{"id":71,"date":"2026-05-24T06:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T06:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=71"},"modified":"2026-05-24T06:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T06:36:12","slug":"can-black-lives-matter-win-in-the-age-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Can Black Lives Matter Win in the Age of Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Activism<\/li>\n<li>Feature<\/li>\n<li>September 19, 2017<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>Can Black Lives Matter Win in the Age of Trump?<\/h1>\n<h1>Can Black Lives Matter Win in the Age of Trump?<\/h1>\n<h2>You could be forgiven for thinking the movement has gone quiet. But you\u2019d be wrong.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>September 19, 2017<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On June 1, the right-wing blogger and avowed white supremacist Jason Kessler and other alt-right activists met for dinner on the patio of Miller\u2019s Downtown, a popular burger joint in Charlottesville, Virginia. The dinner was two weeks after white nationalists had gathered in the city\u2019s Lee Park, wielding torches as a kind of dress rehearsal for the mid-August \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally that left counterprotester Heather Heyer dead and dozens more injured. According to local reports, members of the white-led group Showing Up for Racial Justice surrounded Kessler\u2019s party that night at Miller\u2019s, recording the gathering on their phones and shouting, \u201cNazi, go home!\u201d At a nearby table sat University of Virginia professor Jalane Schmidt, who at the time was trying to establish a Black Lives Matter chapter in Charlottesville. As black passersby stopped and showed interest in the confrontation, participants in the SURJ action directed them to Schmidt\u2019s table. She considers that night to be her group\u2019s first real meeting. Schmidt knew that many BLM chapters were founded in response to police shootings. \u201cIt begins in a crisis,\u201d she told me. \u201cIn our case, it was the crisis of the alt-right organizing in our town.\u201d<span>1<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Despite reports to the contrary, the national constellation of racial-justice organizations loosely referred to as the Black Lives Matter movement is alive and well. It would be easy to think otherwise: BLM appears less frequently in the news than it did between 2013 and last year, when the movement responded forcefully in the streets and online to a string of black deaths at the hands of police. Now, when BLM is mentioned at all, it\u2019s often because a member of the Trump administration is issuing a dog whistle to the president\u2019s supporters, as was the case last month when Trump\u2019s personal attorney forwarded an e-mail to conservative journalists characterizing BLM as \u201ctotally infiltrated by terrorist groups.\u201d But even in more sympathetic portrayals, BLM is said to have lost or squandered the power it began building in July 2013 following George Zimmerman\u2019s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. According to a recent <i>BuzzFeed<\/i> article, BLM is beset by debilitating internal rifts over direction and funding, preventing the movement from doing much at all to accomplish its aims.<span>2<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But conversations with just over a dozen people in the movement suggest otherwise. BLM organizers are still in the streets in places like Charlottesville and Boston, where white supremacists mobilized this summer. From St. Louis, Missouri, to Lansing, Michigan, they\u2019re engaging with electoral politics in new ways. And they\u2019re taking the time to reflect on and develop new strategies for moving forward given the changed political terrain.<span>3<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>T<\/span>rump\u2019s election, like his campaign, brought a new fervor to efforts to crush black organizing and roll back the gains made during the Obama administration. Since last year, so-called \u201cBlue Lives Matter\u201d bills, which increase the penalties for offenses against police officers and in some cases designate them as hate crimes, have proliferated in state legislatures. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in late August that President Trump would sign an executive order again allowing local police departments to procure military gear like bayonets and grenade launchers. As president, Barack Obama had banned the transfer of such equipment after protesters and police clashed in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of Michael Brown\u2019s shooting. State legislatures are also considering laws that make nonviolent public protest costly and, in some cases, deadly: Lawmakers have tried to pass legislation that limits civil liability for motorists who hit protesters with their vehicles, as well as other legislation that puts protesters on the hook financially for any police presence their demonstrations require. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen comparable policies and practices since the McCarthy era,\u201d said Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, when I asked her whether the Trump era demands a new approach to black organizing. \u201cSo, yes, our tactics do have to change.