Dr. Lester K. Spence

Day 60, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

I’m not sure how to take the news that the Baltimore Police Department will no longer inform the public about officers who kill/wound citizens in the process of carrying out their duties.

Yes, you heard that right. The Baltimore Sun, like many other big city papers is a shell of its former self–it didn’t even report the police department’s move. But combine the slow death of journalism as we know it, with government move away from transparency?

We can celebrate the rise of bloggers all we want. But even 10,000 bics (sorry, 20th century reference, I mean “lit up cell phones”) can’t provide enough light to read in the dark.

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I’m snatching the following quote from Adolph Reed’s important work Stirrings in the Jug:

 Encouraging popular participation is the only effective possibility for reinvigorating a progressive movement in black political life because people respond by organizing themselves when offered concrete visions that connect with their lives as they experience them, not to ideological abstractions or generic agendas that perfume narrow class programs. (pp. 50, 51)

Adolph’s academic work can be remarkably obtuse, and I’ve been meaning to ask him why the hell he makes his work so difficult to understand, but this volume is ESSENTIAL for anyone seeking to understand the current political context as well as the historical trajectory of black american political development. With that said, check out this story. One of the things that Reed calls for in remaking black politics is a renewed focus on representative-constituency relationships. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and a host of other folk don’t fit in here because while they may CLAIM constituents, these constituents can’t vote them out of office nor objectively examine their political behavior (because most of it occurs behind closed doors).Clyburn DOES fit this role…but why is he seeking to withhold his support in this instance? It isn’t because black people want him to make a different call. It isn’t because he thinks that one candidate may be particularly bad for black people, policy wise. It is because one of the candidates offended his historical sensibility by insulting the civil rights legacy.You’ve got to be kidding me.This is the type of thing we’ve got to get away from with the quickness. And publicly condemn those who would make such weighty decisions on such petty concerns.  

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I’ve written here about brokerage politics before. The brokerage politics model is fairly simple. You’ve got a large body of “clients” that for whatever reason cannot attain some good using their own devices. So in steps a “broker” who negotiates on behalf of the “client.” The end result is that the client gets something that he/she couldn’t get without the broker. The problem with this model politically speaking is that the clients are usually disempowered (the broker has no interest in giving the clients the resources needed to cut deals on their own), the broker cuts deals on the client’s behalf in private (which makes it impossible to determine whether a better deal could have been garnered by the clients themselves), and there are no means of holding the broker accountable (the broker is not usually a political official hence can’t be voted out of office, and the broker usually operates on a scale that makes shame ineffective).

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are both brokers. Their livelihood has been garnered by a combination of powerful speaking skills, and brokering deals on behalf of black constituencies with private and public parties.

There was a time not long ago when events like Jena and Paris would have come to light THROUGH them (or someone like them). After ensuring that they had their facts straight, Jackson and Sharpton would then spread the word about the events nationally….and perhaps some type of redress would come from it.

The internet combined with black talk radio and other black information sources (remember, Shaquanda Cotton was picked up first by an African American Chicago Tribune columnist) in effect removes Sharpton and Jackson from the equation in their former capacity. Even if, because of the nature of rural political power, the people in Jena did not have the power to make change on their own…black people in Chicago, Detroit, and other urban areas DO have this power. They have the power of the podium, the power of numbers. Making these events transparent is usually enough to get some type of redress, because we have progressed enough that nationally shaming a municipality does work. Jackson and Sharpton are both sharp enough that they’ll hold on in some capacity…likely as media pundits.

However the problem here is that what we’re facing is much larger than rural racism writ large. There’s a reason why people went to Jena and stopped there, rather than say, continuing 4 hours and moving to New Orleans and camping out there until the city and the people in it are made whole. Transparency in the case of this form of subjugation is not enough. This requires a level of organizing and planning that cannot occur through this type of protest. And just as the media has a very short attention span….so do we. I have no idea for example whether Paris, Texas is dealing with its black children any better than it did before the Cotton case made headlines.

I mention the media.

The other thing to take from Jena and Paris is that we actually have developed what some call a “counter-public sphere.” A place where we can engage in debates and come to consensus on issues separate from those created by the mainstream media. However the types of events and discussions that are held in this virtual space is still constrained by a range of factors. We are more likely to talk about domestic subjugation than say the white progressive blogosphere (it’s important that this be acknowledged…it isn’t that the “progressive blogosphere” missed out on Jena while the “black blogosphere” picked it up. Rather the “black progressive blogosphere” picked it up and the “white progressive blogosphere” purposely missed it). But we are not any more likely to talk about say, the potential role of city-level socialism in ameliorating poverty.

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I became aware of Bronze Trinity through Myblog. She’s put into play something that I said would be an excellent idea–a  single place where I can quickly see what other black bloggers were writing about.

