A National Black Lives Matter Platform and the Lessons from Occupy

From the carcass of the great recession emerged Occupy Wall Street, a movement predominantly dominated by college aged progressives. Driven by a burning desire to highlight the growing wealth inequality in the United States, the plight faced by recent college grads burdened by thousands of dollars of debt and the rapidly deteriorating new deal consensus, they protested from city to city. From the heartland of America to her coasts, the occupy movement spread like wildfire. These individuals had frustration, idealism and a progressive ideological streak in common. What they lacked and what they needed most was direction, and it would be that lack of concrete and achievable goals that ultimately led to their downfall. While there still remains some vestiges of Occupy in American politics and while some candidates echo their rhetoric, the spirit of the movement was lost in the process of their directionless downward spiral. The lesson of occupy is that without concrete and achievable goals, a movement cannot make the necessary transition from changing hearts and minds to changing policy.

That was the lesson Hillary Clinton echoed as she discussed the methodology of the Black Lives Matter movement with its representatives. The movement found itself at a crossroads, do we focus exclusively on changing hearts and minds or do we push a national platform that can be co-opted by progressive elected officials to change policy. While protesting, rallying, and civil disobedience are legitimate methods to have one’s voice heard, repeating mantras at rallies and events is not enough to bring about change. More needs to be done. Furthermore, white elected officials cannot be expected to know the best policies to implement to end police brutality, disproportionate mass incarceration or the general over policing of communities of color. Secretary Clinton said it herself, that her push for three strikes legislation was intended to help communities of color and that she did not expect it to negatively impact communities of color. Secretary Clinton could not be reasonably expected, as a non person of color, to know how to best resolve the plights facing communities of color. A non person of color cannot reasonably be expected to know how to best resolve the problems facing communities of color around the nation. We can implement policy that we think may work but there is no better group to identify the problems of a community than the members of the community most knowledgeable of that community’s issues. If white allies are permitted to play a role in this movement that goes beyond the hashtags and mantras, we must be given a platform that we can follow, co-opt, and implement nationwide. It is unrealistic to expect change without policy proposals or some buy-in by non people of color. Thankfully, after the Black Lives Matter confrontation with Secretary Clinton, the movement released a national platform that recommends a concrete and achievable set of policy goals.

Among the policy recommendations made by the black lives matter movement is ending broken windows policing. Oftentimes, in the course of policing, officers will stop an individual for a minor violation (like a traffic violation) or non-crime and rapidly escalate until the suspect has been unlawfully arrested or killed. That was the case with Sandra Bland in Texas. She was pulled over for getting over without signaling and within a span of ten minutes the officer escalated what should have been a warning or citation into an arrest. Sandra Bland was subsequently found dead in her jail cell. That was the case with Michael Brown in Ferguson (jaywalking), Walter Scott in South Carolina (non-functioning brake light), and Tamir Rice in Ohio (being a black child with a toy gun), just to name a few. Putting a stop to broken windows policing is just one of many recommendations made by the Black Lives Matter movement, they also recommend the implementation of community oversight through the erection of a Community and Civilian Complaints Department, limiting police use of force by training officers to use the international deadly force standard, implementing body cam legislation that would prevent officers from reviewing the footage of an incident before completing initial reports, statements, or interviews about the incident and putting a stop to for-profit policing by limiting the total municipal revenue that can be derived from fines and fees to 10 percent. The Black Lives Matter movement also recommends state and municipal officials demilitarize the police by putting a stop to the acquisition of military grade equipment using federal grants, the use of military grade equipment currently in the possession of local law enforcement and the deployment of SWAT in non-emergency, life-threatening, or high risk situations. While every policy proposed by the Black Lives Matter Movement may not be feasible, those of us on the local level, whether it’s folks like me in the General assembly or folks in county and city governments or local activists, can and should examine the proposals made by the Black Lives Matter movement and create workable and implementable legislation to stymie the tide of police brutality and over policing of black and brown lives.