I sat beside Obama at the Black Lives Matter meeting. This was no political show

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Justice, United States on 2016-02-21 22:04Z by Steven

I sat beside Obama at the Black Lives Matter meeting. This was no political show

The Guardian
2016-02-20

Brittany Packnett


The author sits beside Barack Obama’s in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 18 February. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Some political meetings devolve into theater. Not this one: we all spoke direct truth to literal power

Black folks know political theater when we see it; we’ve lived through it for years. And as the 2016 presidential election ramps up, our feeds, and our lives, are inundated with grandstanding and pandering, much lofty rhetoric and often, too few solutions that actually prioritize the unique needs of people of color.

Any White House meeting, much like the one 15 of us had Thursday with President Obama to discuss civil rights, could have appeared as such.

I witnessed such theater just a week prior at the Ferguson city council meeting. A consent decree to help rid Ferguson of its now well-documented racist policing practices was due for a vote. The decree had been negotiated by city officials and the Department of Justice for many months, and both bodies had been dutifully engaged by a substantial number of Ferguson citizens in conversation, community meetings hosted by the Ferguson Collaborative and public comment at three city council meetings…

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Black Lives Matter Activist Says Obama Meeting Was Positive

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Justice, United States on 2016-02-20 00:41Z by Steven

Black Lives Matter Activist Says Obama Meeting Was Positive

TIME
2016-02-18

Maya Rhodan


WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 18: U.S. President Barack Obama (C) speaks about race relations while flanked by Brittany Packnett (L), and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, February 18, 2016 in Washington, DC. President Obama met with African American faith and civil rights leaders before an event to celebrate Black History Month. Mark Wilson—Getty Images

For over an hour on Thursday, 31-year-old activist and educator Brittany Packnett sat beside President Obama at a table in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a unique meeting of the minds.

The nation’s first African American president convened a group of activists, both young and old, for a discussion on how he can spend his final year in office tackling issues that impact the black community—from criminal justice reform to police-community relations. Though one activist from Obama’s hometown of Chicago publicly slammed the meeting as a “photo opportunity and a 90-second sound bite for the president,” according to Packnett, the meeting was the complete opposite of that.

“We had a conversation that lasted over 90 minutes,” Packnett tells TIME. “The president actually extended himself because he wanted to continue the conversation. We had a lot of opportunity to elevate various strategies that are happening on the ground as far as criminal justice reform, working on police violence, and systemic educational inequities.”…

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