ow do we put back together a society that has broken apart? How do we build solidarity within a culture of individualism, punishment, and accumulation when we are constantly repairing ourselves in the face of various forms of daily heartbreak?

If we lend ourselves to the emergent struggles of our times — against Cop City; for Black history, abortion rights, trans liberation, widespread debt cancellation, climate justice, access to land, and alternative food systems; in solidarity with actors and writers on strike and so many others — drawing connections and showing up is where we should start and return to again and again. Now is a time for experimentation and discipline alike. We need to accept what an activist involved in the fight to Stop Cop City in Atlanta calls 

 rather than demand political, strategic, or tactical purism. We have to allow for different people to show up in various ways in terms of ideology and struggle; in our protests and movements, we need the widest participation possible to win.

The uprisings of 2020 showed serious cracks in the system’s legitimacy. By some estimates as much as 

 participated in the protests in some form, a figure without precedent in U.S. history. Around the world, people held protests in at least 

, embodying the globalized nature of our emerging struggles. Mass social upheavals unsettle the status quo; disruption proves to everyone that “normal” is a product of circumstance and not inevitability, that things might not have to stay the same after all. That revolt sent a flare into the sky: 

Don’t mistake the status quo for daily acquiescence. 

. We’re neither happy nor content with things as they are.

But we need more than protests and temporary uprisings. We must further develop our organizations into social institutions capable of creating new relations in every domain of our lives here and now. Previous generations of struggle led to the 

 to one of the worst epidemics in modern history. This fact is not lost on today’s ruling class, which is hard at work making sure today’s young students don’t know how or even whether these past victories happened — 

At work, let’s fight for strong workers’ movements — not only unions — that recognize and build upon the shared interests of a multiracial working class. At schools, let’s struggle against censorship like the opposition to 

 and Black history in the state of Florida while also fighting for 

 like Planting Justice’s in California, and for expanding access to and resources for public schools 

the way the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil

 does. Let’s push for state accountability by planning and constructing the missing infrastructure of our neighborhoods like the socialist shack dwellers movement 

 in South Africa. Their struggle shows how the democratic input of everyday people shapes the built environment of their community, while also recalling the mutual-aid efforts of organizations like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.

In Atlanta, several formations came together to build independent grassroots power to fight Cop City. They have targeted formal legal and political processes but also organized protests, occupied the forest where the city intends to build the police training facility, held a week of actions, and put on music festivals. In response, they have been targeted with sustained and virulent police violence and repression, tarred as terrorists by the state government.

These examples reveal the strategic importance of stable organizations pursuing long-term projects and programs. Uprisings are not enough — constructing an equal and democratic society requires the sustained participation of the people. They are the legitimate creators of the institutions and defenders of rights central to communal life. Beyond the 

 of direct democracy in protests, assemblies, and occupations, we need people power in practice and not just in slogans.

Illustration by Dakarai Akil. Photographs by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times, David Paul Morris/Bloomberg, Andri Tambunan/AFP, George Rose, and Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images.

Uprisings Are Just the Beginning

his summer, the earth raged. Fires in Maui and Canada, floods in Delhi and Beijing, heat everywhere — this is the beginning of the climate impacts scientists have long predicted, and the U.S. is unprepared in terms of everything from 

 to public health. And if I’m honest, I raged, too. Never in my life have I wished more to be a cyclone, blowing away everything in my path, or an earthquake, shaking everyone to their core until they take seriously the concerns of Black and Indigenous frontline communities.

August marked a year since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, arguably the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history. But the racist compromises and the marginalization of Black people and their demands that facilitated the bill’s passage have seeped into the climate movement, sowing division and narrowing discourse in ways that not only threaten to keep Black people at the bottom of a new green economy but also undermine efforts to address thornier issues, such as who owns energy resources or how to navigate conflicts about resource distribution and land use, questions that money alone cannot answer.

t’s true that the IRA has sparked the largest investments in clean energy and manufacturing that the U.S. has ever seen. In fact, along with investments from the CHIPS Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, two climate-adjacent bills passed around the same time, the federal government is funneling so much money into the development of clean and renewable energy — at least $515 billion in public investment from the IRA alone — that 

 is expected to come from renewable sources by 2024 (

up more than 10 percent from a decade ago

), and over half of all electricity could come from solar and wind by 2030. More than 170,000 green jobs have also been created in the wake of the IRA, a majority of them in red states, some of which, like Texas and Georgia, have the largest and 

 to be happy about that. By “derisking” clean technology through public subsidies and other forms of industrial policy, the IRA is succeeding, at least in its mission to spur private investment in clean energy and low-carbon goods. And after 40 years of exclusively neoliberal economic policy, that is something to celebrate. But the transition to clean energy, like every other economic transition, is inherently distributive and redistributive — especially in a capitalist society — and this time, we need Black people to significantly benefit. Yet, with the exception of a few targeted policies, the IRA and the debates that have emerged since its passage suggest that the U.S. is again (at this big age!) relying on white supremacy to decide how to allocate the power and resources that come from going green.

Since last August, commitments to climate and racial justice — legion in the wake of the 2020 uprisings — have disintegrated rapidly, leaving Black people at risk of being left behind and locked out of the clean energy economies spurred by the IRA. The shift arguably began with the deal Senate Democrats brokered among themselves to pass the law, which included several concessions that deeply and directly harm frontline communities. For instance, the IRA required the federal government to reopen public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas lease sales, although the Biden administration had previously canceled the sales after court challenges from environmental and community groups. So far developers have bought only a fraction (3.3 million acres) of the reopened sites, but their successful development will almost certainly increase pollution in neighboring Black communities, which house the oil refineries and gas and petrochemical facilities that will process the oil and gas fossil fuels extracted from these sites. Worse still, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal agency responsible for carrying out offshore lease sales, 

, both in its analysis preceding the sale, arguing that “these low-income and minority communities are located onshore and distant from … oil- and gas-related activities” and thus did not merit consideration in the agency’s decisions about the sale.