\u201d<span>4<\/span><\/p>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Popular<\/h2>\n<p><span><span>&#8220;swipe left below to view more authors&#8221;<\/span>Swipe \u2192<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>GLP-1s and the Limits of Knowing Better<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                GLP-1s and the Limits of Knowing Better<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nGrace Ginsburg <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The American Revolution Was a Mistake<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The American Revolution Was a Mistake<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nElie Mystal <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Why Losing Colbert Hurts So Much<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Why Losing Colbert Hurts So Much<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nBen Schwartz <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>\u201cWhy Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                \u201cWhy Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nFeature<br \/>\n<span><br \/>\n                            \/<br \/>\n                        <\/span><br \/>\nAlex Shams <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>The tactics may be evolving, but the organizers I spoke with reminded me that in a \u201cleader-full\u201d movement such as this one\u2014that is, one that prizes collaborative and decentralized leadership\u2014no one individual or group is in a position to decide for everyone else what tactics to prioritize over others. Still, it was clear from my conversations that activists in leadership positions within BLM-affiliated groups were expressing much more interest in electoral politics than I\u2019d heard in the past. \u201cIn the early stages of the movement, people were talking mostly about the criminal-justice system and a system of criminalization,\u201d said Jessica Byrd, who runs Three Point Strategies, a consulting firm that she refers to as \u201cthe electoral political firm of the movement.\u201d These days, black organizers are turning their attention to the electoral system as yet another social structure that places black people at a disadvantage. This means a new level of engagement in electoral politics as well as the interrogation of a system that diminishes black voters\u2019 power through the antiquated Electoral College, voter-suppression measures, and laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions. \u201cAs much as we need to change the people, we need to change the process,\u201d said Angela Waters Austin of Black Lives Matter Lansing, whose chapter is coordinating a statewide get-out-the-vote and political-education campaign called Election 20XX. \u201cWhat are the policies that continue to make a Donald Trump possible? If he did not get a majority of the popular vote, then why is he the president?\u201d<span>5<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As the 2016 presidential campaign unfolded, BLM activists gained a reputation for using disruption as a way to push the movement\u2019s key issues. At the Netroots Nation conference that took place during the primaries, black activists famously interrupted the candidates\u2019 forum with chants and heckles. At one point, Tia Oso of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (the organization headed by Opal Tometi, one of BLM\u2019s three founders), took the stage. Soon after, Democratic candidate and former Maryland governor Martin O\u2019Malley stumbled with a tone-deaf proclamation that \u201cBlack lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.\u201d Once Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had the floor, \u201che talked over the protesters, got defensive about his racial-justice bona fides, and stuck to his [stump speech],\u201d Joe Dinkin wrote on The Nation.com. After trying and failing to disrupt a New Hampshire campaign appearance by Hillary Clinton, a BLM Boston member asked her a halting, long-winded question that did the\u00a0favor of making her response\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws\u201d\u2014come off as refreshingly sensible.<span>6<\/span><\/p>\n<p>At the time, some progressives criticized these moves, blaming BLM for undermining Democratic candidates when the obvious threat, in their eyes, came from the Republicans. But to many black organizers, these disruptions were a principled way to hold candidates who claimed to represent their interests accountable. When I asked her whether she wished that Black Lives Matter had endorsed Hillary Clinton in the general election, Garza pivoted away from Clinton entirely and talked about how the Democratic candidates had bungled their BLM moment at Netroots. \u201cWhen he was pressed, I wish that Bernie had said, \u2018Of course black lives matter, and here\u2019s what that means for me,\u2019\u201d she offered. Had Sanders discussed how \u201cwe function under a gendered and racialized economy\u201d and done more to build relationships in communities of color, his run for president would have received more support, she added. The problem, in other words, is with candidates who alienate black voters, not with BLM\u2019s refusal to play nice.<span>7<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As the midterm elections draw near, organizers are laying the groundwork for two new initiatives\u2014the Electoral Justice Project and the Black Futures Lab\u2014that they say will address this alienation and transform the ways that black communities participate in the 2018 elections and beyond. And for Byrd and Garza, each of whom is behind one of these efforts, it is not the ascendance of Donald Trump that demands a new kind of black political power. (After all, despite the pressure that BLM activists put on Democratic candidates during the campaign season, 94 percent of black women voters backed Hil-<br \/>\nlary Clinton, as did 82 percent of black men. Black turnout \u201cdid come down,\u201d Kayla Reed, a movement organizer in\u00a0St. Louis, acknowledged. \u201cBut Democrats are not investing in areas where they have a base.\u201d) Instead, organizers told me, to understand the movement\u2019s new energy around elections, you have to understand Tishaura Jones\u2019s failed campaign for mayor of St. Louis.<span>8<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In March, Jones\u2014then treasurer of this largely Democratic city\u2014narrowly lost the party\u2019s mayoral primary, 30 to 32 percent. Just six weeks earlier, she\u2019d been polling at 8 percent in a field of seven Democrats. The winner was the only white candidate in the pack with a sizable following. That Jones came from behind to lose by just 888 votes suggested that she\u2019d been underestimated by the mainstream media and more established politicians. But the young black St. Louis residents who\u2019d been energized by the protests in nearby Ferguson weren\u2019t surprised by her near-win: They had been working hard for Jones behind the scenes, sensing support for her in black communities citywide and finding ways to build on it.