that's not all he said:

'The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room and then start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved. You then have a responsibility to prepare an agenda that is achievable —that can institutionalize the changes you seek and to engage the other side.'

I was at that Sanders rally. And the distorted narrative that's developed about it has to be challenged.

The reality was nobody outside the first couple of rows next to the stage was aware of what was going on. It was pandemonium. It was noisy. The reality was that nut anti-gay Reverend Reggie Witherspoon and his scum bag Mount Calvary Christian Center congregation of bigots were there protesting Uncle Ikes. There was no clear delineation between the Uncle Ikes protestors and BLM. The sound system wasn't that great. It was only the video that was released later that many of us could even tell what it was about.

And THAT's what people initially thought Johnson was on about at first and why people were booing her - at first - and not many people even did that. Most of us were just puzzled and confused.

Wonder why you haven't heard from Johnson lately? BLM isn't exactly scrambling to be associated with her.

Killer Mike was right. And no. That's not "tone policing" it's called arguing in good faith.

Person 1: "You're a damn coon because you disagree with me"

Person 2: "I am willing to discuss this with you, but not if you continue to simply insult me."

Apparently the asshole is person #2 now.

What a time to be alive.

Whining about "tone policing" is simply the new way of saying "no one is allowed to criticize anything I say or do."

When a person says "everyone in this crowd is a white supremacist" why would anyone believe that person is willing to have a reasonable discussion?

There is content and there is delivery - either can distract from the other. It is a receptive balance of those two characteristics that creates true communication. In this case, it seems that the true audience is not the stated recipient, but those who can overhear on each side - "preaching to the choir".

"Tone policing"? Play all the language games you want, Charles, Obama and Killer Mike are right.

P.S. The proper term for this is "troll policing".

@4: Whining because she was being ignored and then throwing a twitter tantrum and insulting him to get attention just makes her look even more like a child.

Because you know, that is exactly how little children act. Why exactly is she entitled to a response? He is not arguing in bad faith, because he never wanted an argument at all, and then she started attacking him publicly.

The ultimate irony of this nonsensical post is that Mr. Mudede in fact engaged in the same "tone policing" of Ms. Johnson right after the incident, criticizing her disruptive tactics for alienating potential allies.

@4 Oh come on.

He doesn't OWE her a conversation. For instance you don't owe me a replay and I don't owe you one.

It was clear where she was gong to take it. Read all her interaction and twitter feed. She is nothing but polemics, screaming and name calling.

He doesn't have to engage her.

How about she drops the prissy shit and actually has a discussion. Anyone who's watched Killer Mike talk on his own channel or TV can easily see that he is a reasonable person.

What a difference 9 months makes. Way to stay consistent, Charles. http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/…

@13: When she barged up on that stage, she made herself a public figure. She made it political, so now people are going to talk about what she did. It is the choice she made.

No one is disallowed from talking about the event without first clearing it with her or making sure she is ok with their opinions. Her sense of entitlement seems only rivaled by her immaturity. She wants to say whatever she wants to whoever she wants, but also wants to demand no one criticize her or anything she does.

If you wanna know what most of America that heard about Obama got out of this I'll give you the TL;DR: Even Obama thinks BLM is wrong and should shut up.

Whoops, meant to continue:

If we are talking about how messages get received, I think Obama probably ought to remember that he's speaking into a device (the national media) that wants to neuter him completely.

OK, so, "reasonable suggestion" is now officially "tone policing." Got it. I appreciate these missives from the front lines of patriarchal suppression.

Obama made a damn good point when he said, after members of the group he was meeting with complained about not feeling heard, "you are sitting in the oval
office, speaking to the president of the United States." When someone who is sitting in the Oval Office, speaking to the president of the United States is still complaining about not having a voice, I think that person may be impossible to satisfy.

@22 People often say "I am not being heard," when they really mean "I am not getting exactly what I want exactly when I want it." One can give someone a full and fair hearing without, in the end, agreeing with them.

@14, just who is in charge of whether someone is arguing "in good faith"? Public discourse (including tweets, etc.) is not a formal debate setting. It's humans saying what they want when they want to, with no requirement that they follow someone else's process.

