For Mari­ah Park­er, recent­ly elect­ed coun­ty com­mis­sion­er in Athens, Ga., being sworn into office on The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mal­colm X was sim­ply a way of accu­rate­ly sig­nal­ing her world­view. It’s a view that’s ground­ed in a spe­cif­ic vision of what the world could be — one in which peo­ple of col­or, and black peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar, live free from the grip of racism and eco­nom­ic mis­ery. Of all the vol­umes in the rich tra­di­tion of Black Amer­i­cans’ quest for such a world, few are as deeply cher­ished as Malcolm’s tow­er­ing 20th-cen­tu­ry autobiography.

Parker sees in black Americans’ story a struggle against oppression that is both uniquely their own and one patch in a larger quilt, one made up of tightly knit struggles on behalf of any community that has come under systemic fire.

It’s a vision that’s increas­ing­ly gain­ing steam. Pro­gres­sive and social­ist can­di­dates of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly women with the wind of pop­u­lar move­ments at their backs, like New York’s Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Michigan’s Rashi­da Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, are run­ning on pre­cise­ly these sorts of plat­forms. And they’re winning.

Pho­tos of Parker’s swear­ing-in quick­ly went gang­busters. In wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed images, Parker’s afro is piled high and heav­en-bound (to bor­row a phrase from poet Hanif Abdur­raqib), and her right hand clenched in a fist rec­og­nized the world over as a sign of one’s com­mit­ment to stand along­side the oppressed. Her left hand rests atop the auto­bi­og­ra­phy, a book wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed through­out black Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties, and one of the harsh­est indict­ments of the country’s long war against them.

Though she had no idea this small act of sym­bol­ism would take the inter­net by storm, it’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing that it did. Park­er is smack-dab in the mid­dle of two of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s biggest crises.

First, there’s the widen­ing gap between the pri­or­i­ties of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty high­er-ups and its pop­u­lar base. Sec­ond, there are the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s awk­ward strug­gles to deliv­er a con­vinc­ing mes­sage for address­ing the knot­ty rela­tion­ship between racial and eco­nom­ic oppres­sion. The view held from the com­mand­ing heights and man­age­r­i­al suites of the par­ty seems to be that, at best, race and class issues must be addressed sep­a­rate­ly, and at worst, that the two are at flat-out war with one anoth­er.

Yet the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests black peo­ple feel dif­fer­ent­ly. It’s right there in years of sur­vey data, which con­sis­tent­ly finds black Amer­i­cans deeply con­cerned by both eco­nom­ic issues and the pow­er­ful role racism plays in suf­fo­cat­ing their chances at a bet­ter life. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, black vot­ers rank among the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive in the coun­try. It’s also been front and cen­ter in the clear-eyed pol­i­cy plat­forms of orga­ni­za­tions like BYP100 and the Move­ment for Black Lives. And it was there in Mari­ah Parker’s cam­paign for coun­ty commissioner.

From Fer­gu­son to Bal­ti­more, and Philadel­phia to Chica­go, a fresh crop of black move­ment builders have issued a clear demand: the eman­ci­pa­tion of black peo­ple from the inter­wo­ven harms of racism and pover­ty. Groups like the Move­ment for Black Lives and the Black Youth Project have called for repa­ra­tions on the grounds that this com­bi­na­tion has made it eas­i­er to exploit and oppress black communities.

After first tak­ing root in the streets, this gen­er­a­tions-span­ning strug­gle for racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice is start­ing to sweep across cam­paigns for pub­lic office, Parker’s included.

“Racial and eco­nom­ic injus­tice have been very inter­twined his­tor­i­cal­ly,” Park­er says. ​“There’s overt forms of vio­lence, like lynch­ing and police bru­tal­i­ty, but then there’s qui­et forms that are less easy to put your fin­ger on, like the inabil­i­ty to obtain cap­i­tal to open a busi­ness or own a home or the inabil­i­ty to union­ize.” Here, Park­er is drilling to the core of the black Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence, where both racism and eco­nom­ic exploita­tion have com­bined to increase the mis­ery index in black com­mu­ni­ties, in ways often sub­merged and thus hard­er to detect. ​“Tack­ling those things at once is so impor­tant because they are the hard­est things to see from the pub­lic per­spec­tive,” she says.

The fact that Park­er, along with oth­er left-wing can­di­dates of col­or, such as Oca­sio-Cortez, find them­selves at this inter­sec­tion is sig­nif­i­cant. We rarely hear the voic­es of those most intense­ly impact­ed by pol­i­cy deci­sion. Women of col­or, giv­en their very notice­able near-total absence from estab­lished media, are the least seen and heard of all.

