This year represents the 40 year anniversary of the Newark and Detroit riots. Next year will be the 40 year anniversary for Baltimore. One of my former students forwarded me a discussion that relates to our discussions about the local and the global. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Amiri Baraka, Larry Hamm, and Grace Boggs about Newark and Detroit respectively. They were on two separate interview tracks until near the end, where Baraka and Boggs had a back and forth that was telling.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Amiri, what has changed in these forty years, in terms of consciousness and in terms of what the country has learned from that period?AMIRI BARAKA: Well, actually, in some ways, we’ve gone full cycle but up to another level. I mean, we went from the kind of blatant brutalization, of white supremacy and racism. We then organized ourselves and elected two black mayors. We haven’t — none of my children, for instance, have ever grown under white people ruling in Newark. They don’t even know what that is, you understand? And so, we can be proud of that. But at the same time, after we had our two domestic kind of mayors, who compromised relentlessly with corporate power, you understand, now we’ve come full circle and come to —GRACE LEE BOGGS: Let me ask you a question, Amiri. Do you think that we have challenged and criticized and evaluated Black Power sufficiently?AMIRI BARAKA: Have we? No, no, but I’ve been doing it for — I’m sorry.GRACE LEE BOGGS: When are we going to do it?AMIRI BARAKA: Well, I’ve been doing it for almost thirty-seven years. I mean, having two black mayors there, Sharpe James and Ken Gibson, I was probably their most relentless critic all the time. But now we have somebody who doesn’t compromise with corporate power, but who represents it. So that’s the difference. We’ve moved —GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, so do you think it’s a question of changing an individual? You know, for changing from Gibson to Booker?AMIRI BARAKA: No, you have to get an individual who’s willing to change the system. You have to get an individual who’s willing to actually struggle with the system to change it. As long as you have people who —GRACE LEE BOGGS: I mean, what do we mean by “struggling with the system”? How — when are we going to be —AMIRI BARAKA: To make substantive changes, to make infrastructure changes.GRACE LEE BOGGS: No, when will we begin to understand that we have to create new infrastructures, new forms, so that you can —AMIRI BARAKA: Yeah, but you can only do that through people, you see?GRACE LEE BOGGS: But you’re not going to do it from people at the top. We’re going to do it from people at the bottom.AMIRI BARAKA: Well, you have to mobilize the whole community. But what I’m saying is that people at the top became accommodated to being in power and not changing.GRACE LEE BOGGS: Yes, but maybe what we’ve done — maybe what we’ve — yes, but you see, we’ve put so much emphasis on taking over the power structure, and we became prisoners of it, because the power structure —
…and at that moment the show ends. The entire transcript can be found here. What strikes you most about the differences between Baraka’s position and Boggs’?
Doc Amiri is stuck in a mode of indidualism where as Dr Boggs understand”a change of the structure” is necessary and that change will come only thru groups, working toward a common goal.
What strikes me the most? Well, what I found striking was that both sides of opinion are completely missing the point. Real change can only happen when a leader is elected who truely represents the people, and not corporate or other interests. This should be the prime subject of debate, in my opinion.
Well CashRoll, this is what Amiri is saying? That they need to get an individual in place who won’t be for the system but rather will be for “the people?”
What is he saying that you don’t agree with?
To me, what is most interesting about Baraka’s general perspective on the riot/rebellion is that it seems so disconnected to the movement for political and economic power that existed in Newark before and after 1967. Baraka’s organization before and after the Riots was focused on electing a black mayor and removing the corrupt Addonizio (sp?) administration. And while this seemed to be an important goal, his organization, as far as I could tell in my research, was rather disconnected the civil rights and community organizing being led by the residents of Newark.
The interesting thing about the Newark riot/rebellion is that “the people at the bottom,” as Boggs puts it, were so active in Newark before and during the riot/rebellion. The federally funded Community Action Program in Newark had helped crate neighborhood boards which saw membership roles in the thousands for some areas. For instance, everyday residents of projects were becoming active in these area boards and organizing their communities to secure government resources and economic opportunities for their communities. Both the Puerto Rican and black communities were actively working against police brutality. And old women who had lived in Newark for 30 and 40 years were organizing their communities in protest of the use of imminent domain to build a medical school while dislocating thousands of residents. Residents of Apartment buildings were frequently organizing rent strikes to improve the conditions of their housing.