Yeah, I'll bet old King George III must have thought pretty much the same thing about all those uppity colonials refusing to be reasonable what with all their rioting and protests and boycotts, and tossing tea into Boston Harbor, and penning long missives of complaint, and refusing to allow soldiers of the Crown to wander into and out of their domiciles at-will. Just so bloody unreasonable, the lot of them. I'm also pretty certain he would have much preferred they all just sit down quietly together while he Kingsplained to them why they were wrong and childish to engage in such unseemly outbursts, and if only they would just acknowledge his superior authority, his paternalistic regard for his subjects, they could all go back to being one great big happy Empire, with his royal self continuing to call the shots. Because, that would have been the REASONABLE thing to do, eh what?

See, there's the proverbial rub: when you come at things from a position of power and privilege, every protest, every speech, every act of disruption seems "unreasonable" because, by definition, it doesn't conform to your particular ideas of what is "reasonable", and that invariably translates as "don't make me feel uncomfortable", "don't challenge my authority," and "wait your turn, we'll let you know when that comes." But for people lacking power and privilege, their turn never comes, because the "polite conversation" is always conducted on someone else's terms; they get to set the rules, they establish the standards of behavior, and ultimately they determine the outcome, and it almost never grants the oppressed even one iota of power or privilege they themselves not only take for granted, but perceive as their natural, rightful patrimony.

Every authority figure is being "reasonable" when confronting protesters who are being "unreasonable" by the simple act of standing in opposition to them; that's the very definition of the power-dynamics at play in any such situation where there is an inherent imbalance between those wielding power and those seeking empowerment. So, guess what? Sometimes, protesters elect to not be "reasonable", because being reasonable doesn't ever really get them jack; it just gets them a pat on the head for being compliant, and at best, a few sops to keep them quiet until those in control can figure out a way to shut them down completely.

Thank you COMTE. I was too tired and depressed to respond.

I do hope everyone actually read Johnson's piece before commenting.

@27 & 28 Yes. Bernie Sanders and Killer Mike are exactly like an armed occupying colonial army. I'm glad we finally have a voice of steady reason and no hyperbole in this discussion.

Maybe identity politics isn't a great idea after all? Or is it really victim-hood politics. At some point it gets blurred into a social media sewage pit.

The chances that this is not a Mudede troll post are less than zero.

@29:

If that's all you got out of it, then I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you really don't want to get anything out of it aside from whatever confirms your own bias in the matter. But, please feel free to remind us that absolutely no privilege was involved in adopting that perspective, nosirreebob.

@COMTE: According to your reasoning, we're all obligated to take seriously every obnoxious asshole who labels themselves an underdog making a "protest".

@Sandiai: Johnson described herself as having been raised as a Christian conservative to hate Seattle liberals. That's why she targeted Sanders' campaign. She's an attention whore who got famous trolling one important movement with the effect of derailing another. I can't believe anyone is actually still talking about her.

I attended Sander's UW rally that followed the Westlake incident with Johnson. The salutes to BLM--again and again and again--kind of confused me. I thought--"wait a minute, isn't my candidate (I'm a Bernie supporter) the economic socialist guy. What's all the repeated mentioning of--it seemed like pandering to--BLM? I later saw news of Johnson's disruption at Westlake. She (that tone) had an effect. No question.

i agree that it is fun to learn new terms, op

@32: your comment implies muedede is capable of writing something that isn't a desperate plea for attention.

@33 And you are somehow magically except from bias?

You certainly mastered throwing around buzzwords like "privilege" and propping up strawmen. Now maybe take some time to work on context and reasoning.

Is the BLM cause generally righteous? Of course? Is every single instance of that cause being invoked a justification for what ever sort of disruptive protest some splinter element dreams up? No.

I was there at that Sander rally. I have first hand unfiltered experience of what happened. You don't. There was no way to determine if Johnson was one of the anti-gay bigots there or not. That the first thing to contend with.

Second Killer Mike is every bit as invested in BLM as Johnson and his perspective is every bit as valid as hers. There's a reason your not hearing from her was associated with BLM anymore.

Position: "I--as an advocate who agrees with your position--will not engage in conversation with you if you verbally abuse me."

Yea, I guess it could be tone policing, but it could also be respecting yourself and being extremely clear about what your boundaries are, boundaries that should probably be respected.

