#Black Lives Matter Movement Has Legs, Runs Past Power Elite

Yesterday I sensed a shift. I don't know if it is entirely subjective on my part. I'm tired of the massive police presence downtown. Every night I get off the train I'm greeted by milling pockets of law enforcement -- from the sheriff's department to the city police, with a robust helping of transit security. 

Last night there had to be a dozen bicycle cops from the sheriff's department clogging the platform of the transit center. I banged my left leg, tender from a hamstring pull while out on a run Sunday morning, on the front wheel of one of their trail bikes. I apologized. The cop said nothing.

There is a new surliness. When I got topside out of the station there where so many police at the entryway I brushed chests with one of them. He could pick up my vibe, which was not happy and welcoming.

As I walked east, passing more pockets of law enforcement, I could see or hear no evidence of protest that could possibly justify such a display of force. And in the end that is what we are dealing with here -- a naked display of force.

During Occupy which from what I can tell put a lot more protesters on the street than the last couple weeks of the #Black Lives Matter intifada, there was nowhere near the amount of police. During Occupy, there was usually a bunch of bicycle cops, but that was mostly it.

So what has changed? Why suddenly is all the machinery of the American police state visible?

I think if has something to do with the "flash mob"nature of these "die-ins" that are targeting gigantic corporate retailers. It is holiday season, a time when the corporate behemoths make most of their sales; so mayors are being pressured to mobilize the gendarmes to guard the gates of the citadels of consumption. In comparison, Occupy, with its myriad centrally-located encampments in cities coast to coast, seems old fashioned; easily policed at least. There would often be marches that would originate at the Occupy encampments, spreading out from there. But, once again, these could be easily policed.

The #Black Lives Matter Movement is much more disposed than Occupy to put bodies on the gears -- to shut down highways and mass transit and commercial holiday hubs. Call it today's equivalent of the Deep South Woolworth lunch counter of the Jim Crow era.

To her credit, so far the Gray Lady has been on board the #Black Lives Matter Movement. But yesterday, when news of the Berkeley weekend protests was topping Google News, nothing could be found on the New York Times web site. I didn't spend a lot of time searching. But usually when there is breaking news of importance the Gray Lady pushes it to the top of her home page. Nothing. Then this morning the story by Carol Pogash and Barbara Grady, "Berkeley Protesters Block Freeway Over Garner and Brown Killings," is a tepid rehash of some of the standard rhetorical devices meant to diminish a protest movement: 1) play up property damage, 2) accentuate division among the protesters and 3) never tarry too long on police violence. For example, note the following from the Pogash and Grady article:

On Saturday night, demonstrators had clashed with the police, who used tear gas on the crowds, drawing criticism for tactics seen as heavy-handed. On Sunday night, the police held back while some people set garbage fires and smashed windows at Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank and other buildings, primarily ones occupied by big corporate tenants. The vast majority of shops along Shattuck Avenue, the main shopping district, were left untouched. 

“It’s ironic that the place with probably the strongest supporters is being trashed,” said Tom Bates, Berkeley’s longtime mayor, said in a telephone interview. “What we have are a lot of people who are outside agitators who want to disrupt and cause violence with the police.” 

Mr. Bates said he was “totally devastated and disappointed” that “what could have been peaceful deteriorated into people attacking the police and doing damage.”

If you have ever been involved in protests, you can read between the lines and piece together what really happened in Berkeley over the weekend. The police went apeshit on Saturday and attacked protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom were orderly, with volley after volley of tear gas. This pissed people off and brought more into the streets the next night at which time the police let the Black-Bloc types trash some corporate storefronts. Vandalism then becomes the primary focus for the media, not police tactics; hence, the quotes from Berkeley mayor Bates denouncing "outside agitators," that old chestnut, for causing the violence with the police.

Imagine if that had been the focus of the Gray Lady's Hong Kong team of Chris Buckley and Alan Wong. Chief executive Leung Chun-ying would have been given prominent placement to dismiss the Umbrella Movement protesters as outside agitators. Instead the Gray Lady focused her attention overwhelming on the police use of tear gas to clear protesters from Hong Kong government buildings, an incident that originated the Umbrella Movement to begin with (umbrellas to protect protesters from pepper spray and the sun).

So based on this report of the weekend protests in Berkeley it appears that the Gray Lady might be trimming back her advocacy of #Black Lives Matter. The protests are getting too broad and showing signs of continued life. Obama's diffident pronouncements regarding the edicts of the Mike Brown and Eric Garner grand juries are eroding his support among his last solid constituency, blacks. As Julia Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear note in "Unrest Over Race Is Testing Obama’s Legacy,"

At this point, Mr. Obama’s response to Ferguson, Staten Island and the unrest across the country has diminished his image with important groups, according to new polling figures. Half the respondents in a Pew Research Center survey conducted Wednesday to Sunday disapproved of the president’s handling of race relations, compared with 40 percent who approved — a reversal from August, when 48 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved. While the majority of African-Americans still said the president had handled race relations well, support among them had dropped 16 points since polling in the summer.

Charles Blow had a generally positive view of the #Black Lives Matter Movement in a column yesterday, "A New Age of Activism: From Eric Garner and Michael Brown to the Ballot Box," but he misses the mark when he directs the protesters to move to the voting booth:

Indeed some activists have already moved beyond chants for “change” and begun to develop sophisticated answers to the retort, “change what?”. The trick is to redirect the passions before they dissipate, to maintain momentum when the media attention fades, and to amplify raised voices with votes cast. 

I believe — because the optimist in me must — that votes will soon, somehow, follow the passion, that people will come to see marching not as a substitute for voting but a supplement to it, that more people will work to effect change inside the system as well as outside it.

Blow should know that Obama's presidency itself is all the proof people need to know that voting does not deliver change. More is needed. Direct action must proceed the election of captive politicians. The #Black Lives Matter Movement knows this.