The Senate deal also led to federal approval of the 

, which, like the lease sales in the Gulf, had been blocked after environmental groups presented evidence of the negative effects the pipeline’s construction and operation would have on water quality and local air pollution and argued that the project bypassed environmental protection regulations. Like most fossil fuel infrastructure, the pipeline and related facilities would run through poor Black, white, and Indigenous communities in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina, some of which already have 

because of existing fossil fuel facilities. Furthermore, while the owners of the pipeline are 

 their property, those who live in poor communities 

 the pipeline and its stations will not be compensated for decreased property values or anticipated health risks that may result from the pipeline’s operation.

Many white climate experts and advocates argued that while these concessions were unfortunate — unjust, even — they were costs worth paying to pass the nation’s first major climate bill. Others argued that the compromises reflected nothing more than the outsize influence of Senator Joe Manchin and his fossil fuel allies, which would lessen once the IRA made clean energy industries bigger and more politically powerful. But even some of the IRA’s flagship policies seemed to be designed almost exclusively to serve the needs and interests of middle-class white people and also to pave the way for clean energy systems that continue to deeply marginalize Black people.

The IRA includes a slate of tax credits for individual consumers to install heat pumps, buy electric vehicles, switch from a gas stove to an electric stove — basically to electrify their homes and vehicles in order to reduce emissions. But the IRA’s tax credits are nonrefundable, making them nearly useless for the 

 that do not earn enough to have tax liability, many of which are Black. IRA tax credits also require users not only to have the money to cover upfront costs but also the ability to wait months for reimbursement, as with all previous energy tax credits — which have been overwhelmingly used by white people even compared with people of color at the same income levels.

The IRA tax credits also prioritize homeowners, a class that is 

, who are much more likely to be young, Black or Latino, or poor. The credits don’t attempt to address the split incentives that exist between renters and landlords: While renters are more likely to want to switch to renewable energy because they usually pay the utility bills, landlords bear the costs of electrification without benefiting from the savings that result, making them far less likely to invest in the relevant upgrades. Nor does the IRA address the fact that climate investment increases home values and thus property taxes for low-income homeowners, which risks unintentionally pricing them out of their homes, 

t is easy to understand why the IRA and the negotiations surrounding it were shot through with racism. White supremacy is incentivized at every level of our policy-making processes — from deciding whom a policy should target and shaping how it is designed to deciding how (and to whom) to market the policy. If I step back and squint (and try to forget that I’m Black), even I can understand how racism can seem — emphasis on 

 — reasonable in light of the conditions we face. But just because something is logical doesn’t mean it’s free — or smart.

For a policy to be effective in the long run, it must be about people. Imagine the impact of a clean energy development whose tax benefits went back into the community to help fund schools or build libraries, or a solar panel factory that’s required to provide child care and elder care for workers and their families. We need to give people concrete experiences of climate policy materially benefiting their lives: better-paying jobs, lower energy bills, new business opportunities, fewer utility shutdowns, and 

. Lower greenhouse gas emissions will mean fewer extreme weather events, fewer boiling summers, and less illness, but that will take time. And even then, most people will not experience the benefits of lower greenhouse gas emissions as viscerally as a transition that helps them to feed their families or take care of themselves. Blame it on capitalism or individualism or consumerism — it doesn’t really matter; we need those sorts of direct experiences for people to care about climate policy when 

. Most days, for most people (including me), life is just too hard to worry about what’s not feeding, fucking, or relying on you.

But for climate policy to be successful long-term, it has to serve Black people too, perhaps most of all. Especially in this fragile moment, right at the start of the domestic energy transition, the experience of having a 

 pipeline built through your community without consultation, or a 

 cratering sacred tribal land without consent, or new petrochemical facilities being allowed in 

 because they have carbon capture and storage with the emissions, or a 

 being rammed through a rural community that feels like it had no say, or a 

 to build a transmission line without any effort to find a different path, or a new incinerator being greenlit in an already polluted neighborhood without any consultation because it has solar panels — experiences of being silenced and dispossessed — could quickly halt the progress of a green transition, especially with the right wing hungry for followers and fossil fuels waiting in the wings.

These are real possibilities — in some cases, real stories. But they come with mounting, potentially unsurvivable costs, even if we rarely discuss them that way.

onsider the discussion that surrounds “permitting reform,” a 

 for efforts to streamline siting and permitting processes to help speed the development of renewable energy projects and modernize the electric grid. Permitting reform has emerged as a focus of Washington policy makers, many of whom worry that the U.S. lacks the regulatory regime and administrative capacity to support the rapid buildout of clean energy funded by the IRA. But the discussion has been dominated by the purported evils of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of the 

 Black communities can use to oppose toxic polluting infrastructure; almost all proposals to weaken it would remove or constrain the avenues the law provides for democratic participation in building infrastructure. Gutting NEPA has 

 for fossil fuel lobbyists, but since the passage of the IRA, it has also been 

 by “supply-side liberals” and members of the climate movement’s 

Thankfully, only the most toothless of the proposed NEPA reforms made it into the debt ceiling deal passed in June. But the fight over permitting reform reflects a trend of pushing aside what Black communities have said they want out of IRA implementation and the energy transition, often in favor of advancing clean energy technologies preferred by fossil fuel industries. Many frontline communities have expressed a fervent desire to prioritize renewable energy when it comes to clean energy development in their neighborhoods — especially community solar, microgrids, and distributed energy resources (like rooftop solar). But while several programs in the IRA do provide funding to support these types of projects, recent federal decisions have also begun to push projects into frontline communities that employ technologies such as 

 that could be used to prop up fossil fuels.

For example, the Biden administration has 

 to funding two hubs for direct air capture — a form of carbon removal — in or near frontline communities in Kleberg County, Tex., and Calcasieu Parish, La. This is in spite of vocal 

 from residents who worry that the technology could be used to justify the continued operation of at least 12 existing petrochemical facilities. Residents’ concerns are justified: The CEO of Occidental Petroleum, the company building the Texas hub, has already 

 that she sees direct air capture technology as a lifeline to “preserve our industry over time.” Nor would the technology remove any of the particulate matter or other pollutants that harm residents most.