Check out her pageflake. In fact, bookmark it. There are literally hundreds of black bloggers, but she’s created a page that seemingly combines a set of topic centered news widgets, with the feeds of almost every black blogger connected to the Afrospear. I know at least one other blogger who has tried to create something like this. Dope dope DOPE.

If you have done something similar, please let me know. We don’t need to all get on the same page necessarily. We just need to do what it is we do, and then have some way to centralize INFORMATION about what we do.

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Felons who have completed their sentences will be able to register to vote in Maryland under a new law signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley yesterday.

The law, which takes effect July 1, was one of 178 measures the governor signed, including legislation to require stricter emissions limits on new cars and protect the diamondback terrapin.

Advocates say more than 50,000 Marylanders will be eligible to vote as a result of the legislation. Thirty-eight other states allow ex-convicts who have completed their sentences – including any parole or probation – to vote. But the Maryland legislation was among the most hotly debated bills in the recent General Assembly session.

“It certainly doesn’t mean the floodgates are going to open, but this underscores the full meaning of citizenship,” said Sen. Gwendolyn T. Britt, a Prince George’s County Democrat who was a sponsor of the measure. “When you have paid your debt to society … you should be free to register to vote.”

Amen.

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How many of you have seen this?

I take a fairly aggressive stance on Net neutrality. I believe that broadband networks should be free of restrictions on both equipment and nodes of communication. If indeed this neutrality would diminish innovation…then ok. I don’t think is what will happen, but I am ok with it if it does. Without net neutrality I’d argue that what passes for a digital divide would increase.

Now the article above notes that black state legislators across the country are beginning to move against net neutrality. But what the article does not say is that many of these same legislators are being paid off financially supported for doing so.

Gotta love it.

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In the wake of the previous week’s discussions shaquanda cotton and black bloggers, I thought I’d end the week with a couple of Nation articles that I found interesting:

Politics: Bottom Up Power

I had the chance to interview Mayor Coleman A. Young the year he passed away. When I asked him about the role the black upper class played in his first election, he scoffed and talked about what he called “ass power.”  For him the thing that got him the election was folks willing to go door to door to register people to vote, door to door to get people out to vote.

Ass power.

Black working class people in Detroit tended to have it. Black upper class men and women tended not to have it.  Now there are some things that black men and women in the upper strata can give that black working class folk cannot–money, professional services, etc. But if we’re talking about building politics from the ground up, ass power is essential. Engaging people who had previously not been engaged in politics is also essential.

Suburban Poverty Increases

For the first time in the modern era more of our nation’s poor are concentrated in the suburbs rather than in the cities. Over the long haul with the right type of political activism this could lead to both a partisan shift away from the GOP, and an ideological shift to the left. When suburban folks get to the point where the services they need cannot be provided for at the suburb, county, or state level, perhaps they’ll look to the federal government for significant intervention. There are other options, but I don’t even want to give them weight by linking to them. (Think Germany around the 1920s.)

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Ok. Now on to the black blogosphere. More specifically to black bloggers who are interested in politics from a moderate to left perspective.  I don’t have a particular beef with black bloggers who have a different set of political preferences, but they have their own thing that works pretty well for them.

What should we do?

As I’ve said already, I don’t have a dog in the “mainstream bloggers should be covering X” hunt. The “mainstream bloggers” cover what they cover. When they get it wrong, that’s another story…but I don’t have a lot of time to work on that project either. I could see someone else making an argument that black bloggers need to be more unified. I don’t agree. I don’t think unity is a particularly black problem, nor do I think more “unity” would be better for black communities–these claims do nothing more than stifle black dissent and increase resources for black elites.  Here that approach would lead to a few black bloggers using unity claims to shut other bloggers up and to hoard resources for themselves. Our strength is actually IN our diversity, it does not occur in spite of it.
But the simplest and most effective things that could be done to increase exposure and focus are:

1. Create a website of nothing more than black RSS feeds.
2. Recreate ArcaNext.

The first thing is something that I think is being done here. One site where we could all go to see quickly what other people are writing about. This may have the tendency of narrowing our scope, to the point where we are doing more responding to each other, than responding to our environment and what is going on around us. But I think that is a risk worth taking, as our collective strength is only as powerful as our ability to–when needed–cover a few issues with depth and breadth.

The second thing is somewhat similar. ArcaNext the first time I peeped it was supposed to be a black version of Digg. But now…well if you checked the link you know what it is now…nothing. This is the type of thing that could be used either in combination with, or separate from the feed site that could swiftly make other bloggers aware of what black bloggers are thinking about and focusing on. This also runs the risk of reifying some of the more problematic aspects of mainstream blogs–increasing the power and influence of a few black blogs at the expense of the rest. But again I think this is a risk worth taking.

