Rasul Mowatt & Too Black (P2): Building movements and navigating funding in systems of complicity (Ep432)

Written By kamea chayne
Green Dreamer Podcast / Rasul Mowatt and Too Black
“Since laundering doesn’t happen above our heads and is something we’re involved in, we can come up with creative ways to extract the things that have to pass through our hands on the assembly line and put them into the hands of the people who need those resources — reverse laundering.”
— Too Black

What does it actually mean to build “movements” — understanding this word not as a loose terminology overarching certain causes but as a substantive call for intentionally spun and co-conspired webs of relations? How can clarifying the words we use around organizing help to prevent co-optation and dilution? And how do we navigate the paradox of needing funding from often “dirty” sources in order to get by — while simultaneously attempting to subvert the underlying structures of power themselves?

In this part 2 of our conversation with Rasul A. Mowatt and Too Black of Laundering Black Rage (tap into part 1 here), we continue to sink in more deeply to unravel our entanglement in systems of exploitation.

Join us as we learn about what it means to tether ourselves to “organizations” beyond feeding into the optics of collective action; how we can practice “reverse laundering” to help funnel more resources towards “illegitimate” places of need; how to disentangle movement building from cycles of electoral politics; and more.

We invite you to…

 

About our guests:

Rasul A. Mowatt and Too Back are co-authors of Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits.

Rasul is a son of Chicago and a subject of empire while dwelling within notions of statelessness, settler colonial mentality, and anti-capitalism. Rasul also functions in the State as a Department Head in the College of Natural Resources, as an Interim Department Head in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, and as an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. He is the author of the book The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence: The State and the City Between Us.

Too Black is a poet, scholar, organizer, and filmmaker who blends critical analysis with biting sarcasm. He has headlined various stages and events including the historic Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, Princeton University, and Johannesburg Theater in South Africa. He is the co-author of the book Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits.  His words have been published in online publications such as Black Agenda Report, Left Voice, Blavity and Hood Communist. He is currently the host of the Black Myths Podcast, a podcast debunking the B.S. said about Black people.

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episode transcript

Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Kamea Chayne: We have critiqued the non-profit philanthropy industrial complex in previous episodes and also just working in this space of independent media, not wanting to take corporate funding, we also very much struggle with these questions because it does make it harder to reject a nice big check from a corporation. And I also understand when under-resourced organizations have to take corporate money to support the work that they're doing.

But I do think about how given our current landscape of economic injustice, where monetary wealth is disproportionately hoarded and held in the hands of corporations and individuals from families who've historically extracted and exploited the most, redistribution then has to disproportionately come from these sources. But then there's this challenge that taking money from these sources subjects us more to co-optation and radical goals being diluted into forms that are deemed more acceptable and less threatening to the status quo. 

So I guess I'm curious what your thoughts are on how we navigate these questions of funding and fears of co-optation, but still needing to pay the bills in light of this picture of economic injustice when rebalancing this terrain means taking more dirty money from the very sources of exploitation and extraction. How do we sit with this paradox?

Rasul Mowatt: I'm gonna probably let Too Black speak on it a little bit more, but we had the opportunity to speak to a couple of undergraduate students who have had some projects. And one of the things we tried to relay is that there is no clean money.

There's not some magical alternative space in which there are better funding streams for the type of justice work that we are seeking to do.

And so one of the things that we're trying to aid people in thinking about is not to say, just take any money anywhere, but to speak to the reality that there is no clean money. And so the aim, the focus, of what we are here to do, regardless of what that money or funding source is, is just understanding whatever relationships that we established can impact the work that we are engaging in. 

