A Hamer of Today

While I was reading about and listening to Hamer's testimony at the Democratic Convention in 1964, I was reminded of Tia Oso - national coordinator for the Black Immigration Network - who bravely stood on stage at the 2015 Netroots Nation Presidential Town Hall in Phoenix, AZ (my home state) to bring attention to police violence against Black women in America.

Here's an article from the Atlantic describing it.

Netroots Nation is a national political convention for progressive activists, so the parallelism in the two acts are fairly similar - they both utilized an event that meant to represent the "progressives" of their time as their platform to demonstrate the failures of those who claim to be advocates of society's oppressed. In addition to being a Black American woman, Tia Oso had the additional intersectional dimension of representing the Black immigrant community: her parents were immigrants from Nigeria, and experienced a multi-tiered oppression often ignored in progressive politics.

Tia Oso spoke specifically of the death of Sandra Bland and other black women killed while in police custody; again, very similar to Hamer's testimony discussing the police violence they faced when attempting to register their citizenship. Similar to Hamer's Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she also created a community that branched away from the community of the convention she attended: "I worked with Phoenix-based organizers to create #BlackRoots, a space to focus on black perspectives and connect national organizers with local black community members."

Oso also tapped into the hearts of her viewers like Hamer: "we called the names of black women killed in police custody, expressed our heartbreaking requests to the community should we ourselves die in police custody, and looked on as respected and revered progressive leaders were woefully unable to answer our reasonable question as to how they will lead America to a brighter future." She aimed her questions and demands at the democratic presidential candidates at the time O'Malley and Sanders, who struggled to address how they would work to unearth structural racism and ensure black lives are recognized and respected as equal people and citizens of America. The next convention was held in St. Louis, Missouri, and focused primarily on the American Blackness narrative while featuring many leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It's interesting to see how similar tactics are repeatedly used to effectively call people into a movement for change; it's also interesting to see how similar problematic views and ignorance recur as modern manifestations of America's tumultuous history of racism and misogyny. While Sanders and O'Malley didn't interrupt Oso with an impromptu press conference, they hadn't even considered preparing answers to Oso's questions. Hopefully more actions like Hamer's and Oso's will eventually bring the Black female narrative to the forefront of politicians' mind when they consider the primary issues of concern they ought to address should they take office.