BLackLives Matter And Elections

Black Lives Matter and Elections

The elections in Worcester and nationally have been affected by the new civil rights movement BlackLives Matter. The effects are not as obviously dramatic as incumbent Councillors not making the cut off of twelfth place on the Worcester ballot, but in ways in which racism has played a direct role.  To a large extent the entire election season has been framed by racial issues.

The presidential candidates have been forced to change their rhetoric. Trump, Sanders, Clinton, and Stein had to address race issues. Unlike previous elections the Black community can no longer be taken for granted. Sanders and Stein will likely be able to take advantage of the BlackLives Matter movement left leaning agenda. Clinton seemed to have swung and missed and Trump has been identified as a racist.

The race issue has been brought to the front by BlackLives Matter. There has been a wall of color blindness in past Worcester elections and in other issues. For example many people said that the killing of Cristino Hernandez was not a racial issue; other people turned a color blind eye to the issues of disparate unemployment among dark skin people (people of color). Today the City of Worcester is working hard to pretend its policies of police accountability, jobs, and educations are not racially disparate.  Just look at the fact that the City has dissolved the Affirmative Action Committee and replaced it with a Diversity Committee which has nebulous responsibilities.

BlackLives Matter has changed most of this color blindness pretext for racially disparate policies.  When Councillors Gaffney and Rosen get up and say that they want an audit of Mosaic and that it is not an issue of racist retaliation, everyone in the City knows something different. These racists are some of the people whom Councillor Lukes calls the “Trumps Effect” on which she is counting on to send her back to City Council.  It has been made clearer to many in the Black and Latino communities who is pretending to be against racism and who is using racism among Whites to get elected.

BlackLives Matter has changed temporarily the way the police respond to complaints from the public. The police are more courteous and transparent for now. The charges against the protesters show that the powers-that-be are afraid of mass demonstrations and disruptions. These disturbances of the peace will likely happen again in the near future as the police are likely to return to their old racist ways. The chant of BlackLives Matter and others of “No Justice, No Peace” has taken on new and significant meaning.

BlackLives Matter exposed Manager Augustus for the pretender that he is. He could have negotiated with the protesters about real change in the City’s policies, instead he retaliated against them on the most frivolous and weak evidence. The Manager then came out with a twenty-eight point plan that is just a shell game shifting responsibilities from one department to another. Worse still the Manager initiated a laughing stock known as the Department of Justice Hearings.

Regarding the elections some people stepped forward to replace the old backward thinking incumbents. BlackLives Matter created the environment for eleven people from the Black, Latino, and Asian communities to feel they have a chance of effectuating change through City Council service. Unfortunately many candidates did not make the required twelfth place preliminary for the at-large election or the second place finish for the district elections.

A takeaway from preliminary election in Worcester is that people of color will unlikely win elections in districts in which White people are a majority. There have some exceptions, all women candidates. To my knowledge there are only two districts where there are large enough so called minority voters to affect an election. The first is Sarai Rivera’s council district where she defeated Barbara Haller some years ago. The second district is Mary Keefe’s representative district.

The effect of Black Lives Matter on society is not over and has not been fully felt. Besides the issue of the killing unarmed young black men, other issues such as mass incarceration and education will have to be addressed.

Although elections are a tool in the new civil rights movement, it has been the actions on the street that has driven the positive changes.