<span>9<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Members of the St. Louis Action Council, which was formed in the wake of the Ferguson protests, had started teaching themselves the ins and outs of voter organizing a year earlier, when they\u2019d gotten involved in the race for St. Louis circuit attorney, the city\u2019s top prosecutor job. They asked the candidates their positions on issues like cash bail, juvenile detention, and marijuana decriminalization, and decided to endorse State Representative Kim Gardner. Today, they claim some credit for getting Gardner into office, thereby helping to elect the city\u2019s first black circuit attorney. \u201cFrom Kim\u2019s campaign to Tishaura\u2019s campaign, we grew,\u201d said Reed, who directs the St. Louis Action Council. \u201cPeople trusted us more.\u201d<span>10<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In advance of the Democratic mayoral primary, Reed\u2019s group partnered with other local community organizations to hold a January debate, during which they quizzed the candidates on issues like economic development and displacement, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the relationship between the police and black communities. According to Reed, some of the questions were an effort to determine how the candidates\u2019 goals aligned with \u201cA Vision for Black Lives,\u201d the detailed policy statement that the Movement for Black Lives released in August of last year. (Reed also leads the Movement for Black Lives\u2019 electoral organizing committee. The Black Lives Matter Global Network is one of more than 50 allied organizations that comprise M4BL.) For the young black organizers, Jones stood out: Her platform included a plan to place social workers inside police departments, and she rejected calls to hire additional officers. To Reed and others, Jones was embracing a \u201cdivest framework\u201d that echoed \u201cA Vision for Black Lives,\u201d which calls for pulling resources out of \u201cexploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance and exploitative corporations\u201d and investing those same resources in \u201cthe education, health and safety of black people.\u201d<span>11<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The debate that Reed\u2019s group co-hosted drew a crowd of 1,500, and 33 percent of those who participated in an exit poll indicated that they supported Jones, Reed said. So the St. Louis Action Council paid little heed to the\u00a08 percent that Jones had polled just days earlier. \u201cWhat we knew was that polls often do not speak to what\u2019s actually happening in communities that are not [made up of] regular voters,\u201d Reed told me. By this point, she added, she could feel the energy around Jones\u2019s campaign in the communities where she works. But she knew that the campaign was doomed unless one of the other leading black candidates agreed to drop out of the race.<span>12<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Once the St. Louis Action Council endorsed Jones, it threw its weight behind her for the next month, canvassing, getting out the vote, and partnering with the national civil-rights organization Color of Change to tell 20,000 St. Louis residents via text messaging that Jones was its endorsed candidate. In the end, it wasn\u2019t enough. None of the other black candidates\u2014all of whom were men, organizers point out\u2014yielded to Jones, so the black vote was split and a white alderwoman named Lyda Krewson became the next mayor in a city in which black people comprise a slim plurality (49 percent), and in a region rocked by police shootings that have pushed questions of systemic racism to the fore.<span>13<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>J<\/span>ones\u2019s loss was a wake-up call to the movement\u2019s leading organizers, and it made many of them prioritize bringing the power they\u2019d built over the past four years into the electoral realm. \u201cWe should play out each one of those races not as a local race, but as a national race,\u201d Garza told me. \u201cNationally, we didn\u2019t mobilize for Tishaura. Tishaura should\u2019ve been our Bernie. Stacey Abrams [a progressive black woman vying to become Georgia\u2019s next governor] should be our Bernie.\u201d That means offering hands-on, on-the-ground support, she said. \u201cAll of us should have been sending caravans of people to St. Louis to knock on doors if they wanted that.\u201d Jones and Abrams aren\u2019t the only candidates that Garza thinks the movement can support. Chokwe Lumumba, the black progressive who was elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, in June, is another; so are Pamela Price, running for district attorney in Oakland\u2019s Alameda County, and Andrew Gillum, running for governor in Florida.<span>14<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Identifying exciting candidates like these and deploying national resources to campaigns where they\u2019re needed is just one part of an electoral game plan, Byrd told me. In November, she and Reed will launch the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project, an effort to educate and mobilize black voters that will kick off with town-hall gatherings in cities throughout the South and in what Reed calls \u201cmigration cities\u201d: Midwestern cities with sizable populations of black Americans who moved north during the Great Migration. Voter education will be essential to these efforts. \u201cWe don\u2019t understand what the [Justice Department] is doing, or what this executive order signed by Trump actually means,\u201d Reed said. \u201cWe want to find a space to spark a continued conversation with a hope of getting more people to these midterm elections.