What i’m talking about is more about content access and consolidation rather than content modification. We need better access to what other people are covering. We need a better way of evaluating that content.

And then the third thing we need as I think about it is a conference of some sort. Like I said before, black people already have a network. Every city I go to for business purposes I hook up with some combination of people I’ve met over the internet, people I’ve taught, people I’ve gone to school with, and people in my fraternity. More formal ftf events would further consolidate what we already have.

Thoughts?

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In response to a followup note on my post on local government, Keith Owens asks:

When you say “a series of self-sustaining societies” what do you mean exactly? I think I may have an idea, but I want to make sure I’m clear on what you’re saying.”

Right now cities are designed for a uniquely mid-twentieth century purpose. They exist as a hub for labor, for manufacturing, for distribution. External capital creates and sustains them. Damn near every significant institution in the city is designed to reproduce this system. Education for example is designed to produce workers/mid-level managers/executives for industry. In a city like Detroit even the churches fit in this model-at least they used to.You could distinguish the powerful churches from the not-so-powerful by how many Ford Motor Co. jobs they could provide.

The strength of this city model is pretty clear. When industry rolls, the city rolls.

But the weakness of the model is not just the flipside of that (when industry fails, so does the city).

The model itself is not sustainable. Not environmentally, as twentieth century industry leaves a pretty toxic footprint. Not economically. Profit margins cannot continue to increase, and even if we take economic cycles into consideration over the long haul the peaks will decrease in size because of diminishing returns, competitors, market saturation, etc.

Finally it is not sustainable politically. As markets free up and capital becomes more and more mobile firms (as a partial result of government action) leave for better economic climates–first outside the city, then later outside of the country. To compete for those firms the best governments can do is reduce the tax burden. Reducing the tax burden means in effect reducing the ability of government to provide services to citizens. This in turn further neuters the citizens.

Now the thing is, at its best the twentieth century model of the city lasted a good 60 years or so. But that’s about it. And while cities like New York may very well last in something like its present form for another 100 years, there are a whole range of rustbelt cities that have not, and will not. Cities like Gary and Detroit are now full of literally thousands of citizens who are trained for jobs that no longer exist, and as a result are unemployable. In Detroit? I’d estimate that about 300,000 citizens in Detroit could easily work on the assembly line if this were 1965, but cannot find meaningful employment now.

So what type of vision can we generate for these cities that put these people to work, and give meaning to their lives?

This is where the idea of self-sustaining societies come from. We’ve got to create a model of living that both generates a life of meaning and purpose for everyone with the physical capacity to work, we’ve got to create a model of living that is not based on the vagaries of global capital, but on local development and modest growth. This means revisiting the idea of community, and perhaps reframing it. This means generating a new more transparent form of politics. This means identifying different means of feeding ourselves. And this definitely means a different way of educating our citizens.

Does this make sense?

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Posts that contain Shaquanda Cotton per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

I first heard about the Shaquanda Cotton case through my former student Frederic Mitchell at his spot. I didn’t post on it myself. Rather, I decided to do an NPR commentary on it (that will probably come out later today). But Temple3, and Prometheus6 both jumped on it (Temple3 from an email I relayed to him, and Prometheus6 from Qusan).

When Witt reported it, he was relatively clueless about the way that blogs work and the existence of black bloggers. No more.

I picked the graph above from technorati. As you can see “Shaquanda Cotton” goes from being pretty much invisible to getting around 80 or so blog hits. Another measure is here. For Witt this is proof of the growing power of black bloggers, the internet as an organizing tool, and an example of the continuing role of newspapers.

Since I’ve been doing this here thing, (and before this the other thing) I’ve thought about what the role of black bloggers should be, to the extent that they identify as black and want to engage in explicit state-centered politics of some sort. Some would say that part of our role is to counter the information that comes from non-black bloggers, specifically on racial issues, but on a variety of issues in general. I don’t have a dog in that hunt. Someone should do it, and I probably do it from time to time.

But I think a more important role is speaking directly to each other and using our connections to further develop the notion of what I call open source politics. Partially as a result of the increased scrutiny engendered by black bloggers, the Cotton case (and the prison she was sent to) is being reviewed. Note that this occurs without Revs. Jackson or Sharpton getting involved (Sharpton is said to be “thinking” about doing it). If this isn’t cell based leadership I’m not sure what is .

Waxing nostalgic, Earl talks about the dissolution of the types of networks that black people used during Jim Crow. But he’s wrong here. The network never went away. I’m not sure how you get from Michigan to Alabama for seven days with barely $30 to my name without people willing to look out. What we need to do is take the networks that we currently have and simply repurpose them a bit.

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