DC is a sight to behold. From the Exorcist stairs to the Capital, every single high-end retail store, hotel, bank, etc is closed and boarded up. No exaggeration. We're talking at least four miles.
The National Guard and their trucks, DC police, and DEA with automatic weapons watch the pre-perimeter to the business district. ICE/Border Patrol and FBI brought to I street. Each subsequent day, DC cops, Military Police, and the national guard push the growing crowd further and further from Lafayette Park. Surprised mall security didn't show up.
And no, this isn't 2 am. This is five hours before curfew. A day or so before Trump cleared protestors, a line of cops shot rubber bullets and threw stun grenades early afternoon purely for intimidation. (Granted, I don't consider a thrown water bottle to be "violent"). What everyone saw on TV had BEEN happening. Despite such an impressive presence, protestors seem to control the streets.
The cop-out, "they're looting their communities!" can't be used. These are the streets of the ruling class. I've been around into the night, and I've seen more vandalism than people taking shit. Not that I care. If I have to hear one more debate about "looting," I might kill myself.
Black Lives Matter DC and other community leaders have done a good job of organizing their base, but the White House has become a soap-box for whoever shows up. VOTE!, kumbaya, anarchy. It's all here.
No brick piles tho.
Police, prison and abolition
Re: Police, prison and abolition
Thanks SG, do keep us informed as possible. I think it is different this time, lotta pimples coming to a head, one prob aggravating another. I can only sit here in isolation and see what develops, others might be what develops.solidgold wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 7:43 amDC is a sight to behold. From the Exorcist stairs to the Capital, every single high-end retail store, hotel, bank, etc is closed and boarded up. No exaggeration. We're talking at least four miles.
The National Guard and their trucks, DC police, and DEA with automatic weapons watch the pre-perimeter to the business district. ICE/Border Patrol and FBI brought to I street. Each subsequent day, DC cops, Military Police, and the national guard push the growing crowd further and further from Lafayette Park. Surprised mall security didn't show up.
And no, this isn't 2 am. This is five hours before curfew. A day or so before Trump cleared protestors, a line of cops shot rubber bullets and threw stun grenades early afternoon purely for intimidation. (Granted, I don't consider a thrown water bottle to be "violent"). What everyone saw on TV had BEEN happening. Despite such an impressive presence, protestors seem to control the streets.
The cop-out, "they're looting their communities!" can't be used. These are the streets of the ruling class. I've been around into the night, and I've seen more vandalism than people taking shit. Not that I care. If I have to hear one more debate about "looting," I might kill myself.
Black Lives Matter DC and other community leaders have done a good job of organizing their base, but the White House has become a soap-box for whoever shows up. VOTE!, kumbaya, anarchy. It's all here.
No brick piles tho.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Police, prison and abolition
The Movement Gets BIG – and Its Enemies Reveal Themselves
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 04 Jun 2020
The Movement Gets BIG – and Its Enemies Reveal Themselves / Photo: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
The decrepit racial capitalist order appears to be unraveling under the weight of coronavirus, economic depression, and a quantitative leap in people’s willingness to confront power through the politics of the street.
“The Black Misleadership Class’s identification with Power has become all but complete.”
The scope and intensity of the convulsion that has shaken the United States since the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, is breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities have participated in actions ranging from silent vigils to pitched battles with police in at least 140 cities, by the New York Times’ estimate – or nearly 500 localities nationwide, according to a marvelously detailed Wikipedia page . The National Guard has been called out in 26 states and Washington, DC, and U.S. Army units, including a battalion of paratroopers from the 82nd airborne division , await deployment to cities by the self-proclaimed “law and order president ,” Donald Trump.
There has been nothing approaching this level of unrest since April, 1968, when 100 cities burned in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Back then, the U.S. corporate order responded to the challenge from below with massive expansion and militarization of local police forces, intensive secret police operations to eradicate Black and radical movements, and a policy of mass Black incarceration that, over the past half century, has boosted the national prison population from less than 200,000 in 1970, to 2.2 million , today – an 11-fold increase. With nearly equal zeal, the corporate order embraced a newly emergent Black political class, hungry for public office and private contracts, as a counterweight to the grassroots movements that had put revolution on the lips of millions of young people.
“Hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities have participated in actions ranging from silent vigils to pitched battles with police in at least 140 cities.”