Wherever you’re seeking funding, the more that funding source is trying to impact, dictate, restrict, input or influence the activities in which you're trying to engage, the worse it can be. But one of the old-school ways in which organizations, especially in the ‘60s and prior, sought to raise money was never through asking for money on behalf of the organization. Members would oftentimes go work jobs and take portions of their checks and internally donate to their funding source. So I think there are ways in which we've also gotten caught up in thinking about: how do you fund the activities of the type of work that we're trying to do? Is it writing a grant? Is it requesting money on behalf of the organization from some corporate entity? Or is it finding some more collective and alternative mechanisms for bringing money in? But I'll hand it over to Too Black.

Too Black: Like Rasul said, it’s all dirty money. This is all a front. This is all colony. We also are above saying, like you said, don’t have any principles or not have any real goals. That's not what we're saying either.

In the non-profit industrial complex, people often reference Ruth Wilson Gilmore who wrote an essay that was very critical. I suggest people read that essay. It was from a broader book called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. And there was a series of essays from different organizers such as [Ruth Wilson Gilmore], Dylan Rodriguez, et cetera. And she talks about how it's twice stolen wealth. The wealth, the money that comes through a foundation, it's already capitalism. Just so people are clear on why we're saying it's blood money, we're talking about capitalism, we're already dealing with the conquests of everything. But then we're also dealing with not being paid the full value anyway. 

So the capitalist can keep the surplus value of the profits that they make off your labor. And then it's also money that's not paid in taxes. And that's why they often set up foundations, so rich folks can pay less in taxes and they just give money away through charity and that's its own type of laundering as well. 

But at the same time, on the point of capitalism, these monies have to go through our hands. Since we are part of the laundering, that then becomes its contradiction.

Laundering is not just something that happens above our heads, but something that we're involved in… there are creative ways to extract the things that have to pass through our hands on the assembly line and put them into the hands of the people who need those resources.

One thing we talk about in the conclusion [of the book] is reverse laundering. And the definition of reverse laundering is just the opposite. So, instead of trying to legitimize your money or legitimize whatever your “crime” is or anything of that nature, you're working the opposite way where you're taking the money that is considered legit or the resources that are considered legit, and you're giving it over to something that is considered illegitimate, something that's not maybe as sanctioned or known by the state. Or it's not something that everybody knows about it. And because the resources come through your hands, people have to be creative. 

Some of us don't need the salaries we need. Some of us do. Some of us don't need the houses. Some of us don't need the excess of things that we have. And for those of us who are fortunate enough to get to that level, those resources can be put back. Using ourselves as an example, even the way that this book was put together is a very small example. 

As I stated at the beginning, I'm not an academic. I don't come out of that world. So even getting a book like this published in an academic publisher is not something that I wouldn't be taking seriously, regardless of how strong my analysis was. But because Rasul works in academia and had a book contract with Routledge [publication company] prior, this was something we were able to bring [into the space of academia]. We were able to get an analysis that's not really supposed to be in this space (generally speaking so we can make this point). But we can also then take that analysis and not just aim it at academia, but also give it to the people. 

It's a way of legitimizing it and then giving it back to the “illegitimate” to think about it in that nature. So there are different ways to do that. And I think even with funding, if a grant doesn't have any strings attached, you can pretty much do what you want. You have to consider whether that works for you.

What are the actual goals of what you're trying to do? What are the objectives? What are the strategies? What are the tactics? The better you can clarify those things for yourselves, the easier it is to figure out what money to take. 

If you just have a very vague idea that, or you just want to be Black and joyful, then you're much more open to co-optation because you haven't clarified what you're trying to organize and what you want to do. A lot of us are not always co-opted (I don't even know if co-optation is always the word) because a lot of us walk in with the demands that are already in line with the thing we claim to be fighting against. We're already saying things that don't need any real pushback. We already have laundered it ourselves when we show up with our grants, and we often are not even asking for things that work against the state in many ways.

So there's no real conversation to take place. We've already converted it anyway. And now whatever identity group we represent, it just becomes a stamp of approval or a way to market for the state. So that's why we have to be clear. The sharper we are on what it is we want to do, what we’re working on, what material conditions are intended to address, then the funding is easier to identify. If you're not sharp on that, you are probably more likely to end up doing things that are unrelated to real issues. And you often might find yourself becoming branded as a sellout or grifter because you're just doing things that are working against the interests of the people you claim to represent. But you may not be aware of that.

