In an interview with Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow!, the mother of Sandra Bland discussed her support for and endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and, in so doing exposed the distorted perspective many people have on what constitutes democracy and the cultural context and vanity necessary to produce it.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Recently, on DemocracyNow! there was an interesting interview with the mother of Sandra Bland (the Black Lives Matter activist who died while in police custody in Texas after being arrested as a result of a 'routine' traffic stop), Geneva Reed-Veal. In it, she did a couple of things that are worth paying attention to. First, she flatly refused to comment on Trump. This is a positive example that we should all follow, without question. Second, she made the case, vehemently, in response to Nina Turner's (a Bernie Sander's surrogate and member of the Ohio legislature) comment that Clinton has tended to 'politic tragedy' that, in a democracy, each person is entitled to their own opinion and can 'endorse' and vote for whichever candidate they choose.

Fair enough. But the terse, obstinate, and self-satisfied way in which it was said, her avoidance of any direct engagement ('I will not go back and forth') with the reality surrounding her daughter's death and the lack of any accountability she's received merited more than the quick agreement on principle Turner gave it that had more to do with retreating from a charged topic held by an aggrieved victim's mother who, ostensibly, holds the moral high-ground. There is a serious issue in this that we all ought to pay attention to that exposes the twisted, distorted state of what many consider 'democracy' in our country today and the cultural context that produces it.

In the first place, Sandra Bland's mother can vote however she wants if she thinks it'll help her secure justice for her daughter, there's no question about it. The problem, though, is that she seems to think its emblematic somehow of democracy for a presidential candidate to meet her in a local, down-home restaurant with 'her people', bring a pad and pencil, take 'lots of notes', express sorrow and sympathy for a 'victim' and, then, fly away leaving little but promises and hints that supporting her candidacy might help bend the wheels of justice in her favor. More than this, she seems to think its even more democracy for her to go around stumping for the candidate as being the only one 'who called her up', 'listened to her issues', and 'made an effort', that her advocacy simply participates in the broad image of democracy we should all aspire to and from out which actual social change arises.

In fact, with a bit of reflection, what this episode actually reveals is a 'democracy' that operates through a kind of functioning corruption whereby individual expressions of injustice are dealt with piecemeal, one at a time as they arise, from the top-down through private meetings and the secret—always generous—exertions of already existing political power on behalf of its victims.

The real issue becomes the fact that this kind of 'justice' can ever seem (to Bland's mother/to us) like its the result of or forms part of a process anyone might call democratic. In fact, that it does reveals a profound vanity involved in the perversion of what we should think of as a real democratic process. For the only way that such back-room politicking could possibly be rendered acceptable in these terms has everything to do with the cooperation of the victim themselves that is entirely predicated upon political power's pandering to their vanity by giving them the impression of achieving broader social and political significance (since they are at the center of a national debate and become a spokesperson of sorts) and by giving the rest of us the impression of justice having been achieved and the feeling that, finally, the right, moral-democratic thing was done (since the victim themselves is happy with the result and the result was achieved with their 'involvement').

Being honest with ourselves, however, we should look into this entire charade and see it as nothing more than a kind of simulacrum of democratic-sounding ideas through which we all, for a moment, get the impression that power is flexible, that the political system works, and that we all bore witness to the broad arc of democracy's expression of justice brought to bear by individual citizen action and public outrage when, in fact, little will have changed: the powerless yesterday are still the powerless today (minus, perhaps, one: the victim) and the only reason anything happened at all was because someone in power found it politically expedient to 'take on-board' an issue and make it appear as if something was done about it.

This is where the real cultural significance of our current situation vis a vi 'democracy' resides. When pundits tell us Bernie Sanders wins with 'millennials' but has a problem with the older 'generation', we should not leave it at that, as a superficial judgment based on polling data. Rather, we should look at the Democratic primary as, essentially, a referendum on the '60s generation's narrative of historical accomplishment and self-same vanity its based on.

Because there is a generation of people who seem to think that everything their generation has done is exceptional, that they themselves are personally implicated in, for instance, the Civil Rights movement, landing on the moon, reaching for the stars, even for folk music and Bob Dylan, simply because they were alive at that time, simply by association. These are people who see themselves more as one story in a broader narrative of which electing the 'first woman president' is now about all they perceive, blinded as they are by their own vanity and the desire to see themselves once again at the center of what they think is another revolutionary change that they will bestow upon the planet and the fortunate younger generation.

We should look at this in the same way that we look at Sandra Bland's mother or, even, as we've come to look at Obama: when we think we are doing something revolutionary that doesn't cost us anything, is something that we can 'tune into' on T.V. or the Internet and watch, when we feel like we're in the middle of some great poetic Change from the comfort of our own home, chair or foreclosed property, we should think twice. Real democratic change comes from the bottom-up, is something that takes time to achieve, requires a broad movement of people to support, and comes at a cost. And it isn't something that we achieve through the prevalent expression of a kind of micro-facism ('that's my vote, you cast yours') in a marketplace of opinion or lottery of ideas where 'the best individual' wins (as Bland's mother tells us), but through the real difficulty of working through the depth of problems and their cultural and social roots and having the conversations no-one seems to want to have so that consensus can arise.

This is what the movement supporting Bernie is trying to do. It's trying not to vote in the false narrative of democracy based on our basest instincts and vanity, in the simple comfort that comes from voting for the most 'favored' or most popular candidate and the knowledge our opinion will be harder to challenge because of it; rather, its the vote that sees itself as just one act amongst many that forms part of a broader movement through which we produce lasting, durable change.

The movement to elect a truly progressive candidate needs to expand the scope of what's included in the debate to get him elected and it needs to challenge some of these deeply held but difficult or nearly impossible to confront (as this is) cultural and, indeed, psychological issues that currently prevent a breakthrough in the dialogue, or, perhaps, the beginning of any kind of real dialogue at all. That would be democracy in action.