5 questions with the leader of Black Lives Matter Boston
Daunasia Yancey holds forth on being “disappointed’’ in Hillary Clinton and the history of racism in America.
Daunasia Yancey, the leader of Black Lives Matter’s local Boston chapter, has made quite a name for herself in the past few days.
In a behind-the-scenes meeting with Clinton last week, Yancey and fellow activist Julius Jones asked the candidate how she feels about being “personally and professionally responsible’’ for the war on drugs and its devastating impact on black communities.
Clinton’s response avoided her and her husband’s role in promoting the 1994 crime bill, which paved the way of the mass imprisonment of poor black people.
“I think that there has to be a reckoning, I agree with that,’’ Clinton said. “But I think there also has to be some positive vision and plan that you can move people toward.’’
We spoke to Yancey to hear about her “disappointed’’ reaction to Clinton’s response, why she and Black Lives Matter aren’t using the politics of respectability, and the role of Black Lives Matter in ending Boston’s Olympic bid.
Boston.com: You mentioned you’d been a big fan of Clinton’s previously. Did you feel like you learned more about her in your conversation? Do you feel more or less positive about her?
Daunasia Yancey: Less positive. We went in asking a very specific question. She understood our question, and she chose not to respond to it. I was disappointed. Like I said in the video, I’ve had respect for her — as a feminist, as a leader, as a woman in politics — for a long time. It’s not to say that she isn’t a strong leader. Her record shows she has been successful in a lot of ways.
Hillary Clinton and Daunasia Yancey spoke last week after a N.H. campaign stop.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed for myself a more nuanced analysis in understanding her role in decimating black communities. I’m like, “Come on! Come on, Hillary Clinton. Speak to that.’’ We can’t move forward until we see where we’ve been. Until there’s acknowledgment of her personal advocacy for policies that have decimated black communities, we’re not gonna be able to get to the place of politics that don’t do that, because you have to have a shift. You have to have a change in why and how you’re viewing the problem.
The war on drugs hasn’t actually targeted drugs; it’s targeted drug users. And it’s largely targeted black and other people of color. That’s what we see with the influx of mass incarceration and in the general response in terms of welfare work programs, and drug testing for worker recipients, and all those things that don’t actually target the problem of drugs. They target the problem of black people trying to live our lives. They criminalize poverty. That’s not an acceptable response.
What we want to see is a divestment in the prison industrial complex, a divestment from these policies that criminalize poverty, that criminalize drug users. And [we want] an investment in a community solution, investment in anti-poverty initiatives that don’t criminalize people for being poor, but instead help them to not be poor.
The solution that has been put forward by politicians and by most folks in power in this country, for the entire life of this country, have been not to target issues of poverty but instead to target poor people.
Boston.com: You’ve gotten this question a lot, but why not play the respectability politics game? Like Clinton asked, why not play this game of pushing policies that you think could be more broadly accepted?
Yancey: We went there to confront her and to ask her a specific question. We didn’t go there for advice on how to keep the movement alive or how to organize. That wasn’t the purpose of the meeting. It was not to hear Hillary Clinton’s opinion on Black Lives Matter. It was to hear her reflection on her personal involvement in the war on drugs, which has been a war on black people, and in the connection to mass incarceration.
It’s not really her place to say as somebody who is uniquely responsible and uniquely tied to the very policies that she herself said haven’t worked. We’re looking to hear about her personal involvement in that and not an exploration of what we need to be doing.
In terms of respectability, we’ve seen lots of movements – from the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, the women’s movement — try to take the cream of the crop if you will, or try to take the most educated, the most articulate, the most whatever you want to put there, and then put those folks on the frontline and get those people free. That leaves a lot of folks behind. The way I characterize respectability politics is it’s caring about the black people that white people care about.
For us to say, “We’re gonna advocate for the black people who are unarmed, and who are in school, and who are doing all these things’’ – all those things are great, but we understand that the climate that we live in makes it so that black people are not able to have access to those situations. For us to say, “You have to look this way and sound this way and have this many accomplishments in order for us to deem you worthy of equality and freedom’’ – it’s not gonna work. It’s not how we strategically believe we’re gonna get free, and it’s not how we individual activists feel.
Every movement has always been led by folks on the margins, and those folks have been pushed out of the conversation. Every time you get to the White House, every time you get to a Hillary Clinton, you no longer have the college dropout. But I’m a college dropout, and I met with Hillary Clinton. And I think that’s important.
Boston.com: Are there other campaign interruptions that the Boston and Worcester Black Lives Matter chapters are planning?
Yancey: I would say that all of the presidential candidates, every stop on the campaign trail, they should expect to hear from us and be pushed on their racial analysis and their understanding of racism and history of it in this country. They should expect to be pushed to articulate and advance a nuanced analysis. We expect certain things from the president of the United States, and one of those things needs to be a deep understanding of racism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy in order for someone to be considered a viable candidate to represent this entire country.
We spent a very long time skirting the issue and giving lip service to it. Even like what we see in the video, that Hillary Clinton says, we do have this problem. We do have this history. But it’s jumping over the piece about what changes so that we don’t continue it. If you have a flat tire and you don’t change it, you can drive on any road you want and you’ll still have a flat tire. So what shifted in her and in politicians and in their understanding of being able to say, “Oh, I can see how divesting $17 billion from HUD and putting $19 billion into prison construction was a direct attack on poor people, on black people, on drug users in this country,’’ so that we don’t have a repetition of those types of situations.
Boston.com: Is there a politician who you think is doing or saying the right things and analyzing this correctly?
Yancey: No, I haven’t heard a deep analysis. I’ve heard very trite, limited, lacking responses.
We have seen the Sanders campaign attempt to begin that after he’s been shut down twice. We saw him come out with a racial justice platform. It’s a step in the right direction. It’s at least an acknowledgment that this issue is important and it’s important enough to articulate clearly.
Boston.com: Are there more plans for local protests in Massachusetts? I know you did the Olympics protest at Mayor Walsh’s house—
Yancey: Yep, and we don’t have an Olympic bid. Woo! Direct action wins. Marty Walsh had said repeatedly and publicly that he hadn’t seen any opposition or dissent around the bid. There were public meetings across the city where people showed up and said we don’t want it, we have questions around it, we think that it’s not acceptable — the first version and the second version of the Olympic bid. He ignored all of that. He said, I’ve never seen anyone complain about it.
It wasn’t until we went to his house with direct action that he even acknowledged publicly that anyone would not want the Olympics in Boston. I think that needs to be very clear. There’s the meetings and the policy stuff and whatever, and then there’s also showing up. There’s also just saying, “We’re here, and this is what our message is.’’
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