U.S.
foreign policy, including the escalation of the war on
terror in Africa, machinations in Haiti, the recent coup
in Honduras, ongoing support for Israel’s occupation of
Palestine, and the role of war and free-trade policies
in fueling the global refugee crisis. M4BL’s critique of
U.S. militarism is driven by Love—not the uncritical
love of flag and nation we saw exhibited at both major
party conventions, but a love of global humanity. “The
movement for Black lives,” one policy brief explains,
“must be tied to liberation movements around the world.
The Black community is a global diaspora and our
political demands must reflect this global reality. As
it stands funds and resources needed to realize domestic
demands are currently used for wars and violence
destroying communities abroad.”</p>
<p>Finally, a peace dividend can fund M4BL’s most
controversial demand: reparations. For M4BL, reparations
would take the form of massive investment in black
communities harmed by past and present policies of
exploitation, theft, and disinvestment; free and open
access to lifetime education and student debt
forgiveness; and mandated changes in the school
curriculum that acknowledge the impact of slavery,
colonialism, and Jim Crow in producing wealth and racial
inequality. The latter is essential, since perhaps the
greatest obstacle to reparations is the common narrative
that American wealth is the product of individual hard
work and initiative, while poverty results from
misfortune, culture, bad behavior, or inadequate
education. We have for too long had ample evidence that
this is a lie. From generations of unfree, unpaid labor,
from taxing black communities to subsidize separate but
unequal institutions, from land dispossession and
federal housing policies and corporate practices that
conspire to keep housing values in black and brown
communities significantly lower, resulting in massive
loss of potential wealth—the evidence is overwhelming
and incontrovertible. Structural racism is to blame for
generations of inequality. Restoring some of that wealth
in the form of education, housing, infrastructure, and
jobs with living wages would not only begin to repair
the relationship between black residents and the rest of
the country, but also strengthen the economy as a whole.</p>
<p>To see how “A Vision for Black Lives” is also a vision
for the country as a whole requires imagination. But it
also requires seeing black people as fully human, as
producers of wealth, sources of intellect, and as
victims of crimes—whether the theft of our bodies, our
labor, our children, our income, our security, or our
psychological well-being. If we had the capacity to see
structural racism and its consequences not as a <em>black</em>
problem but as an <em>American </em>problem we have
faced since colonial times, we may finally begin to hear
what the Black Lives Matter movement has been saying all
along: when all black lives are valued and the
structures and practices that do harm to black
communities are eliminated, we will change our country
and possibly the world.</p>
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