{"id":442,"date":"2026-07-17T10:08:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=442"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:08:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:08:49","slug":"as-the-cbc-condemns-will-lawrence-local-black-leaders-back-him-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=442","title":{"rendered":"As the CBC Condemns Will Lawrence, Local Black Leaders Back Him Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A recent poll in the heavily contested Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan suggests a pronounced voting pattern. Abdul El-Sayed is leading Rep. Haley Stevens by 12 points among white Democratic voters, but he\u2019s losing Black voters to Stevens by a whopping 46 points, according to the Detroit News<\/em> poll. That\u2019s despite the fact that El-Sayed served heavily Black Detroit and Wayne County as director of its Department of Health, while Stevens is from Michigan\u2019s predominantly white suburbs.<\/p>\n

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There are reasons for this, most notably Stevens\u2019s supporters leaning into a nearly decade-old quote from Barack Obama praising her role on the team that executed the 2009 auto rescue. (Obama has not endorsed anyone in the race, per his office.) But the divide, which we\u2019ve seen elsewhere in elections, suggests that progressives are having difficulty reaching Black voters, particularly older Black voters. And when weaponized, that disparity can turn ugly.<\/p>\n

More from David Dayen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened in the same state as the El-Sayed\/Stevens race last week, when HuffPost unearthed remarks from progressive populist Will Lawrence\u2019s campaign, running in a swing seat in and around Lansing, where he said that the older generation of Black leadership\u2019s support for \u201cestablishment, capitalist, imperialist American power\u201d is \u201ca big problem for left politics in this country \u2026 It really defangs the white left and puts us in impossible positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

This has led to a radio ad released on Thursday from Rolling Sea Action Fund, which is affiliated with the Congressional Black Caucus, quoting those lines while claiming that Lawrence \u201cwas part of a movement that helped Trump win Michigan.\u201d (Lawrence voted Uncommitted in the primary along with those sending a message to President Biden on Gaza, and then endorsed and worked for Kamala Harris in the general election.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same leaders, Black leaders, that have fought and bled for this country and this party are not a big problem,\u201d the radio ad says.<\/p>\n

Lawrence contextualized his remarks, which were part of a long conversation with a Black activist on a podcast about foreign affairs. \u201cBecause this episode was specifically focused on anti-war politics within the Black community, I noted that Black elected leaders in DC have been among those supporting unnecessary U.S. wars and foreign intervention,\u201d Lawrence said, while admitting poor word choice.<\/p>\n

But a funny thing happened on the way to mass condemnation. While the CBC, the very Black elected leaders implicated in Lawrence\u2019s remarks, lashed out, many members of the Black community in Michigan strongly rejected the implication that Lawrence was being racially divisive\u2014and in fact saw their own struggles and beliefs reflected in the conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite disappointing that the Black community is being used as pawns in various races in Michigan,\u201d wrote Denzel McCampbell, a Detroit city councilmember, on Facebook. \u201cI listened to the actual [Lawrence] conversation and it\u2019s one that we\u2019ve been having constantly about establishment leaders selling our communities short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barbara Roberts Mason, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Michigan history, said \u201cit\u2019s time for all the mudslinging to stop\u201d in her Facebook post on the matter.<\/p>\n

And in a media interview, Donavan McKinney, a candidate for Congress in Michigan\u2019s 13th Congressional District, gave examples of his disappointment in establishment politics\u2014bailing out banks instead of homeowners after 2008, the failure to pass legislation around policing after George Floyd\u2019s murder, the inability to pass voting rights legislation under a Democratic majority.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhere are we meeting the moment in terms of the Democratic Party?\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re tired of people just giving us the platitudes, the talking points \u2026 We want leaders and fighters that are going to adhere to the urgency of the issues at hand, that\u2019s why people are excited about Will.\u201d<\/p>\n

In dozens of posts and comments across social media, Black residents of Lansing and the surrounding area have expressed general agreement that some of their representatives are too wedded to the establishment and too willing to leverage the historical moral authority of the civil rights movement on behalf of the status quo. And they measured Lawrence\u2019s remarks against what he has done in his own community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I have seen is Will showing up to City Council meetings across the state to fight data centers and anti-Black police violence,\u201d wrote Tashmica Torok, a local resident. \u201cHave you seen your candidate doing that kind of on the ground community based work?\u201d<\/p>\n

White progressive struggles with Black voters who have traditionally skewed more moderate are real. It\u2019s something that Bernie Sanders\u2019s presidential campaigns were never able to fully square. But in a district that is only 6 percent Black, this attack may have been more targeted at white voters to get them to be offended on behalf of Black people. The backlash to the attack suggests that Black voters, particularly younger Black voters, don\u2019t want to be told how to think and may feel the same frustrations that Lawrence expressed.<\/p>\n

The full conversation between Lawrence and Khury Petersen-Smith, the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, was released by Convergence magazine in September 2024. It mostly concerns the connections between the oppression that Black people experience in the U.S. and oppressed people around the world, particularly Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The section being quoted in the ads is prompted by Petersen-Smith explaining how the moral authority of the struggle for Black freedom gets leveraged by powerful forces on behalf of things like military shipments to Israel. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a cohesive Black political agenda that there was in previous times,\u201d Petersen-Smith says.<\/p>\n

In the course of the conversation, Lawrence\u2014who has earned the endorsement of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a Black organizing group\u2014notes the tensions between legacy Black organizations and protesters in the streets during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. He highlights Jesse Jackson\u2019s Rainbow Coalition as an example of \u201cradical universalism,\u201d a \u201cBlack-led multiracial political agenda for all poor people.\u201d He also notes that Black citizens in the U.S. can be seen as occupying \u201ca colony within a nation,\u201d denied full rights and participation.<\/p>\n

The executive director of Rolling Sea Action Fund, who released the radio ad citing Lawrence\u2019s remarks, previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats. Lawrence has led in several polls in the swing-seat Seventh District, where he is running against two Democrats recruited by the party establishment. Lawrence\u2019s remarks in the conversation are in some ways reinforced by the identities of the people trying to exploit them.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen how effective the attack will be. But a sampling of commentary suggests that it has opened up a tough conversation about a disconnect between politicians and the people they represent, rather than the intended reaction.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Speech Tonight Won\u2019t Be About the Economy or Iran<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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