I sat beside Obama at the Black Lives Matter meeting. This was no political show |
I sat beside Obama at the Black Lives Matter meeting. This was no political show
The Guardian
2016-02-20
 The author sits beside Barack Obama’s in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 18 February. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP |
Some political meetings devolve into theater. Not this one: we all spoke direct truth to literal power
Black folks know political theater when we see it; we’ve lived through it for years. And as the 2016 presidential election ramps up, our feeds, and our lives, are inundated with grandstanding and pandering, much lofty rhetoric and often, too few solutions that actually prioritize the unique needs of people of color.
Any White House meeting, much like the one 15 of us had Thursday with President Obama to discuss civil rights, could have appeared as such.
I witnessed such theater just a week prior at the Ferguson city council meeting. A consent decree to help rid Ferguson of its now well-documented racist policing practices was due for a vote. The decree had been negotiated by city officials and the Department of Justice for many months, and both bodies had been dutifully engaged by a substantial number of Ferguson citizens in conversation, community meetings hosted by the Ferguson Collaborative and public comment at three city council meetings…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Black Lives Matter, Brittany Packnett, The Guardian