The message I would want to spread to younger radicals is "no amount of consciousness raising will do X." It can do a lot but.... The problem with "your a sexual racist" is that "no amount of consciousness raising will make me want (or be obligated) to fuck you." You're tone policing? "No amount of consciousness raising will make me want (or be obligated) to stand here and take your insults." That's "our" hairstyle! "No amount of consciousness raising will correct your historical error." You can't come to "our" safe space? Rarely will any amount of consciousness raising force someone to accept that they are they one group of people it's "okay" to discriminate against. Consciousness raising has real limits. If we don't push against them and recognize them, we'll commit errors and adopt bad strategies.

That is no an accurate retelling of what the President said. He didn't actually say that BLM needed to stop yelling. He said that they had turned a spotlight on an important issue. Then he suggested to 'young people' (not BLM specifically) that they should engage once the yelling has gotten people's attention and put a spotlight on the issue. I am not sure how tone policing can be forward looking, but Obama's comment clearly was. He wasn't talking about any specific event, so I am not sure how he could be recasting anything at all. And, in fact, many in the BLM movement have done exactly that.

Also, if Killer Mike's objection and refusal to engage with someone who calls him a 'coon' is tone policing, that raises the question: is some tone policing good and necessary? Or do certain issues hurt your foot so much that you have carte blanche to yell absolutely anything, no matter how offensive and counter-productive it might seem?

I understand how, even though interrupting a rally unrelated to your issue to demand conversation about the issue you want to talk about can seem inappropriate in the abstract; the urgency, importance, and current neglect of your issue can make that action reasonable. And I think BLM is a great example of that.

But it seems like there still needs to be some tone policing. What about people who are crazy, who take the same type of actions over inane or insane issues, but which seem subjectively to them just as important (What are the names of those two guys who interrupt council meetings, the one who ran for city council and the tall guy with the cardboard signs?). Do we have to just give them the microphone and let them control the narrative for fear of tone policing? And what about calling Killer Mike a coon? Killer Mike isn't some privileged idiot who refuses to acknowledge the issue, he is someone with whom constructive dialogue could be had, why push him out of the conversation like that? Or are we saying that he has some continued obligation to stay in the conversation despite pretty intense personal attacks?

And I think this is what Obama was getting at. Because even if we say Killer Mike should stay in that conversation and keep listening to her, we know that isn't how people respond. That isn't going to lead to anything constructive. Disruption is great for forcing an issue, but it doesn't solve the issue on its own. Is disruption the end goal, or is it a means to an end, with the end goal being progress? Because if disruption is the end goal, it has already been achieved. If the goal is actual progress, eventually it will take engagement and not just disruption. I think that is all he is saying, and it seems almost obvious.

How about some basic proofreading before publishing?

So basically what some people are saying is that if you have a meaningful cause, you can be as much of an asshole as you want, and as soon as anyone tells you to tone it down, they're "tone policing".
A real grievance doesn't justify demanding that everyone else excuse your assholery. There's a difference between getting attention and being a dickweasel. This is the same old hypocritical dogmatism that SJWs (speaking as usual of the people who care more about being right than being effective, not of the people who actually fight to advance justice) employ to excuse the shouting down of all differing opinions and the suppression of journalism. Just another trait of the regressive left, with which the progressive left should not associate.

@27: The colonies were actually offered representation in Parliament as part of negotiations, but they couldn't get their shit together enough to decide how their representatives would be chosen.

I also don't see much of a strategy behind Johnson's decision to disrupt Bernie, the one presidential contender who will likely support the BLM movement more than any other contender. Now this spat with Killer Mike. What strategy is behind the twitter tantrum? Let's not give Johnson so much credit.

In reality, I fear Johnson is more of an impulsive loudmouth than a strategic visionary. BLM needs more help.

This is all pretty laughable BS. Tone policing, Micro-aggressions, blacklivesmatters represent superficial attempts to make people conform. Get real. Go read some @nero and stop being a @snowflake that constantly needs to be bottle fed to prevent a racist tantrum. These are just voided people who have no spiritual purpose in life they can understand, so they resort to labeling. A pretty pathetic existence.

disruption and transgression is the only real way to get people in power to pay attention - true

all disruption and transgression is not created equal. calling the shitty things you do disruptive and transgressive is true, but that doesn't mean they're accomplishing the things you ostensibly want them to accomplish.

