Where have all the Cowboys Gone? — The Missing Coalition Between Working Class Whites and Black Lives Matter Organizers

I come from the South/I followed the route

To Chicago, a big old town.

But I found me hard luck/Couldn’t make me a buck

All I got was the run around.

If we’re gonna get/What the poor ain’t got yet

Gotta keep on the Firing Line

— Sung at JOIN (Jobs or Income Now) meetings

from Hillbilly Nationalists: Urban Race Rebels and Black Power

The October 22nd Saturday Night Live episode with guest star Tom Hanks included a pretty offensive, myopic but telling skit concerning cultural exchange with Trump-ed Whites and Black Americans. In the skit, Tom Hanks plays Doug, an avid Trump supporter who interestingly enough, finds out that he shares (stereotypical) Black norms. This includes governmental and surveillance distrust, his Christian and Baptist identity, and veneration for Tyler Perry films.

Of course the skit ends abruptly when the final category is “Lives That Matter.”

I know Doug because we live in the same apartment complex. He’s the town mayor, the district attorney, and even the cop who let me go with a warning after reckless driving.

Doug and his brethren swarmed the voting offices to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States.

There is one black church with 32 members in my town. I occasionally see congregation members at the local grocery or on the street. We always honk at each other and wave too hard.

I live in southwest Virginia — a spit away from West Virginia — coddled in the Blue Ridge Mountains near thick Appalachian shoulders. It’s God’s country here (see the light below).

However, like any other place, my town’s beauty cannot quiet the issues of country neglect. The local elementary school teachers organize food drives because during vacation and holidays, students have access to limited meals.

My landlord wants me to track the license plate of the woman who drops off trash bags outside of the tenant dumpster because she fears, it might be the local crystal meth baker who disposes her supplies away from “the bakery.”

The history of race and separatism is overt and violent.

There is one black church with 32 members in my town. I occasionally see congregation members at the local grocery or on the street. We always honk at each other and wave too hard. I’m also too close to a local Klu Klux Klan chapter in West Virginia and also the site where 15-year-old James Means was killed by a white man.

My town is 30 minutes away from the Christiansburg Institute, one of the first schools to provide free slaves secondary education in Southwest Virginia started by Booker T. Washington. I’m 3 hours away from Prince Edward, the county that closed its schools for several years after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling to prevent racial integration. Traveling further, about 5 hours away is Southampton County where Nat Turner led the largest slave revolt.

I’m located near the hauntings of revolt but my town is steeped in tradition, whiteness, poverty, and Trump love.

Even post-election, there are just as many trees as Trump and Pence signs. The Confederate symbol is preserved through shirts, belts, stickers, and the conventional flag. When I voted, my neighbors were joyous, holding hot chocolate and coffee, feeling powerful to vote for “something different.”

I get it — Hillary Clinton is a rich, shrewd politician. Donald Trump is a rich, shrewd businessman who is transparent and anti-political. More importantly, the U.S. is expanding and changing into a less white, dominated country. The white fear and anxiety that slow-boiled during President Obama’s time reached full hysteria that bolstered Trump to presidency.

This historical racial and political divide is nothing new, but there was stronger organizing kinship across race and class. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. was entrenched in coalition-building between rural whites and middle class blacks — so much that Hosea Williams and other SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) members paid homage to his class efforts during his funeral.

One year later after King’s death, in 1969, the Black Panthers continued their organizing efforts through grief and wrath. They strategized to create the United Front Against Fascism Conference in Oakland, California. The attendees were the Young Lords — a Latino political organization, the Students for Democratic Socialism — a New Left organization and the Young Patriots — white, working class, Confederate flag-wearing youth committed to class issues.

The Young Patriots were kin with the Black Panthers, even adopting their point-program system, their free clinic model. and children’s breakfast program. Young Patriot members wore confederate memorabilia but with the pledge:

The South will rise again, only this time in solidarity with our oppressed brother and sisters.

The social justice group also created The Patriots, where they reinforced the release of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale. and encouraged anti-racist principles. Fortunately, this wasn’t the only white, working class group joining forces with black or anti-racist organizations. There was JOIN (Jobs or Income Now), Rising Up, White Lightening, and other white collectives focusing on class. This partnership was even translated into a shared 1968 presidential campaign with JOIN and the Black Panther Party.

Of course this kinship did not come easily. The Black Panthers Party gained trust with the Young Patriots through shared experience with poverty and police interaction:

“The first meetings between the Panthers and the Patriots in early 1969 had Lee, a core organizer in the Chicago Panthers, travelling to Uptown in order to meet and discuss shared experiences, demands, and goals. Things did not always go smoothly, and Fred Hampton, the leader of the Chicago Panthers, did not even immediately know about Lee’s trips to try and form an alliance. A turning point came one night after Lee left a meeting with the YPO [Young Patriots Organization], only to be immediately apprehended by police and herded into the back of a cop car. Witnessing this egregious instance of profiling and harassment, Fesperman [YPO leader] gathered every person he could — not only other Young Patriot members but also their partners and children — to surround the car and force the police to release Lee on the spot. These minor battles and acts of solidarity reinforced the mutual respect the two organizations had for each other.”

