“People have too many experiences of powerlessness, and not enough of collective power”

1972: Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Photo Robert Gumpert

…when you build such power you can get statewide power without having electoral majorities

Peter Olney (P): In most of the states of the Black Belt South African American population hovers around 30%. In many states the presence of new immigrants, Latinos and Asians, mean that “minorities” approach 40% of the population. Why haven’t these demographic groups leveraged their numbers into more statewide power? What would that power look like beyond occupying seats in legislatures and the executive?

Mike Miller (M): There’s a preliminary question to be asked: Has black power been built in Mississippi? I don’t think so. There are lots of black politicians, but for the most part they are mainstream Democrats.* There needs to be a black equivalent of the Tea Party to hold black elected officials accountable to deliver a quality education and economic justice program. Without that, you can change the color of those who hold political office, and that’s a good thing, but you won’t address the daily living issues of everyday black people. Of course the same thing is true for low income Latinos or any other group that is marginalized both on the basis of race/ethnicity and economic justice.

So the first Mississippi step, from my point of view, is building real, as distinct from rhetorical, black power—power rooted in the lives of the vast majority of black people in the state. When you do that, electoral participation is one of its expressions. Equally, if not more, important are direct negotiations with powerful institutions like major employers (private, nonprofit and public), school districts, developers and others. When you don’t get respect at the negotiating table, you use the tactics of disruptive non-violent direct action, strikes, boycotts, corporate campaigns, public shaming and anything else you can come up with. You engage in people power lobbying—thousands of people descending upon the state capitol to push a legislative agenda forward. Another important dimension of power is to create alternative institutions like worker- and consumer-owned cooperatives. Serious black power would support unionization of low-wage workers in the state, if not engage in workplace organizing itself.

In fact, when you build such power you can get statewide power without having electoral majorities. Whether to participate or not in any given electoral contest then becomes a tactical question: can we elect someone qualitatively better than the incumbent? Can we hold him/her accountable after winning an election? What’s the cost/benefit analysis of allocating our time and energy this way compared to, let’s say, a boycott?

From a different slant, Congressman Bennie Thompson, the African-American representative from the Delta’s 2nd Congressional District, had some interesting things to say at the reunion: he bemoaned black politicians who want safe districts (80+% black voters) when by spreading their constituency into adjoining districts there would be the possibility of electing more blacks while retaining their own seats. He noted that a number of elected black politicians aren’t really representing the interests of those who put them in office, and indicated the need for effective organizing to hold them accountable. He is one of not-too-many politicians who understand the necessity for independent organization at the base. On the other hand, the black elected officials who want safe seats often enter into unholy alliances with conservative white Republicans who are only too happy to isolate the black vote.

Sadly, Chokwe Lumumba, the recently-elected mayor of Jackson, died before he could implement what promised to be an economic development and justice program. Bob Moses calls him a “Fannie Lou Hamer Democrat.”

SNCC was an organization of organizers, or so we thought at the time. With the sometimes-diverging guidance of people like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Myles Horton and a few other older veterans of the struggle, we did amazingly well and accomplished extraordinary things. But we really didn’t know how to be an organization of organizers. And our own internal divisions prevented us from figuring that out. One of my hopes at the time was for a relationship between SNCC and Saul Alinsky, who I went to work for after four years on the SNCC staff.

For a very brief period in the mid-1960s, Stokely Carmichael and Alinsky discussed the possibility of a relationship. They shared a platform in Detroit that was originally billed as a debate on black power. Alinsky said, “If you came here expecting disagreement, you’re in for a disappointment. We don’t go into a black community and come out at the end with pastel power.” The relationship did not develop. The field of community organizing still needs to explore ways of pulling together different strands of thinking and practice in order to maximize the people power it promises to deliver.

“An old story comes to mind: a union organizer in a deep-south state was organizing a factory where whites made $2.00 and hour and blacks made $1.00

P: Is such a failure because there is no white bloc of voters or historical white actors who can be allies?

M: There was a brief period in Mississippi during the mid-1960s when SNCC supported a poor whites organizing project. There are examples in U.S. history where parallel organizing of whites and blacks led to unity among them, and greater people power than either might have had alone. I think a pre-condition for such an approach is the kind of black power organization I describe above.

