So what happens now? What do we do when the mechanisms we were taught to implement to pursue change show themselves to be insufficient? What happens when there’s no accountability, or no institution to turn to for an honest conveyance of grievances to seek and demand correction and justice? What do we do then?
As a heads up, this will be yet another Camden-centric piece, but certainly applies to many of us whom feel bereft of solutions or an effective plan to move forward when we’ve been shown repeatedly that peoplepower has serious limitations, or when voting isn’t enough to achieve justice. One of my biggest pet peeves as a former social studies educator and teacher union president fighting to protect public education in Camden is when I hear politicians and celebrities say things like this Obama quote: “Don’t boo, vote!”, or like when Killa Mike says, “Plot, plan, organize, strategize, and mobilize.” Simplistic enough, these quips hinge on two assumptions: 1. that both approaches are sufficient, and 2: that “plotting, planning, organizing, strategizing, and mobilizing” are quantifiable where anyone participating in those activities can mark, measure, and eventually arrive at a specific indicator denoting whether in fact, they have done enough of each.
Referencing two national events here for context, in response to the record number of votes cast in the 2020 election, Republicans in 47 states in turn, are rapidly ramming through voter suppression laws to prevent people, specifically Black people, from voting. In starker and simpler terms, voting, the oft-referenced democratic mechanism to facilitate policy change, is specifically why power-hungry Republicans are inventing mechanisms to prevent people from voting. The blowback for voting in large numbers, is Republicans using amoral yet “legal” means to prevent people from voting in the future. Additionally, when the matter of targeting redistricting via gerrymandering is factored in, even when Democratic-leaning people do vote in large numbers, their vote is diluted as like voters are clumped into nonsensically shaped Districts with no consistent determiner identifying why a district has the boundaries it does; or during redistricting which occurs every ten years, parts of Democratic voting districts are parceled and annexed into larger deep Red districts to ensuring that area never sees Democratic representation at the federal or state level. For context, in Wisconsin in 2018, more Democratic voters voted in their state elections, but Republicans ended up more winning seats in their Statehouse due to hyper-partisan gerrymandered districts. Just this week in Kansas, thanks to redistricting, the state’s lone Democrat in the US House of Representatives, Sharice Davids, faces losing her seat to redistricting, not a better candidate. Further pertaining to national elections, more votes are cast in NYC’s one borough of Brooklyn with 2.59 million people, than whole states like Wyoming (579,000), Montana (1.07M), North Dakota (763,000), South Dakota (885,000), and Idaho (1.8M). And while the For the People Act languishes in the US Senate thanks to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, it is hard not to recognize that while the record number of voters in Georgia gave Democrats the majority in the Senate in 2020, because of the racist Senate filibuster, and an equal representation mandate decreeing every state has two senators in the Senate regardless of the state’s population, it is unlikely any transformational law to protect the ideals of the franchise will pass despite the overwhelming preference of the larger public. Truth: voting does not solve this problem that was created because people voted.
Pertaining to “organizing”, while it has merit in terms of fostering awareness, connecting issues with the People, and bringing diverse constituencies together for a common cause, no single event exposed the limitations of organizing like the resistance struggle connected to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Disparate groups consisting of environmentalists, the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, anti-capitalists, and even former military personnel from across the country camped out for months with the single goal of halting the pipeline’s construction. After months of demonstrating in unified protest, they were all forcibly removed with tactics including activists being sprayed with water in the dead of the North Dakotan winter. Construction of the pipeline went forward; not due to a lack of organizing or will, but because corporate interests and Big Energy deemed it so.
While national events can provide context as a jumping off point, we in Camden (NJ) do not have to look beyond our 9 square mile city of 74,000 to recognize oppression, and the weakness and limitations of people-power. Just last night, one mayoral candidate Mr. Vic Carstarphen won the mayoral primary versus three challengers despite never substantively verbalizing a single position on anything pertaining to this city. He said nothing on crime prevention. He said nothing on education. He said nothing on pollution. He said nothing on job creation. He said nothing on residential displacement. He said nothing on the erosion of affordable housing availability. He said nothing on corporate PILOTs. He said nothing on our city’s food desert status. He said nothing on generating more municipal revenue. He said nothing on gentrification. He said nothing was pursuant to anything, but for what it’s worth, he did chant “Not Me but We” – a lot.