Claiming that all possible modes of discourse you may use are equally effective denies reality, unless your only need is to hear yourself speak—if the world were such that every way and style of communicating you wished to use were effective, you'd already be in the world you wanted.

If I were trying to persuade others of something and were doing it in such a way that I had very little chance of its working, I should consider anyone letting me know so to be my friend, as much my friend as France tried to be our friend post-2001 by dissing our ideas about Iraq, or anyone hiding my car-keys from me when I might be drunk were mine.

Then again, the dominant political ideology of some of the American Left were best described as 'Marxist-Onanist'.

You Charles are not bright.

Most of the comments here are unusually intelligent, cogent, and literate. But @48 tops them all in accuracy.

So, if I say that this entire article is full of pandering, illogical and repressive bullshit will you tone police me?

@34:

You're free to do so or not do so at your own discretion, but that doesn't mean their grievances aren't legitimate; it simply means you have chosen to de-legitimize them from your position of privilege, because their "tone" doesn't adhere to whatever standards the privileged have set to maintain advantage over the unprivileged.

@comte 1. would you care to explain how attempts to stifle dissent from people of and sympathetic to these movements through tone police policing actually helps anything? I mean, it's not like the opponents of black lives matter et al actually give a fuck if they're "tone policing"

2. Without hand waving and something something transgressive etc etc, how does inflammatory and offensive language, calling people coon here but there's plenty of examples of being being labeled coconuts, bananas, uncle toms, etc etc, how does that help anyone's cause?

If I actually thought it helped? I'd be all for it. I'd tell people to go ahead and murder their oppressive overlords if I thought it would make the world a better place. But it wouldn't. And I don't think this does. I think people are justifiably angry and saying a lot of unjustifiable shit because of it. I understand that people do that. I don't condemn them for being mad and saying rash things in the moment and the emotion.

But this whole tortured application of tone policing as a justification and part of the belief that we can do no wrong is just stupid as fuck.

@52:

That's precisely the point - when you're in a position of privilege you don't in fact actually give a fuck and you can get away with pretty much anything, including telling the unprivileged they don't have any grounds for complaint, or that their complaints become invalid when they're framed in language the privileged find offensive or unproductive (i.e. threatening), as they choose to define those terms. The unprivileged, on the other hand, don't get to define anything, they aren't allowed to set the terms of the debate, nor are their complaints granted legitimacy unless, presumably, they adhere to someone else's standards of comportment, at which point they become so watered down as to be rendered ineffectual.

The unprivileged have power only to the extent they resist the pressure to acquiesce and conform to externally-imposed normatives, which is exactly why doing so makes the privileged feel uncomfortable, because they're refusing to "play nice" by rules they had no hand in crafting, and which invariably are imposed to their disadvantage. This resistance can take many forms, but if it elicits a strong response, even if it's perceived as a negative one by those responding, then it's having the intended effect, because change of any sort doesn't come about without first disrupting the status quo.

In short: comfort is a luxury only the privileged can afford, and the only way the unprivileged can wield power is by depriving them of it.

Man, I said NOT to hand wave something something transgression refusal to play by privilege rules etc etc. You know a rule the privileged and powerful lay down? Don't brutally murder people. But doing that would sure elicit a strong response I bet! Is this an incredibly stupid analogy? Yes! But it is your logic that has brought us here Comte. I hope you're fucking proud of yourself.

I'll repeat: all disruption is not created equal.

@54:

Yeah, "don't brutally murder people," is, if memory serves, precisely what BLM has been shouting, loudly, vociferously, and inconveniently since its inception. This heinous disregard for Black lives at the hands of some of the most privileged people in this country, namely, White law enforcement officers, is what elicited THEIR response. So, I guess I would have expected you to feel at least a modicum of sympathy for their plight, seeing as you seem to hold at least that much in common with them.

But, you know, another advantage of privilege is to be completely oblivious of the forest for the trees...

