Unfortunately, there are black people who do not appreciate the significance of this and other actions. Decades of movement stagnation and lack of political education has made black people less likely to push the envelope and to even point fingers at the people labeled “outside agitators” by craven black misleaders. It is a sign of the weakness of our movement that some of us do not see the importance of cultivating solidarity and dispensing with establishment approval as we seek to make change.
The misleaders do know their people however, and they are well aware that claims of white people undoing the movement would resonate. E.D. MondainĂ© is president of the Portland branch of the NAACP. As such he has access to the Washington Post editorial page and used his opportunity to do some classic misleading. He opined that demonstrations had become “spectacle” which drew attention away from police violence. “What are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality?” was one of his questions. One might ask what the Portland NAACP had ever achieved in this regard, but that didn’t stop him from condemning white people who are not limiting their actions to the realm of respectability politics.
If Mr. Mondainé and others were less compromised they would make common cause with the white radicals they disregard. This is no time to listen to people whose dependence on the donor class of the Democratic Party has helped no one but themselves. Mondainé makes clear why the emphasis cannot be on a well intentioned notion of equality. It is too easily manipulated while the allies who have come forward are left undefended by the people who should be working with them.
Hopefully the misleaders can muster the energy to support the media in Seattle where a judge ruled that unpublished photos and video footage of protests must be turned over to the police. Perhaps they will say something about the police unions welcoming Trump’s troops against the wishes of local elected officials. Whoever set a fire in the Portland police union office is the best kind of ally.
-- Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: Let the Movement Be Radical" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).