And so what happened to these white organizers who were partners with the Black Panther Party and SNCC (Students Nonviolent Christian Committee)? What happened to this partnership and movement?

1. As mentioned in the above quotation, the Young Patriots, like the Black Panthers, also endured police ire, surveillance, and coups. This included the mysterious deaths of white organizers like John Howard and Raymond Tackett. This also meant attacks on YPO resources like clinics, food and housing services.

2. Governmental officials grew terrified and decided to use divide and conquer tactics to separate this political kinship. For example, former police commissioner and Governor Frank Rizzo’s platform from 1972–1980 mimicked Trump’s rhetoric: using racial fear and economic scarcity to increase white nationalism. Rizzo was vocal about his disdain and torture against queer and black organizers: I’m going to make Attila the Hun look like a f —- (expletive disparaging the LGBTQIA communities). When Rizzo had panther members arrested, he would strip them nude and parade them in public before lockup. According to authors Sonnie and Tracy from The Hillbilly Nationalists, Rizzo utilized job and economic campaigns to drive wedges among racial groups. These Rizzo-like figures were voted into offices across cities that sabotaged intersectional partnerships.

3. The demographics of the cities changed and this in turn changed the dynamic, the makeup, and focus of the group. JOIN became more multiracial which in itself is not bad but changed the goals and focus of the group — away from poverty.

4. Many of the members later joined The Weather Underground which was later decimated by government tactics.

Campaign and political retrospect considered, what happened to these contemporary coalition strategies and these prior, notable relationships? Where were these united groups or intersectional tactics during the Trump campaign?

Organizers [will] have to confront issues of gender and homophobia in their communities for meaningful success.

1. We are dealing with tantrums and hate from having a Black president. We are dealing with rural, white neglect and the backlash of elitism and liberalism. Trump coasted his platform on white fear and neglect. He followed up with gilded promises of economic prosperity and social standing. In turn, Democratic outreach to white, working class communities were pretty scarce and glib. Although Trump failed to make an earnest effort to reach these communities, he had the big business attribute and white male agency for his benefit.

2. Black Lives Matter is a movement led by queer, Black women. However, in the 60s, social justice groups were led by heterosexual, cisgender men. The panthers and patriots were majority male-led. Women were chorus and curtains — hardly on the frontlines. This would mean all organizers would have to confront issues of gender and homophobia in their communities for meaningful success.

3. Black Lives Matter (BLM) principles include Black healing and Black re-imagination. This mental and social reframing establishes a new definition or condition with race. Therefore, the black narrative is expanded to include art, queer, and healed identities. We are not bound by suffering. We are not a kneejerk reaction to white supremacy. In turn, Whiteness, in this BLM political landscape, has a different relationship to blackness. If there is Black re-imagination and creativity, then there has to be White re-imagination and healing. What does this mean? Poor whites living in cities and Appalachia need to recover and reorganize. This means processing how their culture of music, agriculture, and fashion has been co-opted for profit as well.

4. Democrats and organizers need to strategize on how to include poor and working class whites — the voters who lifted Trump to presidency — into the political conversation. The outreach will be difficult but the need is urgent.

This is my town too. I’m part of this town, and it is mine. This is not entirely linked to nationalism or local love but because I don’t have the money, the capital Donald Trump has, to move away, and neither does my neighbor.

As an artist, I want to study Appalachian history more, the music, the lore, and the fight. I’m getting acquainted with folks around here and trying to make my face known even through stares and microaggressions.

Right now I have to rethink sneering at every passerby, although it’s difficult when across the street is a barber shop with signage that bleeds, “The Silent Majority Support Trump.” The sly undercurrent of that slogan is noxious. I’m still negotiating, still parsing out what I can do with urgency, safety, and care. I have at least some thoughts to live and act.

I’m listening and reading discussions on whiteness and class issues. With friends and hesitation, I’m traveling to spaces where organizing is starting to rise through music or union organizing. I’m making an effort to relationship build with other majority folks — inviting them into conversations, events and hopefully, (eventually) coalition. I work at a university where there is a focus on Appalachian outreach for student enrollment. I am already having conversations with people about ensuing sustainability and retention efforts with this initiative. As an artist, I want to study Appalachian history more, the music, the lore, and the fight. I’m getting acquainted with folks around here and trying to make my face known even through stares and microaggressions.

Trump is going to fail us. Earthworms belly up in the rain; humans don’t have gills, and Trump will fail us — all of us. His big business cabinet choices and his unyielding focus on The Apprentice previews a disastrous candidacy. We’re going to need a coalition kinship similar to the Young Patriots and Black Panthers.

Yeah, I’m still fucking angry and weary, but by faith, I know this scattered feeling is the sand before the first rock is thrown at an empire. I want to start throwing stones, but I need a community first.