The Netflix movie made me angry, reminiscent of how Aaron Sorkin and Sacha Baron Cohen stole and corrupted Abbie Hoffman to fit their own lame politics. This movie stinks. In the case of Rustin, I have to suspect the malignancy is due to the executive producers — Barack and Michelle Obama — continuing their lifelong quest to extirpate any remnants of social democracy in U.S. politics.
What’s wrong with the film? It’s all race and gender, identity politics if you will, with gay lover drama folded in. Much of the dialog is Rustin stalking around, giving noble speeches. It’s more hagiographic than persuasively realistic. Nothing about class or labor, which was a huge part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The film makes clear that Rustin’s ability to pull the march together rested on his support from A. Philip Randolph, but there is no mention of Randolph’s distinguished career as a union organizer.
The one politically smart thing in the film is its understanding that progress derives from activism focused on tenable, ambitious but incremental advances. Something many of today’s young socialists still need to internalize. Another useful angle is its refusal to exalt the roles of the Kennedys
Some of the acting really stands out, which deepens the tragedy of the film. I especially like Colman Domingo as an actor, here in the title role. He was the only interesting character in the first Walking Dead spinoff, before the writing in that series went south. Jeffrey Wright as usual is fabulous, here as Adam Clayton Powell. CCH Pounder is always good, and Chris Rock as Roy Wilkins is a hoot. The others are forgettable, especially the fellow playing MLK, admittedly a formidable task, as Robert Kuttner notes in his review.
For a more informative view of Rustin, friends recommend Brother Outsider, a documentary available on odd streaming services like Vimeo.
At Rutgers, back in the day, we had a nice array of speakers: Floyd McKissick, Julian Bond, Muhammed Ali, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Rustin. Rustin addressed we student activists in the audience, saying we were irrelevant. In the moment I was impressed with his candor. In retrospect, his analysis was wrong. We were a lot of things, but irrelevant was not one of them.
After the MoW Rustin went on to cleave to the Meany wing of the AFL-CIO, which torpedoed the presidential candidacy of George McGovern (giving us Nixon II, with all the included evils) and championed the extension of the Vietnam War.
I lived in Manhattan in the late 70s. I made good money typesetting and I used to eat out a lot. On one occasion the next table included Rustin and two friends, one man and one woman. I did my best to eavesdrop. I remember Rustin ranting defensively about his association with Al Shanker, the controversial head of the very powerful New York City teachers union.
At one point, he ran his finger over the arm of the woman and said, “Your skin is so soft.” It was weird. Today it would be more seen as creepy. At the time the other two did not react. Not much of a story but hard to forget, and true.
A better view of Rustin’s thinking is evident in this op-ed from 1976 that he wrote for the New York Times.