The debates about climate policy since the passage of the IRA have been marked by dynamics that make these occurrences more likely — particularly an effort to once again define the climate crisis as a matter of energy policy, separate from concerns about the environment and unconnected to efforts to build a more just society. In fact, many of the loudest advocates for “cutting red tape,” who are almost exclusively white men, argue that demands for a just transition are incompatible with the demands of decarbonization or simply that they do not understand how to “

” address environmental justice concerns.

As a result, policy proposals that aim to balance efforts to decarbonize with the needs of Black communities are increasingly dismissed as ancillary, 

, or, worse, “unserious.” More dangerously, after it seemed like people started to understand how white supremacy, the fossil fuel industry, and the climate crisis are linked, environmental and racial justice are being sidelined as separate, secondary issues instead of principles that should guide decisions about how to structure the green transition. But there are simply not enough 

 in the world to prevent Black people from being left behind in an energy and economic transition that does not intentionally consider justice at every turn — not in this country, not with our history, and not with these systems.

I will never agree that white supremacy is a legitimate response to the demands of the climate crisis. Not just because I refuse to assent to my own oppression but because I do not believe that finding ways to legally 

 as many Black people as possible between us and a boiling planet is, or will ever be, a viable climate solution. But I understand the temptation. Truly.

he climate crisis is one of the biggest and most complex problems that the world has ever faced. If you slice open even one of the issues, 10 more problems fall out. Permitting reform alone touches issues with the transmission of electric power and, by extension, the design of our electric grids and energy markets; interconnection queues; cumulative impacts and fossil fuel development; environmental review; permitting and siting for energy projects at the local, state, and federal levels; labor; democratic participation; coalition building; disinformation and growing opposition to renewables among both elected officials and everyday people; utilities and their frequent opposition to clean energy development — and that’s just a start.

Addressing the climate crisis requires us to build out unprecedented levels of clean and renewable energy, much of it within the next decade; stop using fossil fuels, even though our societies and economies remain painfully dependent on them; broker new diplomatic relationships and operate with untold levels of global cooperation; and, at least in the U.S., do all of this while developing and defending a new regime of industrial policy — all while fending off climate disasters, a rabid GOP, rising white nationalism, and a democracy that seems to become more dysfunctional by the minute. It’s an absolute shitshow, through and through.

But as the U.S. begins to implement the country’s first real climate law, we are also creating the frameworks we will use to address the climate crisis for the foreseeable future. Baking white supremacy into these new frameworks, even if just to make designing and passing climate policy easier, will undermine the long-term success of the energy transition.

Why would a crisis this enormous require anything other than a broad set of people and perspectives? What makes us think that anything less is wise?

More concerning, as long as we treat Black people as dispensable, we help protect the social license of fossil fuels, making it harder for us to fully and hastily decarbonize. Few politicians on the right or on the left are eager to confront some of the most powerful corporations in the world, 

sever ties with some of their biggest donors

lose some of their most lucrative personal investments

or the green transition to be equitable, racial justice must thread through all the decisions about how it is structured and how public resources are distributed. One of the best ways to do this is to expand Justice40, a Biden administration initiative that aims to direct 40 percent of the benefits of federal clean energy and other climate investments to disadvantaged communities. The White House should update that order to include all of the programs in the IRA, and agencies should ensure that 40 percent of the funding (not nebulous “benefits”) are going to the communities identified by the White House’s new 

 to identify communities that have faced historical environmental and economic injustices. In programs where it is not possible to ensure that 40 percent of funding reaches frontline communities, as with individual tax credits, agencies need to create partnerships with community organizations and local governments to try to increase tax-credit participation among eligible Black households. The Biden administration should also 

 to make eligible for Justice40 funds projects with technologies that frontline communities have repeatedly opposed, like carbon removal and industrial carbon management.

Congress should also make tax credits refundable and add provisions that reconcile the split incentives for renters and landlords. The IRA programs do offer new possibilities for community control over energy resources, such as direct pay (which can help public and nonprofit entities build renewable energy) and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (essentially a national green bank that will provide 

 for projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities). But these need to be supported with robust technical assistance and connected to organizations like the 

Deep South Center for Environmental Justice

, which help grassroots organizations design projects and apply for federal funding.

Investments alone are not enough. We must reform the administrative state to advance regulations that create fairer procedures. The 

 proposes many such regulations, including strengthening NEPA by requiring earlier and more robust community participation; 

 community impact reports that “assess whether the proposed action will exacerbate or contribute to adverse health outcomes for that community, including historical patterns of exposure and cumulative effects,” among frontline communities; requiring federal agencies to develop strategies that outline how they will address policies, programs, and practices that could have negative health or environmental impacts in disadvantaged communities; creating an interagency council to ensure such principles are incorporated into decisions across the executive branch; and requiring analysis of 

 would also amend Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that people could again sue in federal court for racial discrimination so long as the action created a disparate impact — a change that would make it much easier for people to protect themselves against environmental racism. Congress needs to pass the Environmental Justice for All Act so that these protections are in place before more IRA funding is released and the green transition matures.

Just as important, the U.S. must divest from fossil fuels, even if that requires nationalization or a federally funded wind-down of domestic fossil fuel operations. Fossil fuel industries have built their wealth on the exploitation and endangerment of Black, brown, and Indigenous people, and their continued operation not only undermines efforts to reduce emissions but also ensures that those communities will continue to be harmed even as clean energy deployment rises. There is no path for justice or full decarbonization without ending the production and use of fossil fuels.

ll these changes require our movements to view policy making as a tactic or space that should be organized. 

 policy making is a contested, contentious process that starts months and often years before legislation is written. At the federal level, while movements are often active at the start of the process (getting an issue flagged as a significant problem and spurring government intervention) and the end (shaping legislation once it’s in play or lobbying for its passage or dismissal), they are often absent from the murky middle stages where people struggle to decide 

to solve the problem in question or which solutions should be included in the next stage. The climate movement needs to develop infrastructure and tools to shape policy, beyond electing allies or engaging in legislative fights. Just as important, we must organize ourselves to push back on the idea that racism is a policy choice without costs to anyone but Black, brown, and Indigenous people.