A comparative analysis of the political economy of the Sixties versus the current era could easily stretch to book length, but four main factors combined to bring us the events of the past week:
1) the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed Blacks at between 2.6 and 4 times the rate of whites, ghoulishly accentuating the deadly nature of a late stage racial capitalist system that, after 40 years of endless austerity and war has stripped the nation of even a semblance of a public health care system;
2) the resulting economic shutdown that, in the bat of an eye, brought about Great Depression rates of unemployment and heart-stopping levels of general precarity, maddeningly combined with record-breaking highs on the stock exchanges and grotesque, near-instantaneous multi-billion dollar windfalls for the owners of Amazon, Google, Facebook and other oligarchs, while corporations received the bulk of trillions in federal disaster relief monies;
3) for the past four years the ruling class has been split, warring against itself and, in the process, creating an ongoing crisis of legitimacy for the U.S. regime. This has given the crisis a special and distinct character, in that elements of the ruling class and its media have given tacit moral support to at least some of the protesters in hopes of framing the unrest as the fault of their arch-rival, Donald Trump;
4) the Bernie Sanders presidential phenomenon, recently extinguished by corporate Democrats and their media allies, raised expectations among tens of millions of youth of all races that meaningful change – even some kind of “socialism” -- was possible under the current order. With Sanders’ abdication, his supporters have been forced to accept that they can’t simply vote their way out of the contradictions of racial, late stage capitalism. They took to the streets in astounding numbers, in many instances outnumbering non-white protesters, providing a degree of white skin protection to darker activists in confrontations with police.
“Supporters have been forced to accept that they can’t simply vote their way out of the contradictions of racial, late stage capitalism.”
The video-taped killing of George Floyd, as horrifically cruel and sadistic as it was, is not a special factor in the past week’s events, because the essence of Black folks’ grievance is that murders such as this happen all the time at the hands of police in the United States. However, the national mega-mobilization in Mr. Floyd’s name was a quintessentially wired 21st century phenomenon. Back in 1968, it took the assassination of the most important Black leader of his time to bring about a few days of general Black urban rebellion. This time around, an activist confronting Los Angeles police knew in real-time that people just like her were facing off the cops a continent away, in New York. (To complete the updated picture, the secret police were simultaneously compiling and sharing data on all of them.)
The Black Misleadership Class was in its infancy in 1968, having at that time elected only one Black big city mayor, Carl Stokes of Cleveland. But by 2020 the Black misleaders were manifestly complicit in a whole host of crimes against Black America, having managed the workings of the Mass Black Incarceration Regime in most of the big cities and presided over the gentrification of urban centers under the guise of “renaissance.” Atlanta’s young Black mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sounded just like one of Malcolm X’s house Negroes as she berated protesters for fighting her police and defiling the property once owned by one of her favorite rich white men. “Ted Turner started CNN in Atlanta 40 years ago because he believed in who we are as a city,” said Auntie Lance Bottoms, who evidently believes that CNN’s corporate brand of reporting is the gospel truth. “They are telling our stories, and you are disgracing their building…. Go home.”
“Bottoms sounded just like one of Malcolm X’s house Negroes.”
Like other misleaders, the Mayor measures Black progress by how the system has treated her small, grasping and self-centered class – not by what happens to the likes of George Floyd. “So if you love this city,” she told the ungrateful hordes at the gate, “this city that has had a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs and people who care about this city, where more than 50% of the business owners in metro Atlanta are minority business owners – if you care about this city, then go home.”
Ironically, Black servants of capital, like all of Atlanta’s mayors since Maynard Jackson won city hall in 1973, have no problem inviting whites with money to replace their own Black constituents in “renaissance” neighborhoods, but become fierce Black nationalists when whites join Black-led protests against the institutions that buttress racial capitalism. The Black Misleadership Class’s identification with Power has become all but complete. As embedded tools of the oligarchy, they view any attack on the system as an assault against themselves and their status in the hierarchy. They are right; they should be treated as the enemy.
In this new phase of struggle, we see that there are plenty of non-Blacks that are quite willing to accept Black leadership – the signs they carry and the demands they shout in protests across the country are Black-vetted and correct. But the Black Misleadership Class – the enemy within – insists that they are our rightful leaders, when in fact their allegiance is to the ruling class: the Lords of Capital, like Ted Turner.
When things seem like they’re coming apart, we need to ask: for whom? it may be that things are finally coming together.
