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While Hillary Clinton’s campaign focused on breaking the
gender glass ceiling, it was rooted in what scholar/activist
Angela Davis called an “outmoded notion of feminism that
revolved around white, middle class and bourgeois women.”
The 2016 presidential election, then, perhaps proved that a
feminist ideology devoid of race and hetero-patriarchy, is a
flawed campaign strategy in a nation that has not yet
outgrown the divisions with which it has been “stamped from
the beginning.”
The following is the finale of an organizer’s two-part
account on the dynamics of race and white male patriarchy in
Clinton’s ground campaign in Toledo.
“ I often
had the thought I could get shot today when I walked up to a
white man’s house. I didn’t know if he would be white when
he opened the door, but the area was white. I mean Point
Place is pretty vicious. I had African Americans to tell me
that I can’t go to Point Place, and that was where our
staging location was. I tried to find a staging location in
another area but I couldn’t find one. So I did it here, but
we set it up in a way so anybody, a person of color didn’t
have to go there if they didn’t want to. Because the people
in the staging location really understood racism, we didn’t
want anyone opening a door and getting racism in their face,
but boy, there is a lot of racism out in Point Place.
“When
Pennsylvania turned red I knew it was over. Clinton spent so
much time in Florida, in North Carolina, in Ohio and
Pennsylvania. She lost all of those states and there were so
many white men who basically have voted Democrat their whole
life, and that loved Barack Obama. If you love Barack Obama
then you gotta love Hillary, they’re like so similar in
terms of their policies, but instead they voted for Trump.
I knew at that point there was a wave of sexism and racism
and homophobia…all of it that won this time, and it’s
disheartening and it feels very defeating, but I think like
Hillary, we’re gonna pick ourselves up.
“I have
to take a little time to process this. I’ve worked my ass
off. I feel very defeated as a female, so I think the first
course of action for me is to take some time to heal, use
this process and just let people listen to me about the
discouragement and the hopelessness and how defeated I feel
and how terrified I am about what’s going to happen to
people these next four years.
“But then
after that, I would like to figure out how we protect people
that are going to get most hurt by Trump, including people
of color, immigrants, everybody he’s attacked. Now every
other white man who believes him thinks that they can attack
us too, women. How do we protect them? You always ask the
question what would we have done in the Holocaust? Would we
have been able to stop it or would we have been too scared
to interrupt it? Or the same stuff with racism, it happens
every day and people just stand there or with sexism. What
do we need to do to really protect people?
“So
that’s one thing, and then how do we organize. I think that
many people that voted for Donald Trump have vicious
patterns of racism and sexism. So I feel like we have to do
something with those white men, including my own father.
They are hurting so badly and don’t know how to heal so
they’re lashing out at people and blaming people and
thinking if they target certain groups of people they’ll be
fine, and I’ve not been able to get close enough to them to
help.
“That
stuff scares me. They’re violent, but we need to think about
that. They think that Trump is going to do something…he had
empty promises and they believed him, and why did they
believe him. I think it has to do with classism and they’re
desperate and they’re poor. There’s something to figure out
about that.
“So,
every time I met with volunteers I said to them I want to
lead you. Hillary doesn’t want us here just for your vote.
What we want is to empower you to organize in your
neighborhoods so when we’re not here in two years or
whatever, that you could take charge in mobilizing more
neighborhoods and organize your own neighborhoods. And, I
have to say, I got an African-heritage person that lived in
the apartments on East Manhattan Blvd and they circled all
the way around N. Erie Street. She organized the hell out of
that apartment complex. She got people registered, she got
us names of people who needed rides because she didn’t have
transportation, but I said, then just knock your apartment
complex if you want.
“I also
had an African-heritage young adult guy who organized in the
apartment buildings north of Alexis Road. And then I had
this woman, I didn’t prompt her, she just looked at me and
said ‘I’ve got to organize right now. I have a vision we
have to do something with the churches.’ She teaches Bible
class at her church every Wednesday night and she did a lot
of voter registrations. She also knocked a lot of doors even
though she hated knocking doors.
“She said
to me later, ‘My people did not show up, and I don’t think
black boys have any idea or black men have any idea what the
consequences of a Donald Trump presidency is going to be. I
don’t think we educated them.’ And I don’t know how much of
that is true or not, I just think it is awesome that she now
has a vision and she wants to mobilize and organize and
that’s what I wanted to leave here in Toledo.
“I’m not
sure I did that in the white community, but boy, the
African-American folks I’ve worked with are so ready to do
something. And that to me is a big victory, because we’re
gonna need everything with this guy. We’re gonna need
everything…”
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
Ground Game Realities
Part1
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