I live in Charleston, SC and I understand everyone is incredibly angry. I work on public tranist issues and at this point, I have to rely on African American volunteers to distribute our material because most African Americans won't read something provided to them by a white male even when it's about a project to improve a tranist system on which 75% of the passengers are black. However, in a place like SC most of this pressure falls on the tiny number of white men who show up for progressive, democratic and community meetings, we're easy targets. Maybe we deserve it.
I've been told by Black Lives Matter and Occupy Activists that we're part of the problem because our 25 - 40 years of community activism hasn't produced a better South. Of course most of those young people are in and out of the sturggle in a few months. We're still in it, though our ranks continue to thin. Anyone like us still in the game down here obviously is patient and can handle huge amounts of frustration and abuse. We've already sat through decades of meetings and many of us expect to sit through years more of them before we die. However as I look around the room at the diminishing number of people (all colors and sexes) who actually show up and do the work, I realize that beating up your friends doesn't help the movement much and while we're going to stick around, nobody new is showing up to replace the people who die or have their health break down.
There are people doing really nasty things in business and government down. here. They're insulated by layers of power, staff and physical distance. They're the reason we have 150 thousand people without the access to healthcare that Medicaid Expansion could have provided. They're the reason we have decaying schools while we lavish subsidies on businesses owned by the wealthy. They're the reason we have utterly unsustainable road projects to enable fringe sprawl development while our transit system operates 20 year old buses. They're the reason we have people earning nine dollars an hour. Nobody can touch them. Most of them are invisible. They don't talk to me any longer. They're sure not going to talk to Black Lives matter. They weren't ever going to listen anyway.
Beating up white progressives and liberals for our defects isn't really going to help. it's easy and cheap. I understand that the real targets are out of range. I know you're angry and treated unfairly. However we're well down the road to the big round plantation now, a planet being owned and degrated by an incredibly small number of very rich people who own private islands, jet aircraft and governments. When they're done, they'll own it all and unless the underground railroad shows up with a starship, we'll all be stuck on their plantation. They have every advantage in this contest. The slim chance we have to stop them depends on acting swiftly and using every available particle of energy and resources while there is still time.
Everybody needs to be heard and valued in that effort, but you need to stop talking because we are running out of time. Nine of my fellow Charlestonians ran out of time in June. As President Obama once said, "Go get a mop." That's a metaphore. The Koch brothers and their friends aren't afraid of your mop. You need something faster and more powerful and you need it in a hurry.