Photo/daymonjhartley.com
We are living in a history-changing moment. The brutal, heartless public lynching of George Floyd touched a nerve worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of people of all colors, ethnicities and genders have hit the streets of US cities day after day, demanding that America confront the institutionalized racism that American capitalism has been built upon. Millions more are demonstrating across the world.
The central demand of the demonstrations is that America recognize that black lives matter. This includes that killer cops be tried for murder; that the campaign of police terror against black Americans be stopped; and that money be shifted from policing and mass incarceration to financing economic development in communities of color to help bridge the staggering racial wealth gap. Others call for disbanding the police.
The broad-based demand for real change sparked by George Floyd’s murder is profound. A huge number of the protesters are white, especially white youth. Protests are occurring in every state, and from small towns to big cities. In many cases the demonstrators face vicious, unprovoked attacks by the police, but refuse to back down. All this is taking place in the context of a systemic economic crisis that has evolved over decades, and which is leaving hundreds of millions of Americans in poverty and young people with no future.
Today we see millions of Americans rejecting racism as immoral, and rejecting an economic system that offers them no future. This is of critical importance. Racism—particularly anti-black racism—has historically been used to get the American people, especially the whites, to support the policies of the billionaires, keeping the whole of America divided and under the heel of the powerful. Thus, the multi-color character of the demonstrations and the repudiation of racism reflected in them is significant: It is a threat to the powers that be. A people united across lines of color and nationality can get control of this country and run it in the people’s interest. Repudiating racism is key to the unity needed to create a new America. All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.
http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2020/06/voices-from-the-fight/