Those of us who are just out here, even if we're not in organizations or something of that nature, we need to demand that people have clear plans that can explain to us what they're trying to do. If they do come to us with money, or if they come to us with a new plan, or they come to us with some project or whatever, we need to be politically educated enough to be able to look at that and say that's not what we need. Because sometimes people will try to push that on you, try to take advantage of you, either out of ignorance or just being busy and tired. So we have to be organized in that sense too.

Kamea Chayne: When you share that there is no clean money, I think it's a reminder that there is no ethical purity in systems of exploitation. As you said, that doesn't mean that we should abandon our ethics and compasses of morality altogether, but it's a call to be more intentional about how our goals can contribute, or how we might be able to disrupt these cycles that continue to reinforce themselves.

And as we're speaking, election season is upon us and taking up most of the space when it comes to discourses on politics and what it means to be politically active citizens. At the same time, I sense a lot of our social movements are gaining momentum, whether they are workers' rights movements, Black Lives Matter, the movements for a free Palestine, Indigenous rights, climate justice, and so on.

I'm curious what your general thoughts are on the direction of where these movements are headed about state politics. What do you find to have been effective that people have learned and are working on? Or what might feel like kind of more of the same in terms of capitulating to power or radical intentions being watered down over and over?

Rasul Mowatt: A lot of what we're saying sounds as if we're cautious. We are because I think we have to be accurate. We have to be accurate in our assessment of our issues. We have to be accurate in our abilities and commitment to do the things that we are saying that we want to do. And oftentimes I think there might not be accuracy or congruence. But what Too Black has asked me to think about in presenting a response to you and the listeners is that a social-political movement isn't just this sort of activity of bodies that are around. Typically, what we understand about a movement is that it's an assembly of multiple organizations.

So first of all, individuals will have to come together and create an organization around the issue. So moving from individual rage to a collective rage to a spontaneous response on the street. We have to then move ourselves to create institutions, which are organizations that address these issues.

A movement is a group of organizations that are all connected to a similar issue. Their activities may not be all the same, because some of them may connect to other issues or they have different tactics in how they respond to an issue, but a social-political movement is a coalition of those organizations.

So first, those organizations exist, multiple organizations exist, but then they begin to form coalitions and tap into their respective bases of members, people who want to support their organization to become something bigger. 

And so when we think of a movement in that particular way, it begins to help us to see that certain things are issues that we're right now in the process of dissenting around, but we don't have a movement because they're not quite organizations that have been created. We haven't moved to the point of creating organizations or we haven't created enough organizations that are around the particular issue.

When we think about the Black Lives Matter movement, which was mostly created by the media, we're left with a loss in thinking about what are the different types of organizations that are organized around police killings. We can only think of Black Lives Matter Global Network or a chapter that's called Black Lives Matter in some way, Seattle Black Lives Matter, or some type of alteration of that name.

Kamea Chayne: Just to clarify real quick, by organizations you don't mean like formalizing it as in 510(c)(3) organizations [a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax]. Just organizations more broadly speaking.

Rasul Mowatt: I love the clarity that you're asking for. I say organizations meaning that three or more people have come together somewhere, in their car, in their house and so forth and say, together we need to begin to respond to this, and they will grow and find other people.

So it's not just having a storefront with the title of your organization name. This is not, being officially recognized by the state government in terms of having right 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status. This is not about having bylaws or official constitutions.

This is about an individual that's not accountable to anyone, to now being accountable to others. So that all of a sudden, if we're saying that we need to have a rally on Saturday to spread the word about what happened to Sonya Massey, we have some mechanism to engage in text messages and phone calls and social media postings and somebodies getting there early to check the space out. We have mechanisms to find out who can bring first aid and who can handle childcare. 