\u201d<span>15<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Garza is launching her own electoral organizing project, called Black Futures Lab, this year as well. The<br \/>\n$3 million initiative involves creating an institute where participants will learn how to craft and advocate for policy change, as well as recruiting and training candidates and campaign staff. \u201cIf we\u2019re not making decisions about policy and about representation, if we are not creating our own independent, progressive political force to counter what is a potent backlash to our very existence, we\u2019ll be gone,\u201d Garza said, citing the imprisonment and exile that black-liberation organizers have faced throughout history. \u201cOur ability to operate aboveground will be severely compromised.\u201d<span>16<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For BLM activists, the key to success is keeping these electoral efforts independent. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to build a black-voter mobilization project because one candidate deserves it or the Democratic Party needs it,\u201d Byrd said of the Electoral Justice Project. \u201cBlack people deserve it.\u201d<span>17<\/span><\/p>\n<p>None of this means that organizers will be stepping away from the tactics they used earlier in the movement. Last summer, after five Dallas police officers were shot dead after a protest and conservative commentators laid the blame at the feet of Black Lives Matter, BLM groups didn\u2019t go quiet in an attempt to tamp down accusations that their actions led to the ambush. Instead, activists from Black Youth Project 100, Million Hoodies NYC, the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and elsewhere doubled down on direct action in the following weeks. They showed up at the police-union headquarters in lower Manhattan, at the Oakland Police Department, and in Chicago\u2019s Homan Square, the location of a warehouse where police detained and interrogated thousands of people who had no proper legal representation. \u201cFor us, it was about telling a certain narrative,\u201d said Charlene Carruthers of Black Youth Project 100. \u201cOur movement has a clear vision that doesn\u2019t center itself around individual police officers. Our groups were being blamed, without critical questioning of what we\u2019d been doing for the past several years.\u201d (The Chicago group\u2019s activities should allay any doubts that black organizers can walk and chew gum at the same time: Earlier in 2016, BYP100 participated in the successful citywide campaign to oust State\u2019s Attorney Anita Alvarez.)<span>18<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There have been fewer street protests calling for police accountability in 2017\u2014partly because, in the wake of Trump\u2019s ascent to power, there have been protests about so much else. The anti-Trump resistance has no doubt borrowed from the massive antiwar marches of the early 2000s and the Tea Party protests in the first years of the Obama presidency, but BLM also provided a crucial blueprint, according to several of the organizers I interviewed. BLM normalized confrontation and direct action, and recognized the underlying issues at stake. \u201cBlack Lives Matter begins this moment talking about state violence, about militarization, fascism, authoritarianism,\u201d said Dream Hampton, an informal adviser to some movement organizers. \u201cWe had all this analysis and framing that was absolutely correct.\u201d And the fact that those \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d T-shirts, yard signs, and chants continue to be seen and heard everywhere is further proof of the movement\u2019s enduring impact. \u201c\u2018Black Lives Matter is only rivaled by \u2018Make America Great Again,\u2019\u201d Hampton observed. \u201cDon\u2019t act like the phrase itself isn\u2019t worth its weight in gold.\u201d<span>19<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I<\/span>n Charlottesville, the phrase itself didn\u2019t move Jalane Schmidt much at first. \u201cA hashtag does not a movement make,\u201d she remembers thinking. But once the \u201cVision for Black Lives\u201d policy platform came out, she was impressed. Schmidt had felt frustrated as she followed the debates among local organizations regarding the city\u2019s Confederate monuments over the past year and a half, with conservative preachers and a quiet, careful chapter of the NAACP serving as the official voice of black Charlottesville. The city was becoming a focal point of white-supremacist organizing, but the church leadership and legacy civil-rights organizations had suggested ignoring their meetings and torch rallies. So Schmidt decided that it was time to start a BLM chapter. \u201cWe saw a need to have another vehicle for black mobilization in town, given the situation that we had,\u201d she said. At 48, Schmidt is older than the typical BLM activist; but as a queer black woman, she appreciated the role that other queer black women had played as the movement\u2019s founders. Black Lives Matter was also the organization that was most consistent and outspoken in its claims to be unapologetically black. Schmidt thought she\u2019d found a good fit.<span>20<\/span><\/p>\n<p>At that first unexpected chapter meeting in Miller\u2019s Downtown, held \u201cright under the noses of the white supremacists,\u201d Schmidt collected the names and contact information of local people interested in getting involved. As she and other core members learned about more alt-right and neo-Nazi rallies planned in their community, they reached out to national BLM organizers for guidance and support. David Vaughn Straughn, another core member of the Charlottesville group, remembered his frustration as he tried e-mail address after e-mail address listed on the BLM website\u2014for organizers in New York, Chicago, Boston, Denver, and Washington DC, and on and on\u2014and received no response. Eventually he made contact, and the fledgling chapter got on a call with Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a BLM Global Network co-founder, and Nikita Mitchell, BLM\u2019s organizing director. But the conversations around strategy never clicked. \u201cOrganizing in a small Southern town is different from organizing in a big city,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cIn a big city, you can use these big, disruptive tactics and then fade back into the woodwork of 3 million people. Here, the people we might piss off\u2014we\u2019re going to have to work with them next week.