The underprivileged very definitely can call-out the privileged on their tone; yes, 'standards' can be used to oppress, but they can also be used to subvert the power structure, for example when African-American civil rights leaders showed greater eloquence, intelligence, and even-temperedness (by top-down standards) than racist pobuckers in office and otherwise. The existence of some standards of civility and reasonableness is precisely what allows we non-wealthy types to criticise Trump.

@55 holy shit you can't be serious. Please. Just tell me you're arguing in bad faith. For the love of God. It surely cannot be possible for someone to so grievously ignore the point to make some insanely, offensively insipid appeal to emotion.

of course i fucking know that's what blm is about, there's not a day that doesn't go by without my heart aching and wondering if we're doing enough to throw ourselves on the gears as it were

i already said i don't condemn people for saying offensive things when they've been oppressed, marginalized, and violently molested. but the shitty fucking thing about being marginalized is that you have to be better than the people marginalizing you if you want change. that's part and parcel of what being disenfranchised means.

so talk to me all you want about disrupting the status quo by calling your black allies coons and then crying tone police when the majority of people, powerful or not, take offense. as if the status quo doesn't have things both the haves and the have nots believe in. and no, this isn't an appeal to appeal to sluggish white moderates.

But I'm actually interested in winning the war while you and yours obsess over these petty fucking culture war skirmishes

@57:

"But, I'm actually interested in winning the war", I'm sure you are, little soldier, I'm sure you are. Because nothing says "I am definitely NOT 'obsess(ing) over these petty fucking culture war skirmishes'" quite like trolling an online blog comment page.

@59

IRONY DETECTED! Raise shields! Full power to the Cognitive Dissonance drive!

@60:

Is that anything like an Improbability Drive? Because, that's the only way I can imagine one of you damned dirty apes captaining a starship.

"Little soldier?" Lmao, nice attempt to make me out as effete/impotent with a nice side of patronization and refusal to answer the point.

Sure, IM the one trolling. give me a fucking break

let me know if you ever actually decide to defend your view points

@62:

Considering pretty much ALL of the - what? - 10 comments you've posted since you registered (not counting the single-syllable grunts) have been on this one thread, then yeah, you're a troll.

@62:

Excuse me, but slight correction: 10 comments you've posted since you registered, INCLUDING the single-syllable grunts....

because I'm interested in a thread, I'm a troll? And you've done your research on me huh? Did you also maybe catch that I just registered recently? Please tell me how I'm trolling. I'm super curious. You sure you know what that word means? Just to be clear a troll isn't defined as "someone who disagrees with you". Oh but I'm new to the stranger so obviously I just registered to make complete, cogent points for you to ignore, because I'm *trolling*. You're a fucking embarrassment dude.

@16 underrated post

Obama upping his happy pills, I see. Which room is this polite discussion going to take place in?
Only know what I've read here. She's bold, getting up on stage with Bernie A climate change activist
I hope, right behind her.
This other guy, The Rapper, playing mind games.ignores her then chats with his buddies about her, on Twitter, then goes all twee when she reacts. It's the equivalent onto a female of a squirrel grip.
Violence to confront is dumb, end of story.
There are many other ways to register a strong protest. Sounds like an imaginative move on her part to me.

Remember when Obama said "Im the president of the (white) United States of America, not black america"?

Or the numerous interviews when he shit on black complaints of institutional racism?

All that and it never got him a modicum of acceptance among white moderates or right wingers.

At the end of his tenure, he learned a lesson that any African American person over 25 could have told him day 2. What a shame.

To befair, lets not bullshit.

Millenials and (sadly) white bernie supporters have almost as bad a record on black domestic issues as Trumpers do.

75% of white Americans (including majorities of left leaning whites) not only do not have any black friends, but do not know any black people.

50%+ belieive in untrue racial stereotypes about criminality and subhuman intellectual capacity among blacks.

When people say "its 2016, how can idiots still believe this shit" they forget that at the time of Civil rights passing, well over 60% of whites opposed it. When Rosa Parks was arresed, well over 65% of whites thought it was a setback to awareness of black struggles or agreed with the law, and in the 1940s when Rooseveldt tried to pass an anti lynching law, 80% of white americans opposed it.

Black people keep praying for acceptance rather than righting for equality in one measure or another. The Black Democrats and Republicans (who have their pockets lined so long as they follow orders and shit on black youth who run out of the box) are just another owned part of the equation.