A Conversation With Nicholas Richard Thompson, Part II.
As part of his research on grassroots economic projects toward Black Liberation, Austin Cole spoke with Nicholas Richard-Thompson about his community organizing, expanding definitions of economic development, and connecting the people to the public sector. In part II of this discussion, they reflect on what Black Liberation means on a local level and how organizing through a People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework can get us closer to achieving what we need and demand to achieve it.
We must allow people to question our institutions while building a culture of demanding more. I think a culture of demanding more is key. I think we are so okay with just saying, “$15 an hour is great.” Well, $15 an hour was great – 20 years ago. We should demand more, but I think we make such compromises and concessions because we fight for what’s viable. We probably need to rearrange that and just start fighting for exactly what it is we need and not what we can get. I think people(s)-centered human rights does that in a way that says, on the basis of this idea of justice, human dignity, and realizing our largest aspirations.” – Nicholas Richard-Thompson
Introducing Part II Of The Conversation
This is the second and final part of of a two-part interview series coming from a conversation that I had with Nick in April as part of my recently completed masters thesis (see Part I here ). Because the conversation was so insightful and I couldn’t include most of it in the thesis itself, I’ve decided to publish a slightly-edited version of our conversation, in two parts.
In this second part, Nick and I discuss local organizing strategy, international solidarity through Pan-Africanist principles, and the applicability of a People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework to municipal work — all with an eye toward what Black/African Liberation looks like materially, locally. In particular, Nick talks about building a ‘culture of demanding more’ and struggling to realize what our people want, need, and deserve in order to achieve human rights locally and internationally. Nick also lays out a grounded, Pan-Africanist vision of international solidarity between local efforts and organizations in the U.S. can build mutual material and cultural relationships with their counterparts throughout the African world. He closes out by sharing three C’s that can seed, nourish, and sustain our organizing and movement institutions from the local to the global, and vice versa: coordination, collectivization, and communication.
Learn more and support the work of organizations that Nick is a part of by following BAP Chicago and Aurora Participatory Democracy Hub . Much love and appreciate Nick!
Conversation With Nicholas Richard-Thompson (Part II)
Austin: Anyways I wanted to ask you more deeply about the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework 1 and thinking about bringing that into your work from an organizing perspective and how that ties into your other work too? Especially thinking about human rights frameworks that are popular internationally but don’t always resonate in the U.S.
Nicholas: I think you have to build campaigns around people(s)-centered human rights, specific campaigns to grow people’s understanding of it. I think broadly, just talking about it, there will be a disconnect, but if you have a housing campaign, lets’ say – I work with our own unhoused community very closely. If you have a housing campaign and you’re building with nonprofits, grassroots forces, and maybe particular municipal forces trying to get grants, whatever the case. However you organize, you can bring this framework around with the idea of housing as a human right, and that leaving people exposed to the elements is unsafe in many ways directly to them, but also to the broader community. Again, our interconnectedness – you know as James Baldwin said, “If I’m starving, you’re in danger. And if you think my danger makes you safe, we’re doomed right?” If you see it like that then feeding people is better for everybody. Even beyond the moral imperative, there’s a logical imperative to do so. So, then I would say, I try to integrate human rights – people(s)-centered human rights, in particular – into our campaigns and our demands, toward reinventing how people see organizing and what they collectively deserve, which is also a culture issue.
We have a cultural belief about meritocracy that goes something like, “if people don’t have the things they need, they probably just didn’t work hard enough.” Now, I don’t agree with that. I don’t think that’s true at all. I know plenty of people who have two or three jobs who work harder than anybody, and they’re still on the bottom of the barrel economically. It’s not about hard work. That’s not the question. It’s about opportunities and exploitation. And I think this connects to a generational divide that’s also deeply racial. For me, the class people are born into and inhabit is a determining factor in whether or not they’ll be impoverished, and I think that’s what comes to me about how you bring people(s)-centered human rights into that is, how do we have dignity? How do we build something bottom up and make the demands based upon our needs, and not vague determinations of our value that are ascribed to us?
