Photo: Then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, walks with Newark Mayor Cory Booker in Teterboro, N.J., May 14, 2007. AP Photo/Mike Derer)
Have all of the Black leaders in the U.S. been captured? Politically captured, that is. In a recent videotaped meeting, a group of Black political activists complained that Black leaders had been captured by the Democratic Party, particularly by President Joe Biden’s administration.
In politics, regulatory capture is “a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry,” according to the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
Political or regulatory capture does not bode well for democracy. When it happens, special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public.
A video conference hosted by YouTube channel Revolutionary Blackout Network held a discussion between the network’s co-founder, who goes by Joe Biden is a Dick Cheney Democrat @SocialistMMA on Twitter, Black activist Afeni #SaveSilwan @ReddIsAri and Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
Black voters were never organized as a voting bloc. Nor was there “lists of concrete demands being put to Joe Biden that said if you don’t do X, Y, Z from the Black Lives Matter platform we are going to not vote for Joe Biden, you are going to have to earn our votes,” Gray said in the discussion.
She added she didn’t see Black leadership making any demands of Biden. “People are willing to be led, but…there is no one who has the credibility as a leader in the Black community who isn’t captured.”
The Revolutionary Blackout Network called out what it described as “The lack of Black Leadership” and shared a clip of the discussion on Twitter: “Is there any black leaders with any credibility that hasn’t been ‘captured’ ? Black leaders didn’t have any demands for Biden in exchange for black votes.”
Some on Twitter pointed out that some Black leaders had made solid demands of Biden.
“Antonio Moore & Yvette Carnell had specific demands for Biden. Mainstream media of course will say our people demanding anything is toxic because we are advocating for our people,” tweeted Nate Turner’s Burner in reference to ADOS leaders Moore and Carnell, who demanded Biden pass legislation for reparations for native Black Americans.
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“The only one I see out there making specific demands consistently is Rev. Barber,” tweeted IDKWhatsNext. Rev. William Barber, a Protestant minister and social activist, has been vocal about issues pertaining to the Black community and has often called for policy changes. During the past presidential election, he complained publicly about politicians being too concerned with winning and not focusing on “uplifting” people.
Barber founded the Repairers of the Breach organization in 2015, a nonpartisan nonprofit that “seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of our country.” The organization says it challenges the position that the preeminent moral issues are prayer in public schools, abortion, and property rights. “Instead, we declare that the moral public concerns of our faith traditions are how our society treats the poor, women, LGBTQ people, children, workers, immigrants, communities of color, and the sick.”
Photo: Then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, walks with Newark Mayor Cory Booker in Teterboro, N.J., May 14, 2007. AP Photo/Mike Derer)
