Jan 20, 2017
feeling peachy in @calvinklein at the #peaceballdc 🍑 jewelry: @kller_collection hair: @nappstar_nyc makeup: @stylemyface (at African American History Museum)
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feeling peachy in @calvinklein at the #peaceballdc 🍑 jewelry: @kller_collection hair: @nappstar_nyc makeup: @stylemyface (at African American History Museum)
Peace Ball Strong on Resistance But Something’s Missing
It was in the depths of my disillusionment, just after the election results swept in like a tsunami, wiping away everything that was familiar, normal. My feet had been knocked out from under me. I was struggling to hold onto anything with a semblance of my former life. The Busboys & Poets monthly e-newsletter arrived with an announcement: A Peace Ball: Voices of Hope and Resistance to be held on January 19, 2017. Yes! There are other people like me! They DO want to huddle against the darkness that is coming. We CAN create community. We CAN make a difference! Click. I bought my overpriced ticket. It would be my first, if unofficial, Inaugural Ball. Because of the price, my wife decided to stay home but understood and encouraged my need to go. (She would be going to the Women’s March the day AFTER the inauguration … at no cost.)
My fellow seeker, Terri B., texted me in despair. I knew her pain, so I told her about the Ball. Boom! She was in. Together we would hold a candle to the darkness. We would enjoy one last night of progressive freedom before those who want to take our country back to another age would take over.
Mike and Terri arrive at the 2016 Peace Ball.
The Ball would be held at the new National Museum of African American History & Culture—the perfect place to initiate the resistance; a sacred place that houses the artifacts of a 200-year-long resistance to oppression. It would be a chance for us to explore the stories of those who “Made a Way Out of No Way” and kept hope alive during the darkest days of slavery and, later, the Jim Crow South. We began to dig ourselves out of the depths.
Well, we attended the Ball last night, while downtown Washington was being turned into a massive security zone for the inauguration of Donald Trump. We were lucky to get through the iron-gate barriers before the Mall was entirely closed down to traffic. We made it! But our hope was only partially restored. And the chill that greeted us at night’s end told us that the reality of the drastic change of administrations was not going away, no matter how many feel-good stories we heard from top-notch poets, activists, and artists. Additionally, the hope of connecting with other progressives turned to dust amidst the hype and dress-up thrill of an evening out with DC’s political class.
Andy Shallal, the genius behind the Ball, is an entrepreneur who nearly single-handedly introduced hip to the restaurant scene back in 2004 when he established his first restaurant/bar/radical bookstore in a gentrifying neighborhood near Howard University in residential DC. (Full Disclosure: I serve on the board of Teaching for Change, the not-for-profit that helped Shallal open the bookstore at his first site. TfC ran the store for 10 years before turning it over to Politics & Prose, a full-service mainstream bookstore.) The night was certainly filled with leftist political stars like Angela Davis, Melissa Harris Perry, and Amy Goodman. And the speeches, often impassioned, brought us to cheers. (We were already on our feet for the entire evening! Very little sit-down space with such an overflow crowd. So many of us needed the comfort of one another’s presence.)
And it was thrilling to see the likes of Marian Wright Edelman still in the game, exhorting us to go out and fight for our rights and the rights of the unenfranchised children of the poor, whose fate is often determined by government programs and policies. But the line-up of speakers and performers also pointed out the weaknesses in the current strategies of the left, reinforcing for those of us in the business of thinking about these things, why such a strategy didn’t work this time around.
Marian Wright Edelman addresses the Peace Ball attendees.
As I said, the line-up didn’t disappoint. Poet Sonia Sanchez read a poem called “Peace” after exhorting those gathered to “Resist!” and “Organize so we don’t have this man coming back in four years.” Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), the only politician in the night’s presenters, reprised themes from his DNC speech this past summer, urging people to “match hate with our collective love.” But after calling on the legacy of MLK, RFK, and Frederick Douglass, he warned the incoming administration that “this is the time that we bring the thunder!” Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now” daily update on all things activist, reminded the gathering why a robust and truth-focused press is a necessary part of a democratic society. Social commentator Naomi Klein called the recent election a “corporate coup.” And Ms. Wright Edelman urged us to “Turn Horror into Hope.”
Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now” at the Peace Ball.
Even Eve Ensler, the author of “The Vagina Monologues” among other theatrical adventures, brought her feminist A-game to the stage, calling the President-elect the “Predator-in-Chief” and asking the audience to pledge to “Resist, Disrupt, Love, Rise.”
