By Antjuan Seawright, Columnist
Every major social movement in America’s history has been driven by the combined and tireless efforts from young people, women and the Black community, particularly Black media and the Black church.
Now, I understand that some folks will see this as a controversial statement. That’s fine. It’s still true.
Would the underground railroad have found any success if not for young abolitionists establishing secret waypoints and the Black church encoding them into spirituals memorized, practiced and spread among slaves hungry to be free?
Would the foreign powers in Europe have stood against King Cotton if they hadn’t heard the words of Sojourner Truth or if Queen Victoria hadn’t wept over Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
William Jennings Bryan was only 36 when he gave his Cross of Gold speech, Thomas Jefferson was just 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 when he helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Young people have fought our nation’s wars. Remarkable women like Clara Burton founded the Red Cross, helped ban child labor, created the minimum wage and more. Black media from The North Star to Essence started as the voice of abolition and became the voice of oppressed people everywhere and, when it comes to the Black church, it has not only served as the organizing foundation for American change for everything from voting rights to labor, but it has also stood as the Black community’s touchstone for hundreds of years.
You see, the first thing the slave traders did when they came to America wasn’t to feed the men, women and children in their cargo hold. It wasn’t to clothe them or to clean them. It wasn’t even to whip them. It was to sell them because that was the best way to separate them because they knew that separating families and isolating them was the first step to breaking their spirits.
But there was one time when the slaves were allowed to come together – to pray. So the Black church became family and that prayer sowed the seeds of community growing throughout slavery, through uprising and the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the struggle of the 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s to today where the Black Church stands as the tree of shelter for our struggle for civil rights.
It’s no mistake that the first slave rebellions were plotted through prayer circles. It’s no mistake that the winds of the underground railroad were sung in spirituals. It’s no mistake that the NAACP met in the church basement long before they made it to the courthouse and it’s no mistake the church stands in that same capacity today.
The roots run deep.
That is our history, all of us. But what do we do now that we see it? Simple. We mobilize it.
You see, this reality comes as a surprise to anyone listening to the Trump MAGA narrative that promotes whitewashing history, revering statues of traitors like Robert E. Lee and waging a relentless war against women, minorities and young people, the very folks whose sacrifices drive America to become a more perfect union.
They call it “populism.” It isn’t. It’s Christian nationalism and it’s on the ballot.
Populism is about fairness. It’s about equality. It’s about serving the people, all the people, first and foremost. Is that what we saw when Trump was in the White House?
Did he increase the minimum wage, make healthcare more affordable and accessible, lower housing costs or reform the justice system? No. In fact, his sole legislative priority, and the only major legislation he managed to pass, was a huge tax cut for corporations while his executive orders were about breaking up families at the border, banning Muslims from entering the country, rewriting American history, withholding funding from cities that allowed Black Lives Matter Protests and using disaster relief funds to build a wall.
What about now? We see the MAGA Republicans in Congress refusing to renew the child tax credit extension that cut childhood poverty in half. We see them refusing to fund the American Connectivity Act that gave Black churches, particularly rural Black churches, the ability to adapt to the online worship and online giving that sustained them during the pandemic and sustains them still. We see them refusing to support programs that allow schools to provide free lunches to students in the summer even though they know, for many, those school lunches may be the only meals they get all day.
And while these MAGA Republicans repeatedly refuse to serve the people, they have worked tirelessly to empower and embolden white supremacists and groups like the Proud Boys so dedicated to a white, Christian nationalist agenda that they’d rather incite a violent insurrection than admit women, Black folks or who grew up after integration is a real American.
That’s not populism. It’s white nationalism and it’s on the ballot…and organizing.You don’t have to take my word for it. Read Trump’s Project 2025 and read it for yourself.
On Friday, however, Vice President Kamala Harris took the first steps in reclaiming the populist mantle for the people with a series of policy proposals to strengthen working families by cutting costs for healthcare, housing food and more, taking on price gouging and corporate greed and cut taxes for more than 100 million middle-class and lower-income Americans.
Did you like the child tax credit? Her plan extends it. Do you like that, thanks to President Biden, seniors only must pay $35 a month for insulin? Her plan expands it to all Americans. Do you want a federal ban on price gouging that drives up costs at the grocery store and pretends its inflation pocketing record profits for big grocery chains while the people go hungry? So does Vice President Harris and her plan will get it done.
Vice President Harris is reminding us of what real populism looks like and now it’s up to us to organize behind it. Like I said, every major social reform in American history has been driven by the combined and tireless efforts from young people, women and the Black community, particularly Black media and the Black church. The white nationalist forgot that fact when they put on their MAGA hats. It’s up to us to remind them.
When Malcolm X said, “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything,” he was talking about this moment. He was talking about not mistaking the face of white Christian nationalism as populism or evangelicalism or even Christianity. It’s about knowing the con artist with his hand in your pocket and standing up against it.
We know our history. Now it’s time to make some.
Antjuan Seawright is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Strategy LLC and a senior visiting fellow at Third Way. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @antjuansea.
