Black Lives Matter Activist Jumps Into Baltimore Mayoral Fray
By
JOHN ELIGONFEB. 3, 2016
Photo
DeRay Mckesson, speaking in San Francisco in November. He is jumping into the Baltimore mayor’s race.CreditKimberly White/Getty Images for GLAAD
DeRay Mckesson, whose activism over the last year and a half has vaulted him from obscure Twitter sage to a political force in the national Black Lives Matter movement, announced Wednesday that he was running for mayor of Baltimore.
His entry into the race is a step into the mainstream for a national movement that has been criticized for a lack of organized structure and tactics. His candidacy is sure to jolt the political and protest communities at a time when activists have eschewed traditional politics and sought to work outside the system.
Mr. Mckesson, a Baltimore native who will run as a Democrat, faces an uphill climb.
For one thing, he is diving, relatively late, into a crowded race of about a dozen candidates. Among them are prominent black leaders who include Nick J. Mosby, a city councilman and the husband of the prosecutor who is trying six police officers in the death of a young black Baltimore man last year; and Sheila Dixon, the former mayor who remains popular even though she left office after a conviction on fraud charges. David L. Warnock, a prominent businessman, also is vying for the nomination.
The Democratic victor of the primary on April 26 is almost assured of winning the general election for an office that the party has controlled for nearly half a century.
In a statement, Mr. Mckesson said that he was running to challenge the normal order of governing in the city. If Baltimore wants to achieve its “promise and possibility,” he wrote, “we cannot rely on traditional pathways to politics and the traditional politicians who walk that path. We have to challenge the practices that have not and will not lead to transformation.”
Mr. Mckesson, 30, has been something of a divisive figure. He rose to prominence in the movement that emerged after a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014. Mr. Mckesson was quickly on the ground in Missouri, providing sharp, continuous Twitter missives challenging what he and many saw as a racist law enforcement regime that not only killed Mr. Brown, but was also engaging in violent clashes with protesters.
At the center of the Baltimore mayor’s race will be issues of race and policing in this predominantly black city that saw riots and mass demonstrations last year after 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who is black, died in police custody. Mr. Gray was found unconscious in the back of a police van after he was arrested.
The current mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, was criticized for her handling of the unrest that followed. She decided not to run for re-election.
Mr. Mckesson’s supporters herald him for helping to shed light on national issues of police abuse and misconduct. His detractors, however, tag him as an antipolice anarchist whose rhetoric helped foster spasms of protest violence in cities across the country where blacks have died at the hands of law enforcement. Mr. Mckesson also has critics in the movement, who argue that he is too cozy with the establishment (he has met with both Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton as well as Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s top advisers) and too much of a celebrity. (He is one of 10 people whom Beyoncé follows on Twitter.)
Some also argue that Mr. Mckesson’s proposals do not go far enough to effect systemic change. Along with fellow activists, Mr. Mckesson last year started Campaign Zero, a 10-point platform to combat police violence that promotes things like body cameras and civilian review boards.
He left his job as an administrator in the Minneapolis Public Schools to move to the St. Louis area to work as a full-time activist. He then traveled around the country, turning to Twitter to chronicle protests against racial injustice and often landing in cities where there were controversial police shootings. Mr. Mckesson has since returned to his hometown, Baltimore.
His decision to run may help pacify critics who have said the Black Lives Matter movement is too diffuse and that the new crop of activists are ineffective in creating change. Older generations of civil rights activists have applauded the Black Lives Matter activists for bringing awareness to the issues facing blacks today. But they also ask: Now what?
“I was a civil rights activist, and we had specific goals, specific things that we wanted to see happen,” said Elbert Walton, 73, a political insider in St. Louis. “As we engaged in the civil rights struggle and had certain directions that we were headed in, a lot of us eventually determined to get involved in electoral politics.”
New activists jumping into the electoral fray would be a positive sign, Mr. Walton added, because it would mean “that they understood that their problem was a government problem” and that they had “to take control of government.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/u...kesson-jumps-into-baltimore-mayoral-fray.html
How do people who have no substantial platform keep going up the ranks? Because they are no threats to hegemony.
He will finish 4th in this mayoral race if he's lucky. That's the dude you think has powerful system backing?