All of this culminated in the 67 riot/rebellion. I will quote from a paper I wrote a while back:
“Participants articulated the rebellion as political in nature in other ways as well. Riot patterns indicate that Black-owned businesses labeled “soul brother” were intentionally left in-tact during the riots (that is until the police shot out their storefront windows). Snipers used intentionally harmless gunfire to distract police. One sniper explained his intentions as economically reparative: “The important thing is our people know we’re here. While the police are busy tearing buildings apart looking to kill snipers, our people are getting color television sets refrigerators, clothes—whatever they couldn’t afford they got it.” Though hardly amounting to a revolution, the fundamental drive behind rioters’ actions, then, was a rebellion against white racism and the economic oppression it entailed. As SDS leader Tom Hayden wrote, “[the rioters’ actions] must be viewed…as a new stage in the development of Negro protest against racism.” Jeffery M. Paige, who completed a comprehensive study of participants and their choice to rebel came to a similar conclusion. Based on the Newark rebellion, Paige argues, “Rioting appears to be a disorganized form of political protest rather than an act of personal frustration, or social isolation, as has been suggested in some research.”
All of this is to say, the organizing from below existed in Newark. I think it says something about Baraka’s connection to the “people” of Newark that while Baraka was fighting for a black mayor (again, not a bad thing to fight for), the people were organizing for survival.
Boggs gave the only glimpse of the the thing I was looking for here which was some fleshing out of the organizational purposes and processes. Baraka has left it at ‘corporate’ as evil and is just spinning in circles from there. He strikes me, as with other commenters here, as stuck in history and unable to contextualize the fight at all – he makes the whole effort seem like an embarrassing waste of time.
What I think he doesn’t recognize the extent to which his radical actions even within the context of a motivated community was an extralegal threat to the very system he sought to reform. By establishing the cred of radicalism he foreclosed all possibility of actual reform. The enemy was defined as black. The solution was defined as black. White mayor = bad, black people the opposition. Black mayor = good, black people ‘in power’. And absolutely no reference to the business of life or those matters that a mayor or a city is supposed to address. All he understood is bureacratic corruption, and in the end that’s what he provided. What was Kawaida Towers? A tribute of a full ignorance of the construction business and three million dollars squandered because of this co-dependence on corruption. Essentially, he learned about the System in terms of its corruption rather than its purpose and thus was unable to define any purpose with integrity other than to replace the old regime, which eventually he inherited by radical force, rather than organic growth.
Baraka’s black power movement bought into a welfare state and he never taught anyone how to build Kawaida Towers.
“Disconnected.” This is a nice way of putting it. For Baraka it is all about the single individual leading the (blind? dumb?) masses. Boggs asks when are we going to begin to rethink Black Power, and for Baraka it was all about him. Sartre called from France to get him out of jail. HE was the one who was rethinking black power. Under this line of thinking it makes a great deal of sense that he’s still thinking about getting that individual elected or getting that individual leader to question the system. And even if that model was shown to ever work, why would we trust a poet to know something about administration, about governance? Much less about real black power and democracy?
It’s interesting what you said about Baraka being all about the individual leading the blind/dumb masses. That’s also how he perceived his role in the Black Arts Movement. His relationship to the community is somewhat incongruous to a lot of the grass roots movements taking place at the same time…
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie defines the ideal poet. “To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguements, shape the and stop it from going to sleep.” He also cautions “It isn’t right for the artist to become the servant of the state.” And later, “what you believe depends on what you’ve seen,-not only what is visible, but what you are prepared to look in the face”. Perhaps Baraka’s calcified stance is unprepared for the fluid challenge posed by Boggs.
Has any of ou actually had a conversation with Baraka?
I don’t quite understand the criticism of Baraka here. Amini was always about tearing down the whole system, ergo he eventually became a Marxist-Leninist and transformed CAP into the Revolutionary Communist League M-L-M. He saw electoral drives as a way to mobilize the people, politicize them as a component of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary dynamic and at the same time get some black elected officials up in there who could deliver some actual reforms.
There ain’t that much difference between him and Grace Boggs except to the extent that her approach is still informed by the Trotzkyism of her youth.
And no, while Amini certainly has an ego, it ain’t “all about him leading the blind masses”. Never was. While I disagree with Bro. Amini on his Marxist-Leninist approach, he never was THAT arrogant.
As to “not trusting a poet”. What does being a poet have to do with the price of tea in china? Many successful leaders throughout the world and history were poets. Certainly more of them were poets than political scientists.
I thought the whole point Boggs was making is that there is no such thing as the “blind masses.” Instead, I believe (please correct me if I am off base) that Boggs would say that the masses cannot be blind as their daily experience informs the vision for (revolutionary) political change. I am not sure that Baraka would necessarily disagree with this belief, at least theoretically. All I was trying to say is that before the summer of 67, it doesn’t seem like Baraka was looking to work with with the movements of the masses in Newark, which is what Boggs would prioritize.
By the way, what poet/poetess leaders did you have in mind?
In exchanges like this, judgments tend to be a bit premature. Admittedly both have been at this work for longer than I’ve been breathing – and so, there is no need to rush and insert words or motives where they don’t belong.
What I believe I heard from Baraka was that leaders must be willing to struggle to transform the systems in which they operate. I don’t find that objectionable in any way. In fact, it sounds like an invocation of Adam Powell and his call for audacious Black Power.