We must allow people to question our institutions while building a culture of demanding more. I think a culture of demanding more is key. I think we are so okay with just saying, “$15 an hour is great.” Well, $15 an hour was great – 20 years ago. We should demand more, but I think we make such compromises and concessions because we fight for what’s viable. We probably need to rearrange that and just start fighting for exactly what it is we need and not what we can get. I think people(s)-centered human rights does that in a way that says, on the basis of this idea of justice, human dignity, and realizing our largest aspirations.
People(s)-centered human rights puts it in the power of the people to dictate, determine what human rights looks like and what the definitions are. And then it gives us the idea of how we go and struggle for them. And in fact, I would say there’s no other way to gain human rights. I don’t come from the humanist perspective that they’ve been bestowed down to us. They have to be struggled for because whether they are endowed to us or not, there’s forces that exist that are exploiting our rights and subjugating you. So, you’re gonna have to struggle regardless, right?
So then the question becomes, how do we build campaigns? Campaigns around already existing societal issues and then incorporating people(s)-centered human rights because it’s a great framework to reinvent how we think about our relation to each other, our relation to power. And then how do we actually see what we need and demand much more than what we’ve been given? Because we’ve been given scraps.
We probably need to rearrange that and just start fighting for exactly what it is we need and not what we can get. I think people(s)-centered human rights does that in a way that says, on the basis of this idea of justice, human dignity, and realizing our largest aspirations. People(s)-centered human rights puts it in the power of the people to dictate, determine what human rights looks like and what the definitions are. And then it gives us the idea of how we go and struggle for them. And in fact, I would say there’s no other way to gain human rights.
Austin: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think that Amilcar Cabral talks about culture and liberation, national liberation, and this kind of concept of what you said around demanding more. In some ways there’s a utopian vision of pre-colonial African societies, that is these societies were perfect, and, you know, that’s what we should be trying to get back to, and we don’t need technology and other modern advancements. And there’s a lot to say about progress, technological progress for the sake of progress, which maybe, is not the right way that we should be thinking about it. But at the same time, you do have to recognize that we have made progress because of people being ambitious and innovating and doing things. But the question is, who owns that? Who benefits from it? And are we able to demand more for us, for our needs right? And what do we actually want, and want to struggle for, and want to get? So I really appreciate that.
Wrapping up with one more question. In the spirit of demanding more, what do you see as the things that you and the groups that you’re with right now are organizing for? And what do you think it looks like to get to a place where there is Black liberation on a local level. What would that look like and how would that express itself? When you imagine or you try to imagine that, or you try to inspire organizing to get to that point, what do you feel like are the principal things that are needed within that?
So that’s one part of the question. And then the other is, if there’s anything we haven’t touched on, feel free to expand on that. But I guess the main crux of the question is, what does that liberation look like in a real, like manifested way on a local level, for you?
Nicholas: That’s a big question. Look at us.
Austin: Yea [laughs]. Hopefully I didn’t throw too much at you.
Nicholas: Well to start, over there [gestures behind], there is this book that I got to finish from some folks from Cooperation. Jackson . It’s 500 pages and I’m a busy brother, but we gonna eventually break it down. But anyways your question, this is Nick speaking, personally, not from any position. I would say, you know, it’s a big question for anybody and we gotta find out the answer together, ultimately, but I think there are existing frameworks and models that bring me closer to envisioning it.
I think sometimes people have difficulty, even envisioning liberation. What that is, especially someone for who it’s not politicized. At times I struggle with it, cause I’m a very concrete person. I need concrete examples. So you know I’m not with the abstractions – like those are beautiful and I’m a poet, so I love reading about the abstract idea of being what it means to be free. But, I also need to know how we are going to administer that? And how is that achieved? For me, what it looks like is self-determination, and at the core of that word is power, so it would look like this: Can Black people in their communities dictate, determine, and decide their destinies? And that looks like controlling institutions.