There is hope. From 2018 to 2022, the climate movement became more powerful and unified than ever because we coalesced around a vision of green transition that included racial justice and broad social welfare policies. When I helped design the Green New Deal, I was trying to design policies that served Black people. And that proposal helped galvanize millions of people to care about climate change; they created 

 versions of Green New Deal policies, and eventually pushed climate to the 

. That, in turn, opened up the space to leverage the political opportunity created by the Green New Deal into meaningful federal action.

Strong climate policy requires a strong climate movement. But now that we have the policy, we are at risk of ripping away the foundation for the mass movement we need to see it through. When we trade away Black people, we trade away everything that makes a green transition compelling and urgent. No one gives a fuck about a heat pump when 

. No one cares about clean energy when they can’t eat or when polluters are allowed to dump poison over their heads to turn a profit. The climate crisis may be an existential threat, but millions of people are weathering 

. What’s a little more heat when you’re already going through hell?

Thanks to structural racism, the average Black person 

, and more likely to be unemployed than the average white person. When we design a green transition that serves the needs of Black people, we’ll have a green transition that serves all people, especially those who might not support climate action otherwise. That’s a transition that can sustain itself long-term. And the U.S. desperately needs that. In 2023 — on pace to be the hottest year on record — Americans still 

 climate change 17th (out of 21) when asked about national priorities. And despite the massive spending, in mid-July, 71 percent of Americans 

 said they had heard little or nothing about the Inflation Reduction Act.

How much more is possible if we mobilized around the green transition the IRA started just as we did the Green New Deal? What momentum, what progress could that unlock? We need a 

 mass movement along with mass organizations for climate. And the only way there is with — not over — Black people.

Illustration by Mark Harris. Photographs by FG Trade and Matthias Kulka, via Getty Images.

Our Green Transition May Leave Black People Behind

A woman walks through a meeting hall during National Women’s Day celebrations while members chant “Amandla!” (“power”). It was a popular rallying cry during apartheid resistance. Photographs by Siyabonga Mbhele (LordbearPictures) for Hammer & Hope.

), a mass movement of socialist shack dwellers based in Durban, South Africa, celebrated National Women’s Day, a 

 in memory of the more than 20,000 Black, Indian, colored, and white women who in 1956 marched in Pretoria demanding the 

 that prevented Black people from entering areas of white occupation. For AbM, that holiday is also a time to mourn and remember the lives of 

 since 2009 in the struggle for land and housing. Last year, four of them were gunned down at the movement’s settlements. The movement 

 that ANC politicians are behind most of the killings.

Portraits of assassinated Abahlali baseMjondolo members on display during the movement’s commemorative event on August 20, 2023, at the eKhenana settlement, located in Cato Manor, a historically working-class area in Durban.

The Abahlali baseMjondolo isicathamiya group performs during the General Assembly meeting on August 6, 2023. Isicathamiya is an a cappella singing style originated by the South African Zulu people that is defined by its harmonies and the singers’ choreographed dance moves.

A member of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement wearing a “Socialism or Death” T-shirt. The slogan was popularized by Lindokuhle Mnguni, a prominent leader of the movement who was assassinated on August 20, 2022.

Community members listen to speeches made by Abahlali baseMjondolo leadership during the August 6 General Assembly meeting. They live in eNkanini, an informal settlement on municipal land in Bonela, just outside the business district.

AbM has about 115,000 members spread across 81 branches in the southeast of South Africa. Since its founding in 2005, the movement has fought for access to land and housing along with basic services, like sanitation and electricity. The movement’s struggles, which include defending poor workers from evictions in big cities, expose the social inequality and racial discrimination that remain as 

Thapelo Mohapi speaks to community members during the August 6 General Assembly meeting.

“The movement first and foremost has a principle that we don’t struggle for you, we struggle with you,” explained Thapelo Mohapi, AbM’s general secretary. Contrary to conventional social movements, AbM does not rely on elected representatives to channel its demands. Instead, the movement maintains that landless and homeless workers should speak and act for themselves. They do that by organizing protests, presenting demands to state authorities, democratically managing settlements where they grow subsistence crops, and opening and running political schools. With such acts, AbM synthesizes direct action with grassroots self-determination.

A child crosses a bridge that leads to the other side of the eKhenana settlement.

A resident of the eKhenana settlement heads to the community garden.

Women farming in the eKhenana settlement, which is in Cato Manor, a historically working-class area in Durban.

Mohapi emphasized the strategic importance of AbM’s bottom-up internal architecture, saying, “It is only when people are democratically organized from below that they can change the system that oppresses them.” AbM’s structure enables democratic participation at the grassroots and top levels. Local councils from each branch bring demands to a forum of elected chairs and then to the National Council. The movement’s General Assembly, open to all members, meets once a month to set priorities for the National Council and can potentially disband any structure of the movement if members feel their demands are being ignored.

A member of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement dances during the isicathamiya group’s performance.

Abahlali baseMjondolo members listen to speeches during the August 6 General Assembly meeting.

Women play a key role in the councils and daily life of the settlements. But few had occupied leadership roles as recently as 2016, even though 60 percent of all members were women. Zandile Nsibande, a community facilitator, explained that “women were scared to participate and compete in elections for leadership. They were having low self-esteem.” 

Abahlali baseMjondolo members at the commemoration for fallen leaders held on August 20, 2023, a year after their deaths.

