What are the implications of BLM being a 'decentralised’ political movement? - Vicki Robinson
Black Lives Matter has a very interesting structure. It claims to be ‘decentralised’, meaning it is non-hierarchical and without a Martin Luther King-style figurehead, something it shares with the Gilets Jaunes in France. But is BLM really decentralised?
The movement was launched in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. It started as a hashtag, after which they set up the non-profit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLM Global). An umbrella organisation incorporating many local chapters, it could be described as the nerve centre of BLM. BLM Global was fiscally sponsored by the left-leaning Thousand Currents grant-making organisation until July 2020, when it switched to the Tides Center.
However, as the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ is not trademarked, there are other iterations, including the similar-sounding Black Lives Matter Foundation, registered by Robert Ray Barnes in 2015. Within the UK, Black Lives Matter UK has differentiated itself from @ukblm (and its GoFundMe page), which has recently registered itself as Black Liberation Movement UK Limited. On top of that, many people support BLM without involving themselves with any of the organisations.
All these are examples of what Cullors has described as a ‘leader-full’ rather than leaderless nature. However, for a movement claiming to be decentralised, BLM is remarkably homogenous: it is left wing, and Critical Race Theory dominates, spreading through schools, workplaces and centres of power across the West. If BLM was truly decentralised, surely CRT would be debated and challenged, and alternatives presented? Surely it would be ‘ideas-full’?
The answer lies in an interview Cullors did for Dazed, where she detailed her training at the National School for Strategic Organising, linked to the Labour Community Strategy Centre where ‘A MACHINE TO TAKE ON THE SYSTEM’ appears to be a slogan. This training involved a year of reading thinkers including communists Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, instigator of China’s Cultural Revolution, along with ‘all types of global critical theory’. And interestingly, her approach is highly organised:
‘It’s not all intuitive, it’s deeply scientific, thinking about how to build a movement and make it grow…five days a week we were out on the ground actively recruiting people into the organisation we were in, as a way to learn how to bring people in, how to keep them in an organisation.’
This surely implies more authority than others in BLM. Indeed, there is a management structure at BLM Global. Cullors became Executive Director when the Tides Center took over, and when Hawk Newsome, leader of BLM’s New York chapter, spoke at a Trump rally, Kailee Scales, BLM Global’s Managing Director released a statement denying he was ever a chapter leader. This is clearly not non-hierarchical. All this explains why BLM has powered forward while the Gilets Jaunes have somewhat fizzled out.
And this is the main issue. One of the reasons BLM can be so difficult to define, analyse and challenge is the lack of an official figurehead. Take the ‘defund the police’ policy. One minute we are told this is a central policy – BLM Global posted about it on 30th May – then others deny it. Surely Cullors and Scales are leaders who can be questioned about this and other issues?
The many iterations of BLM raise questions about whether supporters really hold common views. When the England football team take the knee, do they want the police defunded or do they simply believe that black lives matter? Does everyone posting #BLM agree with Critical Race Theory, or even understand it? And when people donate, is their money going towards defunding the police or not?
The cleverness of an apparently decentralised approach is that it makes people with disparate views feel they are part of the same movement. In reality, there is a big difference between someone who wants the police defunded and another who wants equality of opportunity. This raises concerns about whether more moderate iterations are being used as a smokescreen for a more radical agenda. ‘Decentralised’ or not, Black Lives Matter in all its forms requires closer analysis.
Vicki Robinson