Sanders has devoted his life to social movements. He has shaped them and
been shaped by them. He understands that change comes from the bottom, not
the top. (photo: Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Sanders has devoted his life to social movements. He has shaped them and
been shaped by them. He understands that change comes from the bottom, not
the top. (photo: Jim Bourg/Reuters)go to original article
I Helped Coin the Term 'Identity Politics.' I'm Endorsing Bernie Sanders
By Barbara Smith, Guardian UK
10 February 20
I support Sanders because I believe his campaign is currently the best hope
for helping marginalized Americans
n 1977 I co-authored the Combahee River Collective Statement - a document
that emphasized the overlapping forms of economic and social oppression
faced by black women. The Combahee Statement coined the term "identity
politics", and it was instrumental in pushing the international left and
other political movements to understand inequality as a structural and
intersectional phenomenon which affects oppressed groups differently.
Those ideas continue to reverberate today. I am often disheartened, however,
to see support for identity politics and intersectionality reduced to
buzzwords. I am supporting Bernie Sanders for president because I believe
that his campaign and his understanding of politics complements the
priorities that women of color defined decades ago.
I was born into Jim Crow in 1946. The country I grew up in, with few
exceptions, was brutally committed to keeping people like me in their place.
My family were among the courageous African Americans who participated in
the first wave of the Great Migration after the first world war, which
occurred during an even more perilous era than the later wave following the
second world war. They ended up in Cleveland, Ohio; although we lived in a
northern state, racism and segregation shaped every aspect of our daily
lives. I became active in the civil rights movement as a teenager.
At the same time that I was growing up in Cleveland, Bernie Sanders, who was
a few years older, was growing up in Brooklyn. He noticed some of the same
paradoxes and injustices that I did and came to a similar conclusion: that
he needed to get involved.
Long before he thought about running for any office, let alone for
president, Sanders fought for racial justice. He and I worked in different
local branches of the same organization, the Congress of Racial Equality
(Core), which focused on de facto segregation in the north.
Because there is little understanding of the terrifying conditions of
mid-20th century US apartheid, some people dismiss Sanders' involvement in
the civil rights struggle as insignificant or think that many white people
at the time supported black liberation and human rights. Far from it. I
support Sanders because unlike most people of his generation he decided as a
young person to challenge Jim Crow. I wonder if other candidates can say the
same.
Sanders has devoted most of his life to social movements. He has shaped them
and been shaped by them. He understands that the most substantial and
meaningful change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to name two examples,
would not have happened without movement organizing. The Vietnam war ended
because a mass movement finally forced the political establishment to end
the carnage. Sanders and I were in that movement too.
Sanders has said that as president he will be "organizer-in-chief". He is
committed to fighting for regular working people, which is most of us, and
he has the advantage of connection with an existing broad-based social
movement. As president he can implement policies that give those who are
most harmed by the current system full access to opportunity and a decent
human life.
At least 140 million people in the United States live in poverty or do not
have enough income to cover their family's basic needs of food, housing and
healthcare. Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people
with disabilities, children and elders are disproportionately part of this
140 million.
Some critics have questioned whether Sanders is concerned about the specific
ways that people with varying intersecting identities experience oppression.
As a black lesbian feminist who has been out since the mid-1970s, I believe
that, among all the candidates, his leadership offers us the best chance to
eradicate the unique injustices that marginalized groups in America endure.
In 2016 I served on the LGBTQ steering committee for the Sanders campaign. I
am even more excited to support him now.
Look at the diversity and vitality of Sanders' own supporters. His campaign
is powered by a grassroots movement including thousands of women and people
of color. His current surge in the polls is due in large part to support
from voters of color, Spanish-speakers and immigrants. Multilingual caucus
sites in Iowa supported Sanders by a huge margin. Four of the most dynamic
women of color in Congress - representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib - have endorsed Bernie.
The stakes could not be higher. Before the 2016 election I dreaded a return
to the Jim Crow era signaled by the slogan "Make America Great Again", which
obviously meant white. Tragically that is exactly what happened. Four more
years is unthinkable. That is why I am working to elect President Bernie
Sanders.