So that year, the AbM Women’s League undertook a campaign to collectively fight for gender equality within the movement’s leadership. “Through this campaign women and men are now 50/50” in leadership, Nsibande said. Along with increasing women’s participation in decision-making and waging campaigns against gender-based violence and feminicide, the league has advocated for women’s financial independence in particular. It has held workshops on women’s access to land and increased awareness of harmful traditional practices, including the requirement that a woman marry a man before she can own land. The league also encourages women to learn new skills, such as traditional jewelry and dressmaking, highlighting the importance of sharing technical knowledge. “If someone knows how to make dresses, then she must teach others how to do so. In South Africa, job opportunities are scarce, so we need to empower ourselves financially,” Nsibande said. The Women’s League seeks donations to open a training center where the women of AbM can learn how to sew.

The mother of Lindokuhle Mnguni watches her grandchild play. The movement is building them a new home in KwaSwayimane, on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg.

The Frantz Fanon Political School in the eKhenana settlement, which also serves as a community hall. The building is adorned with the movement name and the names of fallen members.

Building an autonomous shack dwellers movement that integrates social, political, racial, and gender struggles has triggered what Mohapi calls a “politics of blood.” In addition to the assassinations and evictions, the movement has been impacted by unlawful police raids, detentions, and death threats. In a 2022 letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, signed by more than 130 civil society organizations, the human-rights organization Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa 

 the fact that “at least 24 leaders of the movement have been threatened and killed, hundreds have been injured and thousands displaced from their homes.”

Abahlali baseMjondolo members wearing T-shirts with the faces of (top) Lindokuhle Mnguni, Nokuthula Mabaso, and (bottom) Ayanda Ngila, all fallen leaders, during the August 20 commemorative event at the eKhenana settlement.

Despite these attacks, AbM continues to resist and preserve the legacies of its fallen members. AbM has held ceremonies in their memory at the 

, located in the eKhenana community, the epicenter of the recent attacks. AbM teaches the communist values and humanist worldview that characterize the movement. AbM remains united in its goals of land, housing, and popular self-determination.

Sinothando Mkhize sits outside the Frantz Fanon Political School. Founded in 2019 after the assassination of Lindokuhle Mnguni, it provides a political education to members of the eKhenana community.

“We Don’t Struggle for You, We Struggle with You”

As part of his attacks on Black studies, gender studies, and academic freedom in classrooms across Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis made a particular target of New College of Florida. On January 6, DeSantis’s office announced the appointment of six new members to the board of trustees. By including vocal opponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; antiracist curriculums; and gender and sexuality studies, DeSantis packed the board with a group of ideologues in order to remake the college in the image of conservative Christian colleges like Hillsdale. Shortly after one of the first board meetings of the year, the Florida Board of Governors appointed a seventh member, securing a conservative majority on the 13-member board.

The new board fired Patricia Okker, the president, and installed a Republican  operative and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Richard Corcoran, as the interim president. They dismantled the office that supported the college’s already limited diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and fired the office’s gender-nonconforming chief diversity officer and dean of DEI, Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez. They also fired Helene Gold, a beloved research librarian and outspoken critic of the new administration. They denied tenure to five faculty members who had been recommended for tenure at every level of the academic process. They began preparations for a “core curriculum” in favor of so-called virtue courses that will give students a “beautiful foundation in virtue.” They are spending part of the nearly $50 million budget — the largest in several decades — hiring an athletic director and coaches on a campus with few sports or facilities to support them. The college community faces near weekly changes to the campus infrastructure, curriculum, and staffing.

At the Board of Trustees meeting on August 10, the members started the process to abolish the gender studies program, a move students and faculty members denounced. Soon after, Nicholas Clarkson, the only faculty member with a full-time appointment in that program, submitted a resignation letter stating, “Florida is the state where learning goes to die.” The chaos has continued, with the administration scrambling to move mostly returning students into nearby hotels due to a shortage of student housing. The loss of nearly 40 percent of the faculty has meant cancelled classes, leaving students unsure how to meet requirements for their majors.

Erik Wallenberg, a visiting assistant professor of history at New College of Florida, was denied a contract renewal by the interim president despite being asked back by the social sciences division. On June 23, 2023, Erik interviewed rising third-year student and incoming Black Student Union Vice President Devyn Rolls.

 Can you tell us how you reacted when you first realized what was happening with the new board of trustees coming into New College?

 My first two years of being at New College, I worked at the airport Starbucks across the street. Ten-hour shifts, three days a week. I was making drinks for customers, and I felt my phone just blowing up in my back pocket. I look around to see if my manager’s there, and I pull my phone out, scrolling through the group chat. I’m seeing “Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis.” Then I told my manager I’m going on my 30-minute break, and I read about who was appointed to the board. I don’t know why, but my first instinct was to laugh. I was like, “This is rich. This is comedy gold.” Because I’m not going to say I expected it, but I live in Florida, and I go to a predominantly white institution [PWI]. What are these people doing? This is absolutely ridiculous. This is like a comedic novel. I didn’t understand what was going on completely.

Then I get home that night, and I call my mom. I had sent her a bunch of news articles with the breaking news and information on all the new board members. We’re on the phone talking about it, and she’s like, “I don’t think you should stay there.” I was thinking maybe I should. I’ve got to stand my ground. I’ve gotten this far. You’re not about to take me out the game. My mom’s first instinct was to pack up and go. But I was thinking that I’ve put so much money into this. I’ve put in so much studying. “One more semester” is the thing that I keep saying to myself now.

The Black Student Union is the reason why the student government still has a DEI training. I was just thinking 

 So your mom was like, “Let’s get you out and keep you safe and find something better for you,” and your instinct was to stay and fight. What did you do then? Did you have a Black Student Union meeting or strategize with other students?

Our intention from the start has always been to protect Black students. There’s probably only been one week I’ve been at New College where I haven’t had contact with the Black Student Union. Whether we had a meeting of three people — the first meeting that I ever went to had three people — or 40 people, the goal has always been to create and maintain space for Black and marginalized people on this campus. So our first instinct was you’ve got to stay safe.