So let’s assume you’ve got that. Two approaches are usually put on the table. One is to woo white “moderates”. While important, on the major poverty-related and economic justice issues I do not think it is sufficient—for two reasons. When these moderates do enter alliances with Democrats, it is typically with “corporate Democrats” and they will not entertain the kinds of proposals that are necessary to address black poverty, poverty in general, and the growing gap between the wealthy few and everyone else. Further, the black Democrats who pursue these alliances are, themselves, unwilling to engage significantly with black poverty. The policy options required to address poverty are now beyond the narrow frame of “realistic” politics in the country. That means major demand “from below” will have to push this agenda to make it realistic.
Another place to look for a break in the now-racist white bloc is at low-to-moderate income whites who view race as a central part of their identity. An old story comes to mind: a union organizer in a deep-south state was organizing a factory where whites made $2.00 and hour and blacks made $1.00. He said to a white worker, “If you have a union, you can both make $3.00 an hour.” “Yeh,” the white worker replied, “but then I’d be making the same as the nigger.”

But there’s another, and opposite, story as well. A 1930s union organizer told me this one. A white worker he was trying to interest in the United Mine Workers said to him, “Ain’t you the union let’s in the niggers?” The organizer pointed to a nearby black worker and this exchange followed:

“See that fellow over there?”
“Yeh.”
“Who’s he work for?”
“Peabody.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Peabody.”
“You think about it. I’ll be back, and we can talk some more.”

In the recognition election, the UMW won. It took white worker votes to win.

You don’t have to go back to the ‘30s to find similar or hopeful stories in this regard. In the late 1960s, former SNCC field secretaries Bob Zellner and Jack Minnis worked in the midst of a strike at the Laurel, MS Masonite plant in which whites struck and blacks scabbed, and had encouraging results. Dottie Zellner wrote the story up. Both Dottie and Bob were at the reunion. As far as I know, no one asked them to discuss this experience.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s earlier described pig coop is another example. That experience is written up in the biographies about her. My understanding is that she was respected and loved by poor whites and blacks.

White Pentecostal coal miners in West Virginia leveraged their status as part-time “jack-leg” preachers to get Pat Robertson, hardly a pro-union clergyman, to endorse a strike. Latino Pentecostals are increasingly engaged in the immigration rights movement as they see the consequences of Obama’s present deportation policies for their member families.

When you start looking there are lots of examples. But you have to look. Historically, Mississippi white Democrats were divided between racist populists and racist plantation owners and their supporters. The former really hated the latter. But they hated blacks as much, if not more. If you start with the premise that this can’t be changed, you won’t change it.

There’s yet another dimension to this. In my SNCC days, it was not uncommon for a field secretary to speak of “crackers,” “honkies,” or “rednecks.” African-Americans who would never utter the negative terms “spik,” or “kike,” and for whom “nigger” (except when used among one another) was a fighting term, thought this negative was o.k. Indeed, it often got a chuckle. Why is that? And can we use the understanding we get from looking at that to look at poor whites? I think so. People want to be “ok.” If to do that they need to be better than someone else, they will. And the someone else is typically lower on the status pole than they are. The reason for that is that those lower are also more powerless. They can’t effectively strike back. It’s risky to say things like that about the more powerful; they can hurt you.

P: What is the potential for an alliance of people of color and poor whites in southern states? How do you build it? What are the issues?

M: The potential for true majority constituency alliances, so long as constituent parts have their own power to protect their own particular interests, is vast. We have to look back to the industrial union movement of the 1930s to get a glimpse of what that might look like.

In a period like the one we’re now in, it’s built patiently, piece-by-piece, no magic just careful organizing. We’re now swimming upstream when we try to build people power. Periods of social movement, on the other hand, are magical; you’re swimming downstream. You can’t keep up with the demand for organization. That existed in the 1960s in the black community. It appeared in the immigration reform movement recently, and maybe is still there. I’m not close enough to know.

As to the issues, beware of magic bullet single-issues. You learn the issues by listening to the people. From an organization building point of view, you need lots of little but meaningful ones because those can be won by guerrilla bands—which is what you start with. When you have a standing army (sorry about the military metaphors, but they’re easy and graphic), you can fight bigger battles. But the big battles can also wear you down and send your people back home to their TVs and private lives. (Use as title above photo)People have too many experiences of powerlessness, and not enough of collective power. It’s the latter that build for the long run.

In Mike Miller’s third piece on The Movement and legacy, he asks: “What makes you think we (California) have Latino empowerment?”

For further reading: The New Racism in The New Republic