As for Ms. Boggs, I understood her to be saying something wholly complementary to Mr. Baraka. Though, I believe that her position is more fundamental and contributes to Baraka’s position. Simply, mobilized communities will tend to contribute responsible, authentic leadership more than fractured, disenfranchised communities.
The positions meld nicely (as stated in this “infant form”), but were not fully fleshed out. Given the specific context of ‘the question’ – looking ahead in Newark, Detroit and Baltimore – it makes sense to answer both questions. There will no collective abdication of leadership positions by Black folk in those cities. So, the quality and conduct of that leadership should be called into question as a matter of standard practice. By extension, that leadership will only be as strong as the communities which call them to account – and so, the work of building community should/must continue if Black Power is to have any meaning.
Well there is no disagreement that Marxists and Trotskyites should have a pretty good idea of how to tear down American cities, whether their masses are blind or visionary. One can only hope that the collective vision of the masses doesn’t blind them to the fact that Marxist solutions aren’t going to fly here.
The leadership of poets cannot be called into account, because poets are not accountable to anything but their ethos. They have no power beside their words – once you’ve read the poem, there’s nothing else to do. Only poets can eat their words, the masses need something more nourishing.
The problem with Black Power is that it has become an end, rather than an efficient means to a productive end.
“The problem with Black Power is that it has become an end, rather than an efficient means to a productive end.”
Perhaps. One could argue that is has become an end because it is the orphaned ideological and operational step-child of a generation granted access without authentic navigational guides for manipulating systems.
On a certain level, Black Power should operate within the American arena like a virus, on one hand (insinuating itself into all aspects of life) and like a thief in the night (fulfilling a Robin Hood function and subsidizing Black infrastructure development). Certainly there are individuals and small collectives who operate in precisely this manner – but those stories, of necessity, would come to us on an anecdotal, personal basis.
Practitioners of the art (it is an art) have not lost sight of the “productive end.” What has been most difficult is establishing an institutional mechanism to support folks in keeping the faith, and another tool to instruct, guide, shape, mold and direct the actions of subsequent generations.
The ill-fated actions of yesterday’s most visible architects do not define the sum total of all that became of Black Power. In fact, the guide posts for continued struggle are all around. It’s connecting all those Black dots that’s so time consuming.
In the context of the discussion between AMIRI (for our brother above who incessantly refers to him as Amini) Baraka and Grace Lee Boggs, I would say that there is a sharp difference in their conceptions of change. I fall on neither side of this debate as I find fundamental flaws within both.
For Baraka, and this has already been sufficiently elaborated above, it is a matter of installing the right leaders with the right consciousness who can make the necessary changes from above. What Amiri wants, as well as our resident Maoist, is a so-called progressive rule from above, where “revolutionary” leaders make decisions “in the interests” of working people a la Chavez’s Venezuela. The flaw is the inability to believe in the self-management and self-government of regular folks because they are too lazy, too stupid, or too backward to do it for themselves.
In less of a defense of Boggs and in more of a historical correction, she abandoned Trostkyism as early as 1951 when the Johnson-Forest Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist political party, broke away and formed Correspondence of which she was an active member until 1961. One of the basic points of this break was over the question of the Soviet Union (and China) which the JFT contended was state capitalist, as opposed to the degenerated workers state that Trotsky proclaimed it to be. In a rather famous proclamation, C.L.R. James, the most notable member of JFT, asserted that the theory of the degenerated workers state is really the theory of the degenerated worker (wow maybe there is a continuity between Trotsky and Boggs, after all).
I digress…
It would appear that Boggs begins with change from below, but this “below” is a limited, marginal, and fragmented categogry that can never translate into real revolutionary and economic change. This is because she locates the prospects for change in the small Leftist groups and not in the popular will and resistance of working people across the globe. Secondly, her view of the working class is just as limited as she confines it essentially to white production workers in the 1950s and not as an all embracing category that runs through racial, national, historical, and gendered barriers.
Any hope for qualitative change, and not on merely a replacement of reactionary rulers by progressive ones, lies within the self-activity of people who work. This “disconnect” which is a running theme throughout this post pertains the most to the break between your average worker and the multiracial ruling bureaucrats.
We agree on the distinction between Baraka and Boggs. I don’t think this is something that can easily be smoothed over given our discussion, though there are other areas where the two come together (on a critique of Booker in Newark and Kilpatrick in Detroit for example). And my sense is that Baraka’s vision of top-down leadership is much too disconnected from the struggles of everyday folk, and it is mired in the belief that for some reason they are incapable of independent action.
But we disagree in a couple of places:
1. Boggs’ conception of “below” begins at a scale that is appropriate for work. I don’t think she disagrees with the notion of a “popular will” that is global…but I think that she disagrees with the idea that this global resistance will come before local work. Scale is something we’ve been neglecting for a while and I’m not sure why, but it is important here. Start where you are and build outward.