So again, with the example of participatory budgeting. Let’s say, we decide that we cannot fully reconcile the Atlantic slave trade for something like reparations, in the economies that we [Black/African people in the U.S.] hold a lot of the power and a lot of the population. There should be some bucket of money for us to utilize for our own institutions. We should have our own elected officials, if that’s what we choose. Now, this gets tricky, because, as you and I know, there is something that we would call the misleadership class2 , not all skin folk are kinfolk. So just looking like us isn’t enough, but we need people who have our interest at the very least are working on community control of police, our schools, grocery stores, and cooperatively owned institutions that meet our needs. And then building out the civic life right simultaneously. That’s not and/or but both. We also need the civic institutions, we need the cultural institutions, we need the community development. And for me it’s imperative that we have a complete say in that right, not with bureaucrats not deliberating with a city government, but being able to determine that for ourselves and that looks like having power. And power in a capitalist economy requires, you know, money.
But ultimately I want to go beyond that. We want to go beyond such a rapacious economic mode of production. We want to instead work towards something different while still existing in it. The framework that I think most captures it is liberated zones. We exist in a larger capitalist economy, perhaps, but we can have cooperative institutions and practices on our own within that. But that requires power, and that power looks like economic, social and political decision making, and not having to again deliberate with outside external forces. We could collaborate with those forces, but we’re not gonna be told what to do. And until we have that it’ll be very hard for me to say that we are liberated people.
And even then, after we get that, that’s a process. That’s a phase, right? I think it’s a phase where we have to demand more and go further and determine what that looks like. Then at that point we can ask, “do we need a nation?”. Do we want to nation-build beyond that? Do we want something that is structured more fully, more operational? Those are the questions that we would get to, but I think ultimately Black Liberation would require more autonomy and agency that we currently have.
And again, I don’t want to keep it to the abstractions. But autonomy is agency over my direct life. When I step outside that door, my neighbor, I have control over maybe a conflict I have with a neighbor because we have collective control of the police. If there’s an issue at school, we have direct access to recalling leaders or rotating leaders because we have participatory processes. So it’s not every 4 years you’re elected. We can recall you immediately, right? I think on one hand, this demands excellence from these people because they know they can be recalled, but it allows for people to have a say. If there is tragedy, if there is misuse of funds, if there is just a lack of decorum – people have recourse. People need to have recourse when there are problems. A definition of politics that I really liked that I came across recently that makes the most sense is, it is that politics is “the art of deciding collectively the course of action of the community.” When we’re doing that, we’re engaging in politics. And as we are further liberated, we can get ourselves from one stage of development and we can go to another.
So those questions of, “do we want a federated state?” and all that comes later, but if we can’t even dictate our own destiny now it will be hard to get there. If you want a federated state, a new Republic of New Afrika, even, how do we get there? I’ll leave it there, though I might have a couple other things to say. That’s my thoughts on Black Liberation.
The framework that I think most captures it is liberated zones. We exist in a larger capitalist economy, perhaps, but we can have cooperative institutions and practices on our own within that. But that requires power, and that power looks like economic, social and political decision making, and not having to again deliberate with outside external forces. We could collaborate with those forces, but we’re not gonna be told what to do. And until we have that it’ll be very hard for me to say that we are liberated people.
Austin: Appreciate that. I guess actually my last thing I would say is within that vision of liberation, what do you think about the interconnections between different Black/African communities across the Americas, across the U.S., across the world? Feel free also if there’s any other kind of last thoughts you have.
Nicholas: I love that question. I’m an internationalist, so I think we are deeply connected, not just by blood, but by belonging and our shared experiences of subjugation, exploitation. And our destiny is intertwined in a very serious way, in that I do believe that if we have a stronger Caribbean, stronger Africa, wherever black people reside in the diaspora, then that benefits us.