During the 2020 uprising I was under the age of 18, and my mom was like, “You’re not going out there.” My friends 

 out there with the Tampa Police Department brutalizing them. They were shooting rubber bullets at my friends, and I told my mom about it. She was like, “Yeah, you got a curfew now. Don’t you dare.” I get where she was coming from — I disagree a little bit, but I get where she was coming from. But watching and participating in the events of summer 2020, we knew that the police across the country were tracking people. We knew that the police were brutalizing people in broad daylight on camera.

New College is a PWI, so you’re a little bit more protected in that sense. But if something happens, you’re the first person to go down. Whether that means mass doxing — people on the internet finding the speech that someone wrote, where they live, their family members — now you’re the person who’s being harassed on the internet, people are showing up outside of your house graffitiing your stuff, and you’re the person whose family is having people knock on their door. So you need to be safe. That was our first instinct. If you’re going to go out, be safe about it.

The second thing was we’re always going to be here for you, every single week. You can come in and tell us about everything that happened this week. We will talk about it, because I feel like in some senses it’s gotten a lot harder. The Black Student Union knew from the get-go this is a dangerous situation. They’re trying to hurt us. They’re trying to cause harm to us. And we will always be here to make sure that you can talk about it.

 There was some of that on our side, too. Some faculty said, “Well, let’s wait and see what happens.” A group of us thought that all you had to do is to look at any of these people and know that they’re coming in with an agenda to remake the college from the top down, and they don’t care who gets in their way or what casualties they cause. They don’t care what disasters they leave in their wake. And we have to respond to that. So our question was how do you get more people to see that and take real steps to organize in reaction?

How did your semester change from the beginning through to the end? Did your life on campus change? Did your relationship to faculty or other students change?

 It was a lot of grieving. First, the initial shock hit. That quickly wore off and turned into grief. I remember going into a faculty member’s office for office hours; we were talking about an essay that I had written. And she was like, “How are you doing?” We write about tough subjects in that class: the 2020 protests, the previous Black Lives Matter uprisings in the country, as well as the extrajudicial killings of Black people. So I was sitting in her office talking about my essay, and I just burst into tears. I was like, “Everything is going wrong. And it’s so horrible here. And no one cares about us.” I kind of don’t know about my future here. I’m stressed. My blood pressure was so high.

By the time we got to the very end of the semester, every week at BSU we had check-ins where we would go around the room and ask everybody, “How’s your week doing on a scale of one to 10? How are you right now?” And I remember this friend said, “They didn’t tenure the two chemistry professors. I don’t know who’s going to be in charge of my thesis. So it doesn’t look like I’m going to graduate on time.” I was sitting there wondering, “Are my professors going to be here?” It’s gone from me just being generally pissed off and very aggravated toward New College to realizing the precarity of the situation. The place I know, with the faculty and staff I need for my senior thesis, may not be here when it’s time for me to graduate. I may not be able to complete my education, because I won’t be able to do my thesis. My friends may not be able to do the same either.

 Can you tell us about when this board of trustees came onto campus to have these meetings? There are Proud Boys all over Florida, and there was fear they would come onto campus. How did students respond to that?

 I remember the first time that I was concerned that fringe right-wingers would come onto our campus was when trustee Christopher Rufo and then-trustee Eddie Speir came to campus in January. And we had a senate meeting within the student government, and that was the discussion. Nothing else on the agenda got addressed.

Once they had their full board of trustees, the board limited how many people could come to their meeting and how long they could speak. They have a ton of cops. They use metal detectors on you, essentially creating a locked-down perimeter. As a Black student, I find the police make me uncomfortable. These trustees were basically just disrespecting me by being on my campus. They’re tearing apart my campus from the academic side, and then they have the audacity to bring it over to the residential side, where they can cause unrest and bring all of these dangerous people onto my campus. And they think that they can get away with it. That’s the worst part.

Erik Wallenberg, a former visiting assistant professor of history
at New College of Florida. Photograph by Danielle A. Scruggs
for Hammer & Hope.

 The feeling on campus, both of having the neo-fascist right wing present and then having the huge police presence, was awful. It was so clear that it was about protecting that small group of board members, as if we were threatening them. And we all know where the violence comes from. It doesn’t come from our side. It comes from the fascists and their police. I remember one of the last board of trustees meetings of the semester, the one where they refused to grant tenure to the five faculty members; there was a protest before. But then a group of students, mostly students of color, came to the front door of the building where the board was meeting and just started chants against what they were doing. They started this spirited response to what we knew was going on inside that building. It was a really inspiring moment for me. We knew that they were on campus to deny this group of faculty tenure, we knew that they were coming for this campus — they had been doing it all semester — and the students were refusing to just roll over and accept it. They showed that there was going to be a response, that we’re going to make our displeasure known before, during, and after that meeting. You were there, weren’t you?

 I was there. I had a meeting that night that I didn’t get to. I was at the protest before the meeting. So then the board of trustees are going in, and we’re just standing around. I’m like, “Hey, guys, you know, it would be really, really funny if we all went home and got pots and pans and speakers, and we waited until they came out of the meeting so that we could confront them.” And everyone agreed. So we went home, got our pots and pans, our speakers.

After watching the whole meeting, everyone was really fired up. The board of trustees wrapped up that meeting very quickly. We ran out and started executing our plan. The campus police were acting a little crazy that day. The moment that there is a group of people, even if it’s just 20 people and five cops, they get freaked out. They immediately assume they need to protect whatever they’re standing in front of, and they start pushing people around. And that’s what happened that day. As the trustees were riding away in their limousine golf cart, we were chanting at them. One of them was recording this on her phone and laughing. Her sitting on a golf cart recording a bunch of students saying, 

You are disrespecting our campus, you are hurting us

, and giggling made me think that these people are crazy.

 That’s my recollection, too. When the board took that vote, it was clear they were going to get out of there in a hurry. The police escorted those members who voted against tenure out a side door onto a waiting golf cart limo surrounded by police. It was Debra Jenks who was filming us. What I remember is that everyone was shouting — students, faculty, community members — following their golf cart and just shouting “Shame!” at them. It was such a shameful display in the meeting, and then to see them scurry like rats out the side door crystallized it for me. In those moments it becomes apparent that they know what they’ve done is wrong. We know that 

 know that what they’re doing is wrong. Anyone seeing that scene couldn’t help but realize that these people know they’ve done wrong, and now they’re trying to escape. They’re trying to get away from the consequences. They won’t even face us. They won’t be forced to explain what they’ve done because they know that they’ve done a terrible thing.

