Black Voters Matter, activists say Trump era is an opportunity to rebuild Black political power

“This moment that seems like a setback is actually a setup,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told theGrio.

National Black activists engaging with Black voters on the ground say despite setbacks on racial justice Black Americans have an opportunity to rebuild and expand their political power to heights yet seen. Even as they face down President Donald Trump’s agenda, which has included the dismantling of DEI policies and other programs intended to close racial equity gaps, and a sanitizing of how the federal government discusses the U.S.’s history of slavery and racism, these leaders see potential.

“This moment that seems like a setback is actually a setup,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told theGrio.

Black Voters Matter on Monday hosted a media briefing on the first-post-2024 election data on Black voters’ attitudes about the state of the country and their role in it. They also shared their thoughts about how Black Americans can seize this political moment.

“Some of us actually believe that what we have has never been enough,” Brown said of the latest efforts in the public and private sectors to overturn DEI policies. “We have always been fighting for crumbs at the table.” As an activist who has been credited with helping to transform the voting electorate in Georgia, Brown says that Black leaders shouldn’t simply focus on the “limitations” of simply “responding to the whimsical nature” of President Trump and his allies but instead, “create the kind of North Star around what it is that we want for our communities.”

Democratic pollster Terrance Woodbury, who runs the research and polling firm HIT Strategies, shared during Monday’s briefing that while some voters ultimately trusted Trump more than 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the economy and immigration—the top two issues for most voters—Black voters post-2024 election remain untrusting of “systems” that aren’t working for them and are losing faith in their ability to change them.

“For folks who have had inadequate results from the system–whether that system is democracy, whether that system is politics, whether that system is the financial system, the health care system–people don’t want to defend those systems that have otherwise failed them,” said Woodbury.

A December 2024 survey conducted by HIT Strategies just one month after Trump’s election reveals a sharp and perhaps historical low among Black voters and the belief that their vote can make a difference in their communities. In 2020, a year that saw national uprisings over racial injustice led by the Black Lives Matter movement, 73% of Black voters believed in the power of their vote. By the end of 2024, that number plummeted to 25%.

“We had what we thought was an awakening, but then came the backlash, with this narrative around CRT, ‘Woke’ and now DEI,” Vonnetta West, a scholar and strategist at The King Center, told theGrio during Monday’s briefing.

Activists told theGrio that while it’s important to challenge the narratives on race that are being driven through the political agenda of President Trump and the Republican Party, it’s equally important to rethink whether the programs and systems currently being dismantled worked well in the first place.

LaTosha Brown noted as an example that the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark legislation that enfranchised Black Americans’ right to cast a ballot without racial discrimination, was in itself a political “compromise” at the time. “[It] was never enough,” said Brown of the law that has since been weakened by rulings from the Supreme Court and subsequent voting laws and maps passed by Republican state legislators.

“We have to keep going and actually push farther and really create the vision that we desire and see for ourselves, and organize ourselves to get to that point,” Brown told theGrio.

West said similarly of programs like DEI, “Does it encompass everything that we want?” and said there is an opportunity to “create our own narrative, to reframe what’s happening, and then to move forward with some deconstruction and some construction of what we want to see going forward.”

As the country stares down economic uncertainty amid concerns about President Trump’s economic agenda, largely led by global tariffs on U.S. imports, Woodbury sees an opportunity for Democrats to seize the moment of waning distrust. However, the former Harris 2024 campaign pollster said policies alone won’t win over voters, particularly among those who are giving up on the “system.” A HIT Strategies survey found that 78% of Black voters want to see Democrats “fight back as much and as visibly as possible.”

Even with Black voters seemingly having limited political power and Democrats having minority rule in Congress and across dozens of state legislatures, Woodbury explained that in states where Republicans have majority or supermajority rule in their state politics, Black voters see all forms of resistance or political fighting as necessary. He explained, “Preventing pain is, in fact, a demonstration of political power.”

Woodbury said he would like to see more Democrats take action, like Sen. Cory Booker’s more than 25-hour-long Senate speech in protest of the Trump administration.

“Fear is contagious, but so is courage. And I think that what Cory Booker did demonstrated so much courage, and it was an inflection point where we had an opportunity to spark more of that type of resistance,” Woodbury told theGrio. However, Woodbury said he would’ve liked to see Booker do a media tour and further explain “why he did what he did, and how you too can sign up for that resistance.” He added, “That’s the part that is missing. It is the amplification.”

While sentiments may be low, Woodbury said Black voters have “always responded to overwhelming pain with an equal and greater force of power.”

As [former U.S. Representative] Barbara Jordan said in her speech during the [President Richard] Nixon impeachment, when she confronted the fact that Black folks were not trying to save ourselves, we were trying to save America from itself,” he explained. “And because of our sacrifice, our toil, our blood, sweat, and tears to be included in ‘We the People,’ we are in the best position to defend the people and ourselves.”

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said he believes what he calls a “MAGA regression and repression” will require Black Americans to “lean even more into our Blackness,” including “our black creativity…our Black futurism.”

“Not just seek to survive this moment, but find ways to thrive moving forward. That’s been the story of our history, and we are certainly going to walk in that right now,” Albright told theGrio. “We have always responded to the backlash and to the periods of regression by digging deeper into our Blackness, by digging deeper into our sense of selves, and to come up with new solutions.”