All power to the people!
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
https://www.blackagendareport.com/movem ... themselves
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 04 Jun 2020
The Movement Gets BIG – and Its Enemies Reveal Themselves / Photo: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
The decrepit racial capitalist order appears to be unraveling under the weight of coronavirus, economic depression, and a quantitative leap in people’s willingness to confront power through the politics of the street.
“The Black Misleadership Class’s identification with Power has become all but complete.”
The scope and intensity of the convulsion that has shaken the United States since the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, is breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities have participated in actions ranging from silent vigils to pitched battles with police in at least 140 cities, by the New York Times’ estimate – or nearly 500 localities nationwide, according to a marvelously detailed Wikipedia page . The National Guard has been called out in 26 states and Washington, DC, and U.S. Army units, including a battalion of paratroopers from the 82nd airborne division , await deployment to cities by the self-proclaimed “law and order president ,” Donald Trump.
There has been nothing approaching this level of unrest since April, 1968, when 100 cities burned in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Back then, the U.S. corporate order responded to the challenge from below with massive expansion and militarization of local police forces, intensive secret police operations to eradicate Black and radical movements, and a policy of mass Black incarceration that, over the past half century, has boosted the national prison population from less than 200,000 in 1970, to 2.2 million , today – an 11-fold increase. With nearly equal zeal, the corporate order embraced a newly emergent Black political class, hungry for public office and private contracts, as a counterweight to the grassroots movements that had put revolution on the lips of millions of young people.
“Hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities have participated in actions ranging from silent vigils to pitched battles with police in at least 140 cities.”
A comparative analysis of the political economy of the Sixties versus the current era could easily stretch to book length, but four main factors combined to bring us the events of the past week:
1) the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed Blacks at between 2.6 and 4 times the rate of whites, ghoulishly accentuating the deadly nature of a late stage racial capitalist system that, after 40 years of endless austerity and war has stripped the nation of even a semblance of a public health care system;
2) the resulting economic shutdown that, in the bat of an eye, brought about Great Depression rates of unemployment and heart-stopping levels of general precarity, maddeningly combined with record-breaking highs on the stock exchanges and grotesque, near-instantaneous multi-billion dollar windfalls for the owners of Amazon, Google, Facebook and other oligarchs, while corporations received the bulk of trillions in federal disaster relief monies;
3) for the past four years the ruling class has been split, warring against itself and, in the process, creating an ongoing crisis of legitimacy for the U.S. regime. This has given the crisis a special and distinct character, in that elements of the ruling class and its media have given tacit moral support to at least some of the protesters in hopes of framing the unrest as the fault of their arch-rival, Donald Trump;
4) the Bernie Sanders presidential phenomenon, recently extinguished by corporate Democrats and their media allies, raised expectations among tens of millions of youth of all races that meaningful change – even some kind of “socialism” -- was possible under the current order. With Sanders’ abdication, his supporters have been forced to accept that they can’t simply vote their way out of the contradictions of racial, late stage capitalism. They took to the streets in astounding numbers, in many instances outnumbering non-white protesters, providing a degree of white skin protection to darker activists in confrontations with police.
“Supporters have been forced to accept that they can’t simply vote their way out of the contradictions of racial, late stage capitalism.”
The video-taped killing of George Floyd, as horrifically cruel and sadistic as it was, is not a special factor in the past week’s events, because the essence of Black folks’ grievance is that murders such as this happen all the time at the hands of police in the United States. However, the national mega-mobilization in Mr. Floyd’s name was a quintessentially wired 21st century phenomenon. Back in 1968, it took the assassination of the most important Black leader of his time to bring about a few days of general Black urban rebellion. This time around, an activist confronting Los Angeles police knew in real-time that people just like her were facing off the cops a continent away, in New York. (To complete the updated picture, the secret police were simultaneously compiling and sharing data on all of them.)
The Black Misleadership Class was in its infancy in 1968, having at that time elected only one Black big city mayor, Carl Stokes of Cleveland. But by 2020 the Black misleaders were manifestly complicit in a whole host of crimes against Black America, having managed the workings of the Mass Black Incarceration Regime in most of the big cities and presided over the gentrification of urban centers under the guise of “renaissance.” Atlanta’s young Black mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sounded just like one of Malcolm X’s house Negroes as she berated protesters for fighting her police and defiling the property once owned by one of her favorite rich white men. “Ted Turner started CNN in Atlanta 40 years ago because he believed in who we are as a city,” said Auntie Lance Bottoms, who evidently believes that CNN’s corporate brand of reporting is the gospel truth. “They are telling our stories, and you are disgracing their building…. Go home.”
