The Radically Reconstructionist Politics of 21st-Century Social Movements

The preamble to the United States Constitution claims the warrant and purpose of its legal authority to be the formation of a “more perfect union.” That metaphor of American perfectibility set down in one of its founding documents has endured as a signpost and aspiration through what has been, substantively, and in the main, a history of exclusion and brutality. The realities of how the U.S. polity is actually made, how power is materially arranged, and the limited nature of who has been accorded the rights and benefits of citizenship have been constant impetus for the struggles of marginalized peoples to organize themselves into social movements which can challenge power holders, demand redress, and reimagine the boundaries of the polity. Social movements throughout U.S. history have served to reinvigorate the polity, reminding both the political challengers acting with defiant purpose and the population at large that they are the ultimate source of political authority and may, at their discretion, withdraw their consent.

In the 21st century, social movements have striven to make even more profound impacts – movements like Black Lives Matter and the reinvigorated labor movement, are attempting to develop ways of acting democratically that exceed the legal constraints of citizenship, take the notion of collective self-determination seriously, and go beyond electoral politics as they are currently arranged. Because these movements understand the unrepresentativeness of American democracy to be structural and systematic, rather than the product of error or accidental imperfection, they seek ends neither reformist nor exactly revolutionary but instead reconstructionist. Movement organizers take inspiration from the too-brief experiment in multi-racial, labor-forward, and mutual-aid supported abolition democracy after the Civil War, and ask the question: what would it take to re-imagine America and build a polity that could deliver equitable flourishing, freedom, and just futures for all?