A president who fails to lead during the pandemic ravaging the country. Who spreads harmful disinformation and whips up ugly, divisive hatred. Who refuses to protect the lives of people while driving them into economic insecurity.
And, now, when millions are in the street here and around the world in defense of Black lives, he intensifies his racist attacks. On June 19—Juneteenth—a day when the end of slavery is celebrated, Trump planned to hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of one of the largest massacres of Blacks in US history. Trump changed the date to June 20, but that didn’t alter the fact that holding the event in Tulsa and in June is a blasphemous and incendiary act that is an insult to Black Americans, and is part of an effort to arouse a racist backlash aimed at crushing the growing movement for justice and equality for all.
Defeating Trump in 2020 is a matter of life or death. His presidency has made the ongoing assault on Black Americans worse. A long list of lynch-like murders, such as the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, can be traced in part to Trump’s dog whistles. People of color, especially Blacks, along with immigrants, the homeless and all poor and working people—in fact the whole of society—are in grave danger under this regime.
The Trump administration has lifted 100 environmental regulations, revoked native reservation status, installed right-wing young judges, and put as heads of federal agencies corporate hacks and privatizers to destroy what few social and environmental protections we have. It represents the most blatantly brutal and destructive wing of the corporate government, hell-bent on stripping every right and civil and economic protection from the American people.
During this time of peril, people are demanding that their government prioritize human needs over further enrichment of the billionaires and war-makers—for universal health care, housing for the homeless and other basics of life, for an end to injustice and inequality. This will require unleashing a vast independent movement.
We build this movement in the interest of all humanity, and against the bipartisan rule that gives corporations trillions in public dollars while we get a deadly crumb. Most immediately, we must stop one of the most destructive, divisive and dangerous heads of government our country has ever seen.