“Bottoms sounded just like one of Malcolm X’s house Negroes.”
Like other misleaders, the Mayor measures Black progress by how the system has treated her small, grasping and self-centered class – not by what happens to the likes of George Floyd. “So if you love this city,” she told the ungrateful hordes at the gate, “this city that has had a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs and people who care about this city, where more than 50% of the business owners in metro Atlanta are minority business owners – if you care about this city, then go home.”
Ironically, Black servants of capital, like all of Atlanta’s mayors since Maynard Jackson won city hall in 1973, have no problem inviting whites with money to replace their own Black constituents in “renaissance” neighborhoods, but become fierce Black nationalists when whites join Black-led protests against the institutions that buttress racial capitalism. The Black Misleadership Class’s identification with Power has become all but complete. As embedded tools of the oligarchy, they view any attack on the system as an assault against themselves and their status in the hierarchy. They are right; they should be treated as the enemy.
In this new phase of struggle, we see that there are plenty of non-Blacks that are quite willing to accept Black leadership – the signs they carry and the demands they shout in protests across the country are Black-vetted and correct. But the Black Misleadership Class – the enemy within – insists that they are our rightful leaders, when in fact their allegiance is to the ruling class: the Lords of Capital, like Ted Turner.
When things seem like they’re coming apart, we need to ask: for whom? it may be that things are finally coming together.
All power to the people!
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
https://www.blackagendareport.com/movem ... themselves
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Police, prison and abolition
New RC tactic: kill em with kumbaya.
Second-ish day of bad weather. Still out there. Stores continue to board up. There was significantly less police presence during the day. DC's mayor is doing her best to extinguish BLM. "Black Lives Matter" is now a street name (???) along with the words painted on the actual street. Liberals shift debate from the ethics of protesting to Trump. They dare not utter "abolish" or even "defund"--they might speak it into existence. The demands are clear as day, and they know it.
Bowser, De Blasio, et al continue to white wash.
Second-ish day of bad weather. Still out there. Stores continue to board up. There was significantly less police presence during the day. DC's mayor is doing her best to extinguish BLM. "Black Lives Matter" is now a street name (???) along with the words painted on the actual street. Liberals shift debate from the ethics of protesting to Trump. They dare not utter "abolish" or even "defund"--they might speak it into existence. The demands are clear as day, and they know it.
Bowser, De Blasio, et al continue to white wash.
Re: Police, prison and abolition
Everything you posted verifies what Glen Ford said in the BAR piece. I've noticed the approval the 'street name' got, very savvy for some audiences. Looks like they're pulling Trump back from the abyss, true & faithful servants...Nonetheless I got faith that he ain't done yet.solidgold wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 7:31 amNew RC tactic: kill em with kumbaya.
Second-ish day of bad weather. Still out there. Stores continue to board up. There was significantly less police presence during the day. DC's mayor is doing her best to extinguish BLM. "Black Lives Matter" is now a street name (???) along with the words painted on the actual street. Liberals shift debate from the ethics of protesting to Trump. They dare not utter "abolish" or even "defund"--they might speak it into existence. The demands are clear as day, and they know it.
Bowser, De Blasio, et al continue to white wash.
It's all about Trump, everything is about Trump. Distract from the cops & capital while playing full bore partisan politics, the Dems are in their element. Throw in some racist red-baiting and the Democratic Party is in it's Happy Place.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Police, prison and abolition
I’m less optimistic than Ford. “Non-blacks carrying the signs that are black-vetted and correct”—I worry this isn’t the case, or it won’t be the case for long. Class interest seems to be a retardant to the flames, and it might be working. I don’t wish for anyone to be arrested, jailed, or killed, but cops being recalled signals a diminished threat, no? Not to mention the painted “BLM” is the bat signal for those who only see a humanity issue. I imagine this week’s protest demographics will look pretty different.blindpig wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:22 amEverything you posted verifies what Glen Ford said in the BAR piece. I've noticed the approval the 'street name' got, very savvy for some audiences. Looks like they're pulling Trump back from the abyss, true & faithful servants...Nonetheless I got faith that he ain't done yet.solidgold wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 7:31 amNew RC tactic: kill em with kumbaya.
