Networks of local protest can constitute national politics from the ground up

Evidence

I am not suggesting that we concede the national political scene (although I am certainly suspicious of it). Instead, we have to reboot national politics—change the flow of the current. Here intensified local efforts enter into a network of other local practices across the country that, taken together, have national political implications. You can build a national politics from the ground up rather than think about it as decisions that flow from the top down. That’s what the protests did. They connected what happened to Michael Brown in Missouri and Jessica Hernandez in Colorado and John Crawford III and Tanisha Anderson in Ohio with Eric Garner in New York and Trayvon Martin in Florida and Ezell Ford in California and Yvette Smith in Texas and Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. in Wisconsin. The same has happened with the reaction to the closing of schools in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, and with struggles for a livable wage for workers at Walmart and McDonald’s all across the country. We can do what the civil rights icon Ella Baker did, in her early days of organizing NAACP chapters. She established pathways, connections, and conduits that linked her practice across the United States. Like her, we can build a network of local efforts that can give us a more robust form of democratic politics. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 620

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of prior chapters’ treatment of black electoral loyalty and the value gap; also resonates with Ella Baker’s organizing model vs. charismatic leadership. — connects to: Mass protest can move US majorities toward anti-racist structural politics.; Grassroots tribal networks leverage national council seats to advance local cases — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 654; Past environmental-group counterattacks worked because they had an opposing government branch to rally against — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1084 (+4 more)
• SEED: The ‘blank-out ballot’ proposal’s realism could be tested by comparing how networked local campaigns have fared since 2016.