Playwright Eve Ensler at the Peace Ball.
Musical guests Esperanza Spalding did not disappoint with her short set of Africa-inspired jazz pieces, and Beyonce’s kid sister Solange offered a longer set of oddly peaceful, new-agey songs and yoga-like moves that seemed to invite the audience to take a deep breath before the storm descends.
A video posted by District Diva (@brookeobie) on Jan 19, 2017 at 7:47pm PST
Esperanza Spalding at the Peace Ball.
But it was left to veteran radical activist and scholar Angela Davis to provide the historical context around the events that were about to occur. What we are seeing, she said, is the “last gasp of a dying white male supremacy,” and the “inauguration of the resistance to come.”
A video posted by District Diva (@brookeobie) on Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39pm PST
Activist Angela Davis addresses Peace Ball participants.
And there, in one brief oration, lay the challenge for the future and the summary of the problem for the left. If the issue is white male dominance and, by extension, white supremacy—with all of the racist overtones that phrase summons up—then white males are excluded from the future of the movement. Obviously, no one would posit such a concept given that whites still comprise a majority of the country’s population and, thus, white males constitute approximately one-fourth of all eligible voters. But both the Democratic campaign that just ended and even the evening’s line-up of speakers excluded white males from the conversation. The single-most potent force in the Trump ascendancy is the white male, primarily because they saw nowhere else to go. Hillary’s campaign focused on women and children and minorities of all stripes—racial, sexual, religious. But rarely in her campaign did she speak directly to the concerns of the white male except, perhaps, when she was blasting their worries over jobs (as in, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”) or denigrating their political choices (as in referring to half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables”).
Mike and Terri with Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallal.
Nowhere on that stage last night was there a speaking role for a white male. (Although it should be noted that the brown-skinned Shallal, himself an Iraqi-American, would be considered white under Jim Crow segregation laws.) Nowhere were the blue collar white males’ legitimate concerns about jobs and their economic future addressed. (On another front, it is significant that President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack tried to advise Hillary about the lack of attention her campaign was paying to the rural white voter. “You know, Hillary,” he is rumored to have said, “there are a lot more people in rural America than there are transgender voters.” Vilsack, who was one of the finalists for Hillary’s V.P. pick, was doing the math while she was chasing after the latest liberal cause—transgender bathroom rights.)
So while the Peace Ball was inspirational, even thrilling (Terri and I had positioned ourselves just in time to get front-row perching rights), there is obvious work that needs to be done to ensure that the left’s agenda is truly inclusive of ALL of the identities that the DEMS’ identity politics tries to play to.
As we left the Ball, it was nearly 1 a.m., clearly later than the midnight Cinderella story that we were hoping for. The gold-encrusted carriages had all turned back into wooden wagons (even our bus was late picking us up) and our Prince Charming (nearly always a white male, right?) was M.I.A. We were cast back into a world where there was no magic, just the harsh, cold reality that our Fairy Godmother would not become President as we had hoped. In less than 12 hours, our entire world would shift. The message was clear. Resist—peacefully and hopefully—but resist nonetheless. With any luck, our leaders will get the message and next time be a bit more inclusive with our outreach and our messaging.
With my Boo Jackie @fondmemphoto at last night's #PeaceBallDC #TGAUNIFIED @busboysandpoets @nmaahc @officialistmag (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
👸🏾 #Repost @queensoloxo with @repostapp ・・・ #Solange @ #PeaceBall 💙 #Solo #SolangeKnowles #SolangeKnowlesFerguson #SolangeFerguson #BlackGirlMagic #ASeatAtTheTable #DontTouchMyHair #cranesinthesky #Peaceballdc #weary #rise #mad #busboysandpoets (at Southernlaced.com)
About Last NIght: I apparently sang loud (& off key) over all of my video of #donttouchmyhair So out of respect to @saintrecords and myself I won't post those. Here's choreography instead. #peaceball17 #peaceballdc #BusboysandPoets #solange #dancing (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
About Last Night: #africanamericahistorymuseum Beauty in the bravery. #peaceball17 #peaceballdc #BusboysandPoets (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
About Last Night: A BAD & Ball Gown: the #superVolunteer takes a mediocre bathroom selfie. It's blue. The dress is blue. #peaceball17 #peaceballdc #busboysandpoets (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
About Last NIGHT: Mama Sonia: "Peace, peace, peace.... PEACE." #peaceball17 #peaceballdc #BusboysandPoets #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #goals (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)