Second-ish day of bad weather. Still out there. Stores continue to board up. There was significantly less police presence during the day. DC's mayor is doing her best to extinguish BLM. "Black Lives Matter" is now a street name (???) along with the words painted on the actual street. Liberals shift debate from the ethics of protesting to Trump. They dare not utter "abolish" or even "defund"--they might speak it into existence. The demands are clear as day, and they know it.
Bowser, De Blasio, et al continue to white wash.
It's all about Trump, everything is about Trump. Distract from the cops & capital while playing full bore partisan politics, the Dems are in their element. Throw in some racist red-baiting and the Democratic Party is in it's Happy Place.
This opinion only applies to DC. It’s the one I’ve been following closely. I want to be clear, BLMDC organizers are NOT slowing down. Today there’s like four or five SCHEDULED events.
Been reading some Amilcar Cabral. We could really use a revolutionary theory right now.
Might not be a quality post, typing from my phone.
Re: Police, prison and abolition
Yeah, know what you mean about the 'shelf life', a unifying ideology is badly needed to make this more than a flash in the pan.solidgold wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 10:01 pmI’m less optimistic than Ford. “Non-blacks carrying the signs that are black-vetted and correct”—I worry this isn’t the case, or it won’t be the case for long. Class interest seems to be a retardant to the flames, and it might be working. I don’t wish for anyone to be arrested, jailed, or killed, but cops being recalled signals a diminished threat, no? Not to mention the painted “BLM” is the bat signal for those who only see a humanity issue. I imagine this week’s protest demographics will look pretty different.blindpig wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:22 amEverything you posted verifies what Glen Ford said in the BAR piece. I've noticed the approval the 'street name' got, very savvy for some audiences. Looks like they're pulling Trump back from the abyss, true & faithful servants...Nonetheless I got faith that he ain't done yet.solidgold wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 7:31 amNew RC tactic: kill em with kumbaya.
Second-ish day of bad weather. Still out there. Stores continue to board up. There was significantly less police presence during the day. DC's mayor is doing her best to extinguish BLM. "Black Lives Matter" is now a street name (???) along with the words painted on the actual street. Liberals shift debate from the ethics of protesting to Trump. They dare not utter "abolish" or even "defund"--they might speak it into existence. The demands are clear as day, and they know it.
Bowser, De Blasio, et al continue to white wash.
It's all about Trump, everything is about Trump. Distract from the cops & capital while playing full bore partisan politics, the Dems are in their element. Throw in some racist red-baiting and the Democratic Party is in it's Happy Place.
This opinion only applies to DC. It’s the one I’ve been following closely. I want to be clear, BLMDC organizers are NOT slowing down. Today there’s like four or five SCHEDULED events.
Been reading some Amilcar Cabral. We could really use a revolutionary theory right now.
Might not be a quality post, typing from my phone.
Looks like good turnout in Baltimore. The view of City Jail gave a chill, what a house of horrors.
'Bat Sign', bingo.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Police, prison and abolition
Interesting developments in Minneapolis.
Re: Police, prison and abolition
Yes, that 'abolition of police' is being aired is very good. That the Dems will try to turn it into flaccid reformism is assured. Watch for pushback from Joe Biden. Still overall encouraging, if anything something else to rip the Dems apart even as Trump does same to the Rs.
Like the Man said, sometimes decades pass with nothing, sometimes months pass in days'(something like that)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Police, prison and abolition
No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against the African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 03 Jun 2020
No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against the African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad
The justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action initiated by Black people with Black leadership.
“A shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system.”
So, we say: Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland; for our political prisoners; for the super-exploited Black and Brown working class; for oppressed Indigenous nations; and for the millions subjected to U.S. warmongering, sanctions and criminality. We say this to shift the focus from the individualization of this week’s rebellion back to the objective structures of white supremacist, global colonial/capitalist domination. (BAP Newsletter )
The ruling class is befuddled and confused about how to respond to the ongoing street demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd. The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy. The ferocity of the demonstrations that had not been seen since the brief uprising in 92 in response to the Rodney King verdict seems to have caught the authorities completely by surprise.
In the 1992 street actions in Los Angeles the nation and the world saw the first multi-racial, multi-national street action that was very different from the Black rebellions that rocked the U.S. in the 1960s. The racial configuration of the participants captured the range of non-European national minority communities and migrant peoples from across the Americas’ region.
