Nearly one year after protests that rocked America’s cities and helped propel Joe Biden’s ride to the White House, Black Lives Matter activists aren’t the Washington power players they envisioned themselves to be.
The Biden administration has neither granted them a meeting months after they requested one, nor have any names of activists been listed in White House visitor logs. (Those logs, it should be noted, just cover the first couple of weeks in office.) Their leaders are absent from police reform discussions on the Hill. And their legislative proposal, the BREATHE Act — which codifies the reallocation of funds from law enforcement to communities of color — has yet to catch on outside of a small circle of progressives in Congress, including Democrats Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, who have backed it.
The issues that brought Black activists into the streets — and the national spotlight — have not gone away. Far from it. Police continue to kill Black and Latino Americans at higher rates than white Americans. Since November, 47 state legislatures have proposed or passed bills that effectively limit access to the ballot for low income, Black and Latino voters. And a growing number of Republican-led legislatures have passed bills limiting protesters’ rights — and absolving those who antagonize or harm them.
Now, leading Black activists say those issues aren’t getting the hearing they deserve.
Part of the disconnect may be the cultural gap between activists — for whom justice is an absolute, but attainable ideal — and politicians, who deal with the messy realities of governing, forging compromise, and accepting incremental wins. Many BLM leaders, for instance, pushed to “defund” city police departments, only to find little appetite among lawmakers for what was widely seen as a politically suicidal position.