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If your response to the title of this piece was “The only thing I would be doing at a Trump rally is protesting,” then I wrote this piece for you.
Because that’s precisely what Hawk Newsome was doing on Sept. 16, 2017, in Washington, D.C. -- protesting what a group of pro-Trump types were calling the mother of all rallies.
Hawk was part of Black Lives Matter New York. He had come to the D.C. protest because he was tired of the open racism coursing through American public discourse. Hawk had most recently been on the front lines in Charlottesville, Va., and he was not going to back down from a confrontation.
The pro-Trumpers looked ready to give him one, belligerently chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” in his face.
But then something remarkable happened. The organizer of the mother of all rallies, Tommy Hodges, invited Hawk on stage. He said something about everybody having a right to their message and gave Hawk two minutes on stage to deliver his.
I read this story in Arthur Brooks’s terrific book Love Your Enemies, and there’s a great video of what goes down which you can watch here.
By all means, allow this story to warm your heart -- it certainly increased the temperature in mine. But also, consider using it as an assignment for people who would likely be protesting at a Trump rally (people, in other words, like yours truly).
It’s a simple exercise: if you were protesting a Trump rally and somebody invited you on stage to address the crowd, what would you say?
Here’s what Hawk does: he restates his policy goals within the values frame of the audience. He says he’s not anti-cop, he’s anti-bad cop. And just like bad plumbers and bad politicians should be fired, so should bad cops.
When an audience member shouts, “All lives matter,” he agrees, and then says that the reason for the Black Lives Matter movement is because there needs to be extra emphasis on the lives of black people because they are too often rolled over by the institutions of the state, often violently.
As you can see on the video, people cheer at the end of Hawk’s speech. Then more heartwarming stuff happens. Someone asks Hawk to take a picture with his kid. Another treats a cut on his finger, a wound Hawk had suffered while opening a box with a knife earlier that day.
This, it seems to me, is what effective activism looks like: a positive engagement of the people with whom you disagree. It’s also the only way to have a healthy, diverse democracy.
By all means, preach to your choir, help them learn the song, teach them to sing it loud. But at some point you’re going to have to talk to people with whom you disagree. It’s useful to practice what you would say to those people.
My suggestion: do this as an exercise with your social justice group or your diversity class. Have them imagine the whole scene and write out their remarks. Have them pretend to get on stage and deliver those speeches.
Remind them that they have to be interesting and crisp. Perhaps mention that insulting your audience is not a good way to win them over.
Show them some of the material on how progressive policy positions tend to win when they are wrapped in “conservative” values like patriotism, family and work.
Definitely show them the Hawk/Tommy video.
Hopefully your students will learn from this. Hopefully it will make them better leaders. Our nation certainly needs more people like Hawk (and Tommy, too, I suppose).
Instead of further cementing the current us vs. them, wouldn’t it be nice to create a wider sense of “us”?
Instead of constantly saying, “Here is my bright line that you can’t cross,” wouldn’t it be great to say, “Here is my wide circle that you can join -- it’s a place where we will all thrive”?