Park­er, who co-found­ed Athens’ chap­ter of the pro­gres­sive Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Rev­o­lu­tion, is a 26-year-old rap­per, PhD stu­dent and open­ly queer black woman. She ran on a pro­gres­sive plat­form that put racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice cen­ter stage, and won by a razor-thin mar­gin of 13 votes. Athens itself is a most­ly work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty with a medi­an income that bare­ly ris­es above half the state of Georgia’s.

This is even truer for Parker’s dis­trict, which the Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion describes as ​“an eco­nom­i­cal­ly strug­gling swath … that lacks some of the same ameni­ties that oth­er parts of town enjoyed.” On top of the district’s eco­nom­ic woes, it’s also ​“the most heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed black dis­trict in Athens,” Park­er tells In These Times. She goes on to argue that in a strug­gling com­mu­ni­ty with a high con­cen­tra­tion of black res­i­dents, peo­ple don’t view racism and pover­ty as dis­tinct evils with no con­nec­tion, but rather as twin giants that need to be knocked down simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. In speak­ing with Park­er, it’s clear that many of her wak­ing hours are spent con­tem­plat­ing the two, and that she sees a set of prin­ci­ples in Malcolm’s life and words that might help light the way to a bet­ter world.

Park­er says that as an office­hold­er, she hopes to chan­nel Malcolm’s ​“capac­i­ty for being an out­spo­ken agi­ta­tor that pushed the con­ver­sa­tion in a rad­i­cal direc­tion.” Beyond his ser­mons of col­lec­tive black uplift and broad­er social change, Park­er is espe­cial­ly inspired by the fact that ​“in his lat­er life, he was will­ing to incor­po­rate new expe­ri­ences as a means of see­ing where the move­ment need­ed to go in order for the work to get done.” By this, Park­er is point­ing toward Malcolm’s per­son­al evo­lu­tion as a crit­ic of Amer­i­can pow­er. In his ear­li­est days, Mal­colm was a fierce but ide­o­log­i­cal­ly straight­jack­et­ed mouth­piece for the Nation of Islam. That all start­ed to change fol­low­ing his stormy split with the orga­ni­za­tion. In the months after, which now seem to have always been rac­ing toward his even­tu­al mur­der, Mal­colm became increas­ing­ly drawn to the moral force of social­ism and expressed a deep­en­ing belief in mul­ti­cul­tur­al, work­ing-class orga­niz­ing as the best weapon for con­fronting Amer­i­can pow­er. In a May 1964 Q&A host­ed by the Mil­i­tant Labor Forum, he went so far as to say, ​“It is impos­si­ble for a white per­son to believe in cap­i­tal­ism and not believe in racism. You can’t have cap­i­tal­ism with­out racism.” And toward the end of his life, he explained that ​“cap­i­tal­ism needs some blood to suck…and it can only suck the blood of the help­less.” The most help­less in Amer­i­ca would always be the com­mu­ni­ties most men­aced by those with pow­er and cheat­ed out of their fair share of it. That con­di­tion has defined the black Amer­i­can experience.

Whether he knew it or not, Mal­colm was chan­nel­ing an idea with deep roots in black polit­i­cal life. From small-scale plan­ta­tion sab­o­tage under slav­ery to social­ist orga­niz­ing among share­crop­pers for work­place democ­ra­cy in the post-eman­ci­pa­tion south, his­to­ry offers a rich tapes­try of black resis­tance to a world where, as Dr. King once wrote, ​“the insep­a­ra­ble twin of racial injus­tice was eco­nom­ic injus­tice.” A half-cen­tu­ry after Malcolm’s assas­si­na­tion, the fight for that bet­ter world is still on. And the path­way to it, Park­er believes, runs through every­day peo­ple rec­og­niz­ing how America’s chart-top­ping inequal­i­ty, accord­ing to the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, hurts every­one but an elite few. ​“If we band togeth­er to fight against it,” Park­er says, ​“it is to everybody’s benefit.”

Park­er sees in black Amer­i­cans’ sto­ry a strug­gle against oppres­sion that is both unique­ly their own and one patch in a larg­er quilt, one made up of tight­ly knit strug­gles on behalf of any com­mu­ni­ty that has come under sys­temic fire. It’s here that Malcolm’s abil­i­ty to trans­form, his abil­i­ty to stretch his imag­i­na­tion of what’s polit­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble when those who have been cast aside band togeth­er, echoes loud­est. ​“I do believe that cap­i­tal­ism relies upon social strat­i­fi­ca­tion. Be it in terms of abil­i­ty or gen­der or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or immi­gra­tion sta­tus, it def­i­nite­ly relies upon oppres­sion of a kind,” Park­er adds. ​“In Amer­i­ca, that has fall­en par­tic­u­lar­ly along racial lines” but it’s impor­tant ​“to build sol­i­dar­i­ty across dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ty groups” to under­stand that ​“the sys­tem hurts everybody.”