On Saturday, author Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to a packed audience at the Flynn Center, part of Burlington’s annual Black Experience festival. Burlington was the last stop on Coates’ tour for his latest book, The Message.
The Message consists of three essays rooted in three locales he visited: Senegal, South Carolina, and Palestine. While the essays connect to each other, the recurring theme of his talk in Burlington was first and foremost Palestine.
Coates expressed frustration with friends and colleagues who used the election of Trump to attack those — particularly Palestinian and Arab Americans — who did not vote for Harris. “For those of us who feel that that community abandoned us, this time, we have to look at ourselves and ask ourselves: where have we been for them?” Coates asked. “Gaza has been an open air prison since 2007, one that was maintained by our tax dollars, by weapons that we shipped… I don’t recall this being a top line item that we held Barack Obama’s feet to the fire on, that we held Joe Biden’s feet to the fire on.”
Coates did not put much stock in the Democrats as the Trump administration quickly works to enact its agenda. “We are watching a group of cowards who are surrendering under the guise of ‘not wanting to fight every battle’ that Trump puts out there, who are our Congressional representatives, who are supposed to be our defenders, but instead are cowering,” Coates said. “And as I watch them cower, I’m forced to ask: why in the world did I think that these were worthy defenders of democracy when they could not stand up to genocide?”
Coates attended the Democratic National Convention in August, and remarked on the historic energy he and others felt there as a major party nominated a Black woman woman for the first time, sixty years after Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation were denied their place at the 1964 DNC and fifty-two years after Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 run for president.
“But then I stepped outside,” Coates said, referring to the pro-Palestine demonstrations taking place on the streets around the convention center. Convention officials had denied all requests to have a Palestinian speak at the convention after months of attempts from activists both inside and outside the Democratic Party. Less than a week before the convention kicked off, the Biden-Harris Administration approved a $20 billion arms shipment to Israel.
“Amidst this claiming of this heritage of freedom fighting and inclusion and equality, there is a group who is not allowed here,” Coates said. “Fifty years from when Fannie Lou Hamer was disqualified, we are still disqualifying people.”
Coates warned the audience that this problem isn’t going away. “A test is going to come really soon, and maybe it’ll come before 2028, but it’s definitely going to come in 2028, and there will be people who will stand up in front of you, and they will promise to restore order, they will promise to rebuild the institutions, and they will promise to protect democracy. And the price of that will be your support for apartheid,” Coates said.
Throughout the talk and conversation on stage, Coates pulled together strands of history and genealogy to weave a better picture of the present, a hallmark of his writing. He returned to matters of time, generation, and responsibility as he concluded his remarks.
“What I’m speaking to here is the world that is with me now — my community, my people, my family, my friends — the world that is gone — of my ancestors, Ida B Wells, Frederick Douglass — and of the children, and that’s the world that will be, and we have responsibilities to those worlds,” Coates said. “And I just don’t see anywhere in the playbook where you get to try to enjoy your own safety and your own happiness, given that you are only here because other people suffered, other people sacrificed.”
“In a moment when white supremacy, when homophobia, when sexism and misogyny are at their highest and are explicitly enshrined in our highest offices… you have a responsibility to fight these people,” Coates said.
Patrick is a writer and organizer based in northern Vermont. He is on the editorial collective for The Rake Vermont.