What Carstarphen did have in his favor was his affiliation with, and allegiance to, the County Democratic machine, vis-à-vis pledging fealty to George Norcross which gave him the protection of the “county-line”. The “county-line”, which has been the subject of much conjecture and comment throughout the Garden State, essentially allows all candidates belonging to one of the two major parties to align themselves vertically from the top of the ticket, which will sometimes be headlined by a presidential or gubernatorial candidate, to the bottom of the ticket which will consist of names of local committee persons (hacks). In New Jersey, being part of the party-line, accounts for a boost of 35% in elections; essentially, the dominant party with the “county-line” has a head start of 35 points before the 1st ballot is counted.
The Camden Machine has such an intimate understanding of their “county-line” advantage that their candidates never participate in local debates or forums. They know they don’t have to present themselves nor their positions to the voters. This reality, along with the windfall of funding and limitless resources, coupled with a slew of party foot soldiers (yes-men) assures that anti-establishment candidates’ who do rely on a sharpening a superior platform or message will not come close to upsetting the oppressive anti-democratic status quo. Yesterday’s election was no different. The Party-line, as constructed, that only exists in New Jersey and has been academically proven to depress democracy and widely warp the election process toward those with the most political power, sadly, can only be undone by the very people who benefit most by having it in the first place (fat chance); or by the courts, which barring residents’ or anti-establishment candidates’ willingness to pay exorbitant fees (with money they don’t have) to attorneys to secure a judicial decision that is far from secure, only ensures the party-line, and its disenfranchising effects, is cemented here. So who do residents appeal to in order to win change?
What’s happening in Camden politics where the functionaries act as willing puppets for outsiders, and are structurally protected from accountability through their ballot construction, is not unlike what takes place pertaining to public education here. Under state takeover since 2013, the Camden City School District (CCSD) has become an exemplar of an urban district that has had power stripped away from residents and placed into the cutches of politicians, consultants, and privatizers. What have we to show for the removal of democratic rights from Camden residents aside from a string of closed schools, massive layoffs, and unimproved test scores? Very little. To be clear, CCSD is a state takeover district that rushed to close public schools and establish corporate charters as their substitute to fulfill the political dreams of then Governor Chris Christie and power consolidating whims of George Norcross. Just this year alone, despite being gifted a whopping $175M extra dollars in budgetary aid, our District superintendent is inexplicably barreling ahead with plans to close three public schools that will only result in costing our District both students, and funding. Further, the prior administration, in efforts to digitize employee documents, or while District operation were moved across town, lost employee documents and certification which has caused some employees to either be forced into involuntary retirement, or face termination. As appalling as these recent instances are, what is worse is that when our union appealed to the Camden County Superintendent, the acting NJ Commissioner of Education, and to Governor Murphy’s Office directly, no one intervened to stop this unfolding madness. For months, union members and Camden residents protested, petitioned, spoke at Board meetings, emailed, made phone calls – and nothing. The esteemed individuals with the power to stop the sabotage-like school closures and protect educators from unjust termination, despite being shown fault lies with the District, opted to sit on their hands and watch this readily predictable and inhumane train wreck commence. So what do concerned and committed parties do when those with the power to do something, choose to do nothing?
Recent national events, last night’s city primary election, and these unfolding events at CCSD reminded me a just and “happy” ending in fighting against injustice is far from assured, and indeed increasingly more unlikely as Injustice and Oppression are finding newer, more effective means of protecting and sustaining themselves. Audre Lorde’s words, “The Master’s tools will never be used to dismantle the Master’s house” have proven prophetic, much to the disappointment and dismay of many optimists and activists across a range of issues who once believed if they just pushed harder, and planned better, justice would be for the taking. But many of us are learning some hard lessons these days, and in reflection are forced to ponder tougher questions: What do you do when there are no answers? When there is no help on the horizon? Where there is no one to turn to? This is precisely where justice-fighters find themselves now and hopefully someone, someday, will have a few answers…