An organization allows an individual to move towards addressing the issue collectively, and more importantly, to now be accountable.

Many of us can go to a protest as an individual and leave whenever we want to. But when we're now a part of the organization that's put on that particular protest, our day is gone. Because we have to be there early and we should be the last people out. And to our frustration, we may not know when it's going to end, we may be exhausted, we may have to bring things for glucose levels and all that type of stuff to able to function for the day. But that's what I mean by organization. Does that provide the clarity that you were looking for?

Kamea Chayne: Absolutely. I think that's a very important distinction to make because when people see the word ‘organizations’, I think a lot of people jump to the conclusion that it's a nonprofit. So this is very helpful.

Too Black: We're probably obsessive about [the definitions] but, we just want to make sure that definitions are clear for the listeners. Because I think movements get thrown around, and since we’re talking about things being laundered and co-opted, part of it is that things are sometimes not clear. Like I was saying earlier, it's just not having a clear sense of what we're up against, what we're dealing with. 

Rasul Mowatt:  And if we can look at some of the examples, I know you mentioned the environmental justice movement as one example. For quite some time, there have been multiple organizations that have been tackling environmental justice in so many different ways, representing so many different populations many of which either don't know each other or they don't politically agree.

Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia is now a social movement in that space because there are multiple types of organizations that have their own distinctive issue, but they have now found a shared space. The state forest is going to be converted into a police training facility. And so you have everything from environmental movements and specifically organizations of environmental movements present in that location.

You have organizations that are around criminal justice, and restorative justice. And then we have other organizations that have been responsive to labor rights, land and access and land rights. They are all coming together to protest how the city and the economic forces there have been wanting to convert this public space into a private space for the sake of police training. And the work that has gone on there would not be able to be sustainable if it was just individuals.

There had to be organizations that had ways in which they could sort of come in and out to find ways to get resources and bring resources in. Or to come up with some agreed-upon tactic like throwing raves, or staying overnight in the forest area.

The need for organization is key. Again, going back to the issue, how do we respond to that? We have to sustain our anger, but we also have to be accountable to other people so we're not just pushing our agenda.

If our school is going to be closed, it's not enough for just a few of us parents to be angry. Is it only the parents of children in that school that should be concerned about the school being closed or should the community that is around the school should be concerned about the school being closed? And so I hope that provides at least an initial response that I'm sure Too Black is gonna add to some more.

Kamea Chayne: I appreciate this clarification of movements and organizations. Organizing itself is a skill that a lot of us were never really taught either. So I think all of this is very important to sit with. 

My general question is, with election season, everyone's centering “political action on electoral politics”, so I’m just curious what your thoughts are on that and maybe what it means to redefine or expand what we understand to be politics and political action so that they're not just playing by the rules of the system.

Too Black:  I think especially with those clarifications about movements and organizations, that's what I was also getting as far as being clear on what are our objectives, what is it that we are working for, what are we doing? And

Even with objectives laid out, organizations can still be laundered, co-opted, and chopped up. And we see that all the time.

And some of that's due to a lack of clarity on their part. And then some of that's due to much larger forces. But I do think when we're talking about how to engage, especially during an election season or something like that, if we're clear and we hold to those things, I think the terrain becomes much easier, whether you should deal with this politician or whether you should support this policy or whether you should have an idea that is outside of that framework. I think those things become much clearer when you're in organizations and people have clear objectives and when you're willing to change those objectives when they don't align with how to resolve an issue, or even if you come to see that the issue is much bigger than maybe you initially thought it was.

But part of what makes that hard is because we do exist in a situation where all these liberal—or they might even call themselves left-based within the United States context–organizations partially sustain themselves through election cycles. So election cycles will come around and act blue, and all these different entities will give money to organizations to go out and support the candidate, particularly the presidential candidate or the people running for federal office. Much of the nonprofit world's funding cycles are tied to the cycle of an election.

