Marginalized communities can politically organize themselves without elite leadership

Evidence

The idea of politics I’m suggesting here assumes a different kind of leadership. It insists on the capacities and responsibilities of everyday, ordinary black people and urges them to reach for a higher self even in opportunity deserts. Those deserts are fertile ground to be politically creative. They are the places in which we can think, reflect, and act anew. They provide opportunities to expand the very idea of who matters in the context of struggle with others and let us see ourselves as our own saviors. Ferguson showed us that. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 624

Categorization

• XREF: The anti-leader ‘no HNICs’ stance connects to the reader’s knowledge of Ella Baker’s organizing philosophy cited just above. — connects to: EJ advocates lack the power base to win without fusing movements; Time poverty structurally prevents the poor from organizing political movements — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1889; Attempted racial-defensive coalitions collapsed without preexisting community institutions. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 219