 I also think that it helps them to paint New College students as a vicious mob. No one came out with weapons. They immediately scurried away. No one was going to do anything to them physically — we just wanted them to have to see these people that they’re causing immense harm to. They know what they’re doing is hurting people, and to be confronted by that may as well be physical violence to them. But those from the outside just presume that they’re running away because New College students might physically hurt them.

 As students are trying to respond to these attacks on education and assert the right to have access to Black history and gender studies in Florida but also across the country, do you have any advice for them? And do you have any plans for how you’re responding in the coming year?

 You’ve got to talk to people one on one. First, if you’re at a public institution, don’t use your institutional email and try not to attach your name to anything that you’re doing. This requires strategy. Most of all, it requires talking to people that you may not have spoken with before and people that you may have ideological disagreements with. Because at the end of the day, it’s us versus fringe right-wing fascists. We may have disagreements. “Oh, this person is a Marxist-Leninist, and I’m an anarcho-syndicalist.” Have you considered that the board is out for both of you? For this one moment you just have to learn to agree to disagree with the people around you and stand together as a united front. Talk to other clubs. You have to reach out and extend invitations; you have to accept invitations from people you normally may not run with. Because they’re out to get all of us; they’re out to hurt and cause immense harm, and they likely already have. Regardless of whatever ideological differences we have, you have to learn how to work with other people.

So what are we doing? Are we doing property destruction? Or are we doing property creation? It’s tough to find that middle ground, because some people are like, “We want to have food trucks. We want to do chalk and draw pictures.” That’s not my prerogative. I firmly believe that if there’s a board of trustees meeting happening on our campus, on the residential side, directly behind where I live, then we need to respond. The fact that they think they can show up where I live, where their presence invites people like the Proud Boys, and think that they can get away with it is ridiculous. No, they need to face the consequences of their actions. We need to disrupt in whatever capacity we can without getting arrested.

The other big thing is, where’s the money? There’s been a lot of donations to Save New College. I believe if you’re getting donations, it should be used as a bail fund. It’s a mutual-aid fund. Instead a lot of it was used on public relations. I asked, “Why are we using it on P.R. if we haven’t done anything wrong?” They can’t do a smear campaign against us. Also this is a college, and there are people who are either learning about or doing P.R. right now. That’s not a good use of our money. So there are big ideological and organizational differences within NCF. But at the end of the day, I can’t just decide that these people aren’t listening to me, they’re not doing what I want them to do, so I’m going to go off and not do anything or start my own organization to oppose these changes to NCF. It’s not a good use of our power. I believe that even though I have ideological differences within these organizations, and even though the Black Student Union has said time and time again that some people are not showing up for us in the way that they should be, it’s our business to change that. We have to go into the group ourselves and fix that. We have done that before within the student government, so we can definitely do it again.

 Do you have any plans for organizing when you come back in the fall? Have students been talking? Anything we should look out for and any ways that people can support you all?

 Keep your eye on New College. The thing that I’ve been most worried about is people just kind of letting it fade into obscurity. Because in this country, our news cycle is extremely quick. Second, since the college administration’s DEI office has been abolished, I will have a larger role in student government. All of the DEI is now my and my co-chairs’ domain, because the college cannot dictate what the student government does. We’ve been talking about doing occupations, trying to rally more support from the student body, because there is a general consensus that this sucks. With all the sports and new students coming onto the campus, I’m worried about a lot of class tensions occurring. So I’m trying to help the campus stand together instead of fall apart.

Devyn Rolls, a student at New College of Florida. Photograph by Jeffery Salter for Hammer & Hope.

One Black Student Union Vice President vs. Ron DeSantis

oe Biden stated what his party takes to be the truth about Democrats and Black America, when, days before police officers murdered George Floyd in 2020, he told a host of a popular Black radio show while promoting his candidacy, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

Biden’s claim was galling. As a race-baiting legislator in the 1980s and ’90s, he helped to dismantle welfare and expand the criminal legal system. The comment was also presumptuous; for weeks, Biden was engaged in competitive Democratic primaries. But the Democratic Party 

 basically owned the Black vote for nearly a half century. Did Blackness confer such a political uniformity that even someone like Biden could say that a vote for him was a vote for the interests of Black Americans?

If that’s true, why has it been hard to sustain a movement against racism in the United States? What undermines the unity of Black people amid racist attacks, including the recent mass shooting of Black people in a Dollar General store by a white supremacist in Jacksonville, Fla.? Days after Biden’s impolitic quip, the largest protests in American history unfolded across the country. The “Black lives matter” slogan assumed new meaning in a pandemic that had ravaged Black communities in particular. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd shocked the public out of its exhaustion with our upended society.

Local activists unveiled radical demands to uproot the causes of violence, disease, and death — demands born of the chaos of the pandemic and the radicalization created by the state’s failure to enact meaningful reform. Protesters called for the redistribution of public money away from the police and back into libraries, health care, housing, schools, and social programs. Ordinary people responded to the pall Donald Trump cast over national politics, and they also protested local conditions worsened by police brutality and austerity budgets.

When Biden claimed that no Black person could vote for Trump, he sensed the political impact of Trump’s racist insults hurled at cities with Black mayors or large Black populations. Trump had once 

 Baltimore as a disgusting and rat-infested city where no human being would want to live. Chicago became a catchall for his racist caricature of American cities — what he called “American carnage” in his inauguration speech in 2017. He 

 of San Francisco, “It’s worse than a slum; there’s no slum like that.” As a response to Fox News host Sean Hannity singling out Black-led cities, Trump 

, “Everyone gets upset when I say it. It’s not racist. Frankly, Black people come up to me and say ‘Thank you, sir, for saying it.’ They want help. These cities, it’s like living in hell.”

