Elon James White and Imani Gandy Interview Marissa Janae Johnson. Very Illuminating. Thoughts?

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57. Seems like BLM is a mixed bag...

you have chapters of the movement - if you can call it that - all loosely tied together to to fight for Black lives and against police brutality. That's the common thread amongst the movement obviously. Beyond that you get a bunch of different outlooks on what demands are. Obviously you have capitalists in the movement that think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are some kind of answer and back the Democratic Party. You have people in the movement identifying as Black liberals and Democrats, you have people in the movement identifying as Marxists and leftists that think fighting outside the Democratic Party is the answer. You probably have some libertarians in the movement also. Anarchists, Feminists, Nihilists, Socialists, and probably some Communists.

It is a big tent - so to speak - and there is no set of concrete demands except that Black Lives Matter. The question is how do you organize a movement like that into something that has a real concrete set of demands that rises above slogans and emotions. Overall what is the movement fighting for and against as a movement. That is not defined because there are divisions in the movement on what is important and what might not be. It's the same as the Democratic Party whose factions only can agree on one thing and that is that Republicans suck. It's the same way with leftists in which there are dozens of different factions and the only thing they agree on is that class struggle is the defining cause. Everything is confusion because nothing is defined. That has to be changed for any movement to be effective. That's why criticism of what is real and what is not has to be put on the table.

Nothing can be immune from criticism and critique. That goes for BLM, the Democratic Party, electoral candidates, leftists, Marxism, Black leadership, white supremacy, capitalism, socialism, past history and the present conditions on the ground, and everything else. We are so damned thin skinned that we can't take criticism. We hold onto to political critique and criticism of everything as if it was an attack on our very personal being. This can't be personal. It has to be about what is real and what is not for the whole. Who has power and privilege and why that is in all discussions. Who stands with capital and who stands with labor. Who stands with the power and the ruling class and who stands with the struggling and the exploited and oppressed. That is what must be sorted out and those of us who seek real change are not even close to sorting that out.