\u201d<span>21<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There was also the question of whether their group would be allowed to carry a BLM banner during the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d counterprotests. Though the BLM Global Network doesn\u2019t require local groups to clear their decisions about actions or tactics with the national group, it does require new groups wishing to organize under the Black Lives Matter mantle to go through a series of conversations and trainings before officially using the phrase in their name. According to Schmidt, she asked Khan-Cullors: \u201cThere are going to be all these white people there wearing \u2018Black Lives Matter\u2019 T-shirts, but we\u2019re not allowed to [call ourselves a BLM chapter or march under a BLM banner]?\u201d The national group at first said no, then reversed itself a few days before the events that would garner national attention for the eruption of violence and the displays of white-supremacist hatred. The Charlottesville group is still not an official chapter, but the BLM Global Network amplified its call to action on the national organization\u2019s social-media channels just before the weekend of August 12. \u201cHad that amplification been given sooner, I think we would have had more individuals coming down and helping us defend our city,\u201d Straughn said. \u201cI just wish I had more of a personal connection with somebody who could\u2019ve got the ball rolling a little bit quicker.\u201d<span>22<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Khan-Cullors is open about her regrets. \u201cIt\u2019s really unfortunate that we took too long\u201d to respond to the black activists in Charlottesville, she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s always hard to tell what needs a rapid response.\u201d In my conversation with her, what at first might sound like bureaucratic pettiness came across instead as an expression of the difficulties that any national organization faces as it goes through the pains of rapid growth. The BLM Global Network has reason to tread carefully when it comes to authorizing new groups: It is now the target of two lawsuits brought by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who claim that BLM has created an unsafe environment for law enforcement. Groups calling themselves BLM chapters, but lacking the training that Khan-Cullors and Mitchell offer, have engaged in actions\u2014such as inflammatory chants picked up and broadcast by the media\u2014that provide fuel for such legal claims. \u201cYou need to know what you\u2019re getting yourself into once you start calling yourself a BLM chapter,\u201d Khan-Cullors said of the responsibility she bears. \u201cYou\u2019re going to get a lot of publicity. The right\u2019s going to come after you. You\u2019re going to need security.\u201d<span>23<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A highly visible four-year-old movement and the national organization that emerged from it are bound to stumble when it comes to providing resources, training, and support to places across the country faced with crisis. Nowadays, that feels like everywhere, and black organizers are meeting the challenge with a spirit of experimentation. Rather than creating chaos, they\u2019re looking for a way out of it. \u201cWe are reflective of the needs of hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have been feeling that the government cannot and will not do its job,\u201d said Shanelle Matthews, the communications director for the BLM Global Network. Electoral organizing, street protests, disrupting Democratic events, and crafting new and visionary policies are all ways to begin to meet the challenge, Matthews added. \u201cHowever nimble we need to be to approach that, that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do.\u201d<span>24<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=40\">This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: Want to Know What NAFTA Teaches Us About the TPP Fight?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=42\">GLP-1s and the Limits of Knowing Better<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2><i><span>Your support makes stories like this possible<\/span><\/i><\/h2>\n<p><span>From illegal war on Iran to an inhumane fuel blockade of Cuba, from AI weapons to crypto corruption, this is a time of staggering chaos, cruelty, and violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Unlike other publications that parrot the views of authoritarians, billionaires, and corporations, <\/span><i><span>The Nation <\/span><\/i><span>publishes stories that hold the powerful to account and center the communities too often denied a voice in the national media\u2014stories like the one you\u2019ve just read.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Each day, our journalism cuts through lies and distortions, contextualizes the developments reshaping politics around the globe, and advances progressive ideas that oxygenate our movements and instigate change in the halls of power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>This independent journalism is only possible with the support of our readers. If you want to see more urgent coverage like this, please donate to <\/span><i><span>The Nation<\/span><\/i><span> today.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span> Dani McClain<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Dani McClain is a contributing writer for <em>The Nation<\/em> and author of <em>We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=38\">The American Revolution Was a Mistake<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Can Black Lives Matter Win in the Age of Trump? 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