Trump’s misconduct made it easy for Black public officials to decry him across national news outlets and voice solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Many protesters hoped that those politicians, some of whom 

 to empathize with the anger on the streets, would lead the way in transforming protest demands into public policy. Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston and the former president of the African American Mayors Association, said as much in 2021: “Black mayors, we have to get it,” adding, “We come from these communities and many of us live in these communities. So who better situated to address all of these needs and challenges than we are?” The sentiment was the same the year before: Black elected officials would stand in solidarity with Black protesters to pursue reform. All of this heightened protesters’ expectations; if federal politicians rejected their demands, maybe local ones would fulfill them, especially when it comes to police reform, which is a local issue given there are around 18,000 police departments.

Yet Black leaders in local and federal office largely failed to enact substantial reforms, which they claimed to be uniquely qualified to deliver. Instead, police killings nationally 

 in 2021 and 2022 than they had been in 2020. Often in politics, politicians say one thing and do another, and Black elected officials are no different. Political change requires cooperation among multiple parties, which can be hard. But these officials used their identity to cultivate an impression that they harbor unique insights that allow them to be effective legislators. It is a perspective crystallized by the title of an article by the social scientist and writer Andre Perry: “To Protect Black Women and Save America from Itself, Elect Black Women.”

Despite the greatest concentration of Black political power in American history, the problems that plague poor and working-class Black communities persist. We not only had a two-term Black president, and Black attorneys general, but now there are two Black Supreme Court justices. Black people preside as mayors of some of the largest and wealthiest cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston; soon, Cherelle Parker, a Black woman, will become mayor of Philadelphia, the sixth-largest city. There are more Black elected officials in Congress than ever, but there has been no substantive reform. As a result, nearly 40 percent of Black people said in a recent poll that “B.L.M. has done the most to help Black people in the U.S. in recent years,” compared with the paltry 6 percent that said the Congressional Black Caucus had done the most. And for all the B.L.M. movement’s problems, more than 80 percent of Black people polled say they support it.

Black politicians’ suggestion that a shared racial identity means their election alone will fix Black communities makes it appear that the hard work to forge solidarity and engage in political struggle is unnecessary. Some describe this gap between promises and outcomes as selling out or even betrayal, yet Black elected officials complain of being held to a higher standard by the media or Black voters, who, they claim, hold unrealistic expectations for change. But these officials made false promises as Black insiders working on behalf of the community, which prompted new questions about how to achieve change.

he historian Robin D. G. Kelley has challenged the “presumption of a tight-knit, harmonious Black community that has existed across time and space.” During the Jim Crow era, residential segregation and racial terror seemed to unite the fates of Black people. Then, just as now, the Black community was contingent, fragile, and riven by class tensions between the Black middle class and the Black poor and working class. Whatever cohesion born of necessity then cannot be invoked today as an actual strategy to fight oppression. The successes of the civil rights movement further frayed any sense of a unified Black community, as more Blacks rose to the middle class and elected office. The generation that came of age after the 1960s benefited from the rights and affirmative action initiatives that cracked open the possibilities of a better life. Greater access to college and better-paying work, and with it better housing, transformed their lives and raised expectations that they could ascend in society. But that came at a cost.

“When members of a racial or ethnic group become affluent,” the political scientist Michael Dawson wrote in his groundbreaking book 

, “they seek to preserve their ‘well-earned’ measure of security and privilege by forming coalitions with other racial or ethnic groups whose economic interests are similar,” leading to increased “class conflict among African Americans.” This was true in 1994, when Dawson published his book, and it is even more true today. For all the focus on the racial wealth gap between Black and white families, the greatest transformation in Black life in the past 50 years has been class polarization 

 Black families. In 1975, fewer than 1.4 percent made over $100,000. Today, that figure is 20 percent.

When it comes to the Black elite, the top 5 percent of Black households 

 had higher incomes than 85 percent of white households. The highest-earning 20 percent of Black middle-class households had higher incomes than 62 percent of all white households. “Du Bois’s ‘talented 10th’ has become the ‘prosperous 13 percent,’ ” quipped Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard African American studies professor, in a 2016 article. Today, that number is most likely higher. In the article, “

,” Gates observed, “There are really two nations within Black America.” “The problem of income inequality,” he added, citing the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, “is not between Black America and White America but between Black haves and have-nots, something we don’t often discuss in public in an era dominated by a narrative of fear and failure and the claim that racism impacts 42 million people in all the same ways.”

This was an exaggeration, of course. Compared with white Americans, we can measure the fragility of the Black middle class and even the Black elite by their relative debt burdens, or income or wealth disparities. And while the wealth gap between the Black poor and the Black middle class may strain political allegiances, it also connects them. Middle-class Blacks are more likely than their white peers to provide financial support to poorer relatives. But this does not guarantee political solidarity; middle-class Blacks may resent people who “hold them back.” Largely because of racism in the real estate market, middle-class Black people are also more likely to live closer to poor Black neighborhoods than middle-class white people relative to poor white areas. This is no recipe for unity. Instead, Black homeowners who want property values to rise to protect their devalued assets may feel antagonized by this proximity.

The new opportunities for social mobility increased class tensions, which manifested in negative attitudes. In 1986, only 44 percent of Black people felt the values of middle-class and poor Blacks had “become more different.” That figure rose to 61 percent in a 

 where 70 percent of Black respondents with a college degree agreed that there was a value gap between middle-class and poor Blacks. Nearly one in four said that growing diversity within Black communities meant that they could no longer be considered a single race.

Hammer&Hope

No. 2

Summer 2023

a Black body is somebody

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Uprisings Are Just the Beginning

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No. 2

Summer 2023

a Black body is somebody

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Previous Article

Next Article

More From This Issue

1

Uprisings Are Just the Beginning

2

Our Green Transition May Leave Black People Behind

18

A Thank You Letter

FREE TO READ

SIGN UP TODAY

FREE
TO READ

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TODAY