So when you see an organization that may have primarily been working on, let’s it could be police brutality, and the organization is tasked with trying to elect, in this case, Kamala Harris or whomever else, they are inherently going to be pulled away from what they were already doing because now they have to dedicate resources to that. In other eras, it wasn't like that. Organizations weren't as looped in, so they had a little bit more autonomy. 

So you have to ask yourself when you are organizing, how do we want to set this up? In the short term, you can pay the bills, fund your staff, but it comes with an exchange that is always benefitting the people giving you the money.

So you might be able to fund your thing, but they're probably more likely going to want to tie you to their thing. So instead of thinking about reproductive rights more broadly, now the organisation is only focused on abortion, for example. If people want to talk about abolition, or we want to talk about the broad sense of the state or police violence, now it's just about reform. This often leads to the police getting not just more money themselves, but the people who make the equipment profit directly. You directly see stocks go up and you see profit margins go up at the time of a high-profile police shooting.

So we have to understand the situation we're walking ourselves into. It's not just, “We're going to take the money and fund this”. You have to have a plan. If you think you can do that, if you can enter yourself into that process and somehow fund something else, then I'm not here to tell you don't do it. But I think there's sometimes a sense that we can play both sides of it. And like we say in the book, there is a line of “the state is the house (in terms of gambling)”. Because once you get tied into that apparatus, the state, political parties, and political infrastructure delegitimize you by legitimizing themselves. 

It's also a vampire-like process, they [the state apparatus] suck all your energy. So you're no longer a movement. You're just a lobbyist group for the party. You're just a ‘kind of’ activist that's sent out to work on behalf of the party.

And we've seen this happen over the last 50, 60 years that independent organizations have become extensions of the Democratic Party, extensions of, as journalist Glen Ford would say, the corporate oligopoly is extensions of the state. That's what these organizations often become. And some of that is their own doing, some of that they didn't see coming. So we have to structure things in ways that don't align with that kind of process. 

Kamea Chayne: We are coming to a wrap here, but we will have more references and resources from this episode linked in our show notes at greendreamer.com. And for now, thank you both so much for joining me on the show today. It's been an absolute honor to be in conversation with you and get to learn so much from you two. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as Green Dreamers?

Too Black: There's something Rasul wrote in the text and I want to read the end of the introduction: “Black rage won't pick up the assault rifle for a parade and rally to march. Black rage won't develop clever chants and vibrant posters to march. Black rage won't sit on a panel or hold a microphone to march. There is no stage for Black rage. Black rage, if it goes somewhere meaningful, will have to stock pantry shelves and read to children so that they can finally learn to read, pitching tents to provide inadequate shelter when other types of shelter are desired but resources are limited, delivering food five days a week to elders who may not be alive the next time you're making those rounds. I think you may get our point. Black rage must become the work.

It is important to understand that Black rage is born out of love, not anger per se, because anger is not what happens to you. The outlets are not about what needs to change in your life. Black rage is about looking out into the world and seeing what is happening to those like you, those with you, and more importantly, using yourself as a barometer.

The enough is enough for watching the whipping of the other. The enough is enough of hearing the cries of the other. The enough is enough of not wanting oppression to exist anymore, anywhere, anyhow, and in any way”. 

I think that quote for me is the final words of wisdom. But stay vigilant. I think things can always be transformed. Life is never stuck. It's always moving. So take that as an opportunity to move it in your direction.

Rasul Mowatt: And for me, another Frantz Fanon quote, but this time from [the book] A Dying Colonialism. The quote is, “Here are houses to be built, schools to be opened, slums to be torn down, cities to be made, children to be adorned with smiles. There are tears to be wiped out and human attitudes to be fought and people to be humanized”. 


 
kamea chayne

Kamea Chayne is a creative, writer, and the host of Green Dreamer Podcast.

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