And that’s not always direct. We don’t fully understand it. The example I use internationally is always Malcolm going to the UN and taking civil rights to human rights. This is why we have the generative idea of People(s)-Centered Human Rights. And it connects to this idea that a lot of people here could be supportive of and supported by Africans on the Continent. And there’s a desire to do so. Kwame [Nkrumah] talked about it. At the end of his book he talked about how this Pan-African project requires the Black Americans. He said, “I asked for Black people everywhere.” So I think in a very strategic way, what it looks like is, maybe the United States does not agree with us building economies that are Black-led, but maybe Africa wants to invest into that. Maybe they see a value in that, and they invest into it. Maybe we build partnerships with the Sahel that’s developing [AES: Alliance of Sahel States ]. Maybe we build partnerships with the Horn [of Africa].
And you start creating those types of developments, because realistically, there is a lot of immigration here and what has been successful for other groups of people is they bring money from their countries. They do, and they’ve been successful in this capitalist economy. Now, we wouldn’t have the same endeavors, but we could find success in our own political endeavors if we had backing and vice versa, right? If we had talent here that took it back to the Continent instead of saying, “I’m gonna work for an enterprise here,” say “I’m gonna go work back in the continent.” This is an exchange. It’s reciprocal. And in that way we can see the upliftment of the Caribbean, which has a host of resources that if they were used for the Caribbean as a – their own resources from the gold, the oil, the timber, all of that and the natural gas – they would be able to be very successful.
So I think for me it becomes those questions of the relationships internationally that I think, could have very material benefits reciprocally, but could also support what we’re trying to build towards politically. Maybe people don’t want a unified Africa, per se, but you should want a stronger Africa. And I think that’s part of the process: what ways can we strengthen Africa? And when I say Africa, I do meet all black people globally. So that’s including everybody. I think we should find ways to unify with those who say “I don’t know if I want a Pan African state,” and that’s fine. But in this immediate moment as we’re working towards whatever it is we’re working towards, unity is much better than division. That might mean getting on the same page, having our own currency, independent of Western institutions, having the ability to intervene in a genocide, right? I think that’s just very relevant right now. And that’s power. And if you can’t do these things, you might need to reevaluate what you’re doing, you might be powerless.
So, I think building towards that type of power and influence on a global scale should be the goal and not an inside-out strategy, but like a Continental and a diasporic strategy that only lends itself to more collaboration. I do believe that there is a lot of spaces where here and there can be supported, materially through sharing resources and creating a shared vision of what it is we’re trying to build, having more congresses, having more meetings and collaboration, and us collectively determining how we collaborate cause I don’t have all the answers, but we do need to be in communication. We do need to have organizations on a continent that work here. We need to have organizations that work here, that work with the continent. And we need to be able to communicate.
When it comes to organizing, the 3 C’s to me are, (1) how are we going to coordinate? (2) how we’re collectivizing power. And (3) how do we communicate? If you have those 3 C’s, you have a legitimate organization that’s probably doing work. And if you’re executing and you are principled. I think you’re going to get pretty far. So yeah, I’m an internationalist AND when I think about all this, it’s very local. But I dream and endeavor to take it out from the local and globalize it.
Austin: I obviously feel you on a lot of these points. And I think that question of if the U.S., or when the U.S. decides that you are not going to do this. You’re not going to build autonomy, and you’re not going to do these alternative things, then the answer has to be solidarity with other folks, right? It has to be solidarity with Africans globally and vice versa like you said so. I appreciate that and you.
Nicholas: Thank you, brother.
Originally published in politics in command of “planning”.
Nicholas Richard-Thompson is a human rights organizer and cultural worker. He is the Director of Communications for the Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative, a founder of the Aurora Participatory democracy Hub and the Midwest Regional Organizer for The Black Alliance for Peace.