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Ferguson forum: Academics, activists discuss a new movement and its potential for change

December 17, 2014 By Meredith McGlone

Photo: DeShawn Mckinney

UW student Deshawn McKinney speaks during a public roundtable discussion titled “Ferguson in Context: Trauma, Violence, and Citizenship” at the Discovery Building on the UW–Madison campus.

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How did America get from Jim Crow to Eric Garner, from “I Have a Dream” to #blacklivesmatter? And where do we go from here?

Academics and activists wrestled with these and other questions in a forum Wednesday presented by Humanities NOW, a program from the Center for the Humanities that aims to respond to moments of crisis and confusion.

Panelist William P. Jones, a professor of history, opened the discussion with a shout out to the students who organized Sunday’s protest on campus, the largest of its kind since the civil rights era. “There’s something going on here in Madison, around the country,” he said.

Jones said he’s buoyed by the vigorous public response to recent killings of black men by police, but he’s mindful that similar outcries in the past haven’t led to much change. Recalling his own days as a college student protesting the beating of Rodney King and President Clinton’s subsequent call for a national conversation on race, he said, “Twenty years later, if anything, the problem has gotten worse.”

Photo: Protestors in front of Bascom Hall

The sizable crowd at a student-led demonstration that started in front of Bascom Hall Sunday swelled as it made its way through campus, ending with a “die-in” at Helen C. White Hall.

Photo: Nate Moll

While social media provides a powerful new medium for sharing images and issues, panelist Keisha Lindsay said she’s skeptical that the outrage will last.

“Maybe we’re in a moment of increased conversation,” said Lindsay, an assistant professor in the departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science.

Assessing the president’s response to Ferguson, Assistant Professor of English Aida Levy-Hussen said, “It’s hard to think of a more disheartening image than that split screen … after the non-indictment was announced. On the one side you see Obama talking in sort of this soulless way … about faith in the national system and on the other side you see Ferguson burning, you see citizens being threatened by militarized police.”

History Professor Stephen Kantrowitz said the civil rights protests in the 1960s succeeded because they were tailored for the national media of that day, which no longer exists. He questioned whether similar protests today can work.

Photo: William P. Jones

History Professor William P. Jones speaks during the roundtable discussion.

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“There’s not a common media landscape in which everyone is forced to reckon with a common set of facts. Everyone has a different set of facts now,” he said. “It’s hard to figure out how the old strategies can gain traction in that world.”

Young activists in the audience challenged panelists’ pessimism over whether the protests will lead to lasting change if they’re not linked to enduring organizations like those of the civil rights movement.

Contemporary protests don’t rely on highly visible leaders or spokespeople, said sophomore Deshawn McKinney, and that gives them more power.  “Anybody can step up. It’s about people stepping up and doing it all together.”

“Something as simple as a die-in – it’s simple and it’s powerful. You can relate it to the sit-ins,” said Matthew Braunginn, co-founder of the Young Gifted & Black Coalition and a staff member of the university’s PEOPLE program.

“Something as simple as a die-in — it’s simple and it’s powerful. You can relate it to the sit-ins.”

Matthew Braunginn

Mckinney and Braunginn see a sharp generational split between young activists and their older counterparts. Elders who preached that acting respectably would bring about change were wrong, Braunginn declared.

“To hell with respectability politics. We don’t care about that,” he said. “We don’t care about having our pants up. It’s about the humanization of black people and making sure that goes forward.”

That left the panel at a momentary loss for words.

Then Kantrowitz jumped in: “Go, go, go!”

Eric Upchurch, a 2010 graduate and coalition member, asked the panel what real change would look like.

Demilitarize the police, Lindsay said. “Abolish juvenile incarceration, period,” Kantrowitz offered. Stop locking so many people up for so long for nonviolent offenses, Jones said  — noting that’s an area where activists could perhaps find common ground with conservatives. “It costs a heck of a lot of money to keep these people in prison.”

And while America has a long history of violence against minorities, it also has a history of resistance to that violence based on common ideals of equality and the right to due process, Jones said.

“These are the issues that people are rallying around trying to uphold … if we’re looking to a solution to this problem this is where we can turn.”