2. She likely does privilege race given her work in Detroit. I don’t think she is wrong to do so, but I don’t think she is as caught up in it as you might think. This is more of a function of the work she is doing (in cities like Detroit mostly) and her perception of the space that most change has occurred in, her perception of the space that future change WILL occur in. Cities. Rustbelt cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. In as much as those cities are populated by black and brown people, those populations are going to be essential to generating new ideas about what society is supposed to be like. Why would we expect these conceptions to come from people outside of cities?
Best…
You wouldn’t be referring to me as “resident Maoist”? “cause nothing would be further from the truth. I can’t stand Communists. Including Trotzkyites, by the way. Trotzky having been the father of the system of Communist repression. He built it, Stalin just outmaneuvered him and took it over. Fascism is fascism under whatever name. F**k a Trotzky.
In any case, this discussion is pretty moot. Baraka has long ago abandoned the concept of black power in favor of the class struggle as the primary contradiction in society. Black Power for Baraka is a means to an end in order to achieve an integrationist worker’s paradise. Boggs abandoned even the black power component.
Ergo, they are nothing more than apparently more radical NAACP cadre. Baraka a bit more, Boggs a bit less.
The only way to progress is for black folk is to create their own economic space and to defend it against all intruders. Politics must flow in accordance to that paradigm.
The “masses” (I hate that objectifying term for human beings), blind or not, follow those who feed them.
Lester,
You got to the heart of the disagreement. The question we have to ask is what is it that we are trying to build? This is self-evidently a broad question and open to diverse interpretation.
I think, however, that this question is constantly posed in terms of sectarian agendas and what groups, whether official or independent, NAACP or the Revolutionary Communist Party, think is best for people. But precisely because they don’t know what all people want speaks to their disconnect and divorce from the popular concerns of regular people.
George Rawick remarked somewhere that the most important and revolutionary forms of mass resistance took place outside trade unions, parties, and other official organizations, organizations which became tools of the employers to contain such resistance.
It has been working people’s (that is, the white, black, Latino, male, female, gay, straight, middle class, poor etc.) instinctive drive to fight the status quo mechanisms established to protect its “interests”. These established mechanisms always collapse, not because of sellouts or disloyalty, but because of the structure of representative democracy.
I think everyone is quite familiar with traditional bread and butter demands of regular folk: better healthcare, schools, housing, wages, etc. etc. But I don’t think these kinds of demands get to the meat of problem for people; the issue of control.
This is where C.L.R. James and JFT was so important. They never got lost in issues of consumption like the NAACP, the Democrats, Labor, and Communist Parties. For them, they looked to the core of the matter and saw through people’s daily revolt on the job via strikes, sabotage, absenteeism, loafing, slow-downs, sit-ins, occupations, etc. that the struggle was qualitative and related directly to control.
But control over what? First, over the thing we spend most of our time doing and which all other things are shaped, i.e. our work.
None of these bread and butter demands will resolve the fundamental contradiction between workers, on the one hand, as wage earners and, on the other hand, as producers.
Grant them all the democracy outside the workplace, but as long as direct democratic participation on the job is non-existent and labor-power as such is commodified, workers will resist, whether its at Kaiser Steel or Popeye’s Chicken.
Where is Boggs’s vision at it relates to the subject of control? And why is her only example of an alternative society about a man who bought property and teaches children how to grow organic vegetables? It is this kind of action that capitalism nourishes and it no way conflicts with its mode. How is carving out independent spaces going to challenge those mass spaces where people are daily subordinated?
I am not opposed to independent action by small groups whether of an educational or practical nature and I don’t think Boggs is wrong to talk about their importance. A distinction needs to made, however, between mass movements and small groups. In the video clip above, Boggs deals explicitly within the context of the Left and mentions nothing about popular movements. It is my position that the weak state of the Left is due to the lack of a popular movement at the present moment, that in times of mass upheaval, a larger, vibrant Left proliferates in proportion to the mass activity of people. The logical extension of Boggs position is that the Left creates more Leftists (or whatever term you wish to supplant) which will eventually engulf the rest of the country.
I guess it is more of an overstatement of their importance, that revolutionary change depends upon their activity. Also, I don’t see the kind of revolutionary change that workers have struggled to implement for over two hundred years happening in a stagist or developmental fashion. That’s not to say that I think revolution will be an overnight, worldwide apocalyptic explosion (although I haven’t written that off, either), but that it isn’t something we “start” and once getting to an appropriate point we “expand”.
Okay, I’ve already said way too much. I sincerely apologize for such long-windedness (as always). Its your turn (or someone elses).
K.
Which Way for Black Power? http://t.co/mOguG8XA