“The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy.”
But even in a departure from what occurred in 92, the justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action of whites, Latinx, LGBTQ, immigrant and migrant workers and Black youth, initiated by Black people with Black leadership. The response from the rulers was predictable but unsurprising in its ideological and strategic coherence to break that emerging coalition of social forces.
I posted a comment on Facebook in response to what I saw as the counter-moves being made by the state. I was asked by several people to elaborate on those points, which I offer here.
In my original Facebook post I said:
“The enemy knows how to quickly adapt in the ideological struggle: 1) undermine the emerging unity with white agitator propaganda, 2) follow up with declaration against something called Antifa as a terrorist group, 3) instruct the police to join demos and express solidarity, 4) release statements from police chiefs and others pushing the bad apples theme, and most important, 5) keep the focus on the individual and call for "justice" for that individual to avoid attention on the systemic and enduring elements of Black and Brown colonized oppression.”
The white outside agitator trope. If it wasn’t frightening enough to see images of young white kids marching shoulder to shoulder with African and other colonized peoples, seeing white kids actually engaged in militant engagement with police authorities, which went beyond the approved forms of resistance, triggered a cognitive dilemma almost as serious as when they tried to comprehend and explain how China could escape the COVID-19 with five thousand deaths while the virus was killing tens of thousands in the U.S.
That cognitive dissonance could only be achieved by resurrecting the outside agitator notion that emerged in the 30s and was directed at organizers from the Communist Party and militant union organizers who were working in the U.S. South. But that trope was given its fullest form in the Civil rights struggles in the 50s and 60s.
It’s redeployment today is geared to 1) delegitimizing Black agency by implying that resistance of this sort had to be directed by white folks, and, 2) generating suspicion and even hostility toward white participants. Granted, issues of counter-productive tactics and police infiltration are real issues. But the state saw a vulnerability in evoking the white agitator trope that the black petit-bourgeois administrators in various cities enthusiastically embraced.
Antifa as a terrorist group: With the ideological foundation of the white outside agitator, the next step was creating a more understandable target by inventing an organizational form in order to give the threat a more serious and ominous character. The problem should have been, though, that Antifa is not really an organization but an idea with a loose network of some organizations and mostly individuals, many of whom are anarchists with many other political orientations, who believe that the U.S. is facing a neofascist threat that should not be ignored.
But the fact that Antifa is a mirage is secondary when the objective is to drive an ideological agenda. The success of this, however, is yet to be determined.
Instruct/encourage police to engage in public relations shunts like taking a knee or even walking with the demonstrators in some locations. Shrinking the distance between the police and the demonstrators is easy when the issue is being framed as “justice” for George Floyd, and by implication the idea that his killers were “bad apples.”
Those kinds of political stunts are not even inconsistent with a simultaneous display of military prowess and heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators, especially if the idea is taking hold that it is the “bad apples” among the demonstrators that are deserving of policing.
The bad apple trope plays right into the monumental political error being made by resisters by keeping focus on George Floyd as an individual, even if by extension the critique extends to the police and policing as a whole. The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police as the leading edge of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.
Hundreds of Black and Latinix people are dying every day from what the Black is Back Coalition calls the colonial virus known as COVID-19. Yet because we are not watching grandma take her last breath on the ventilator after having been laying around the hospital for days, her unnecessary death and the literal deaths of thousands of our people did not bring the people out of their houses during lockdown and into the streets.
Those deaths will continue long after the other cops are charged, and the military secures the cities and people go home, because those deaths are generated by the contradictions of capitalism. They are produced by the structural violence that is inherent in a system that devalues all life but especially the life of non-European workers and the poor.
So, the state has responded. The challenge for us is how do we counter the state’s attempt to pre-empt the development of a new movement.
The definition of the “people” is an historic one that emerges out of concrete struggle with specific historical conditions. The deep structural crisis of the system of national and global capital are creating the conditions for neofascism as a capitalist reform strategy. Therefore, we must not allow the state to undermine the basis for building new forms of solidarity among people who are finding their voice.
“The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police.”
And while Trump may be the face of this movement and the public attention fixed on his most bombastic statements and the spectacle of armed citizen groups showing up at various state capitals, he does not have complete power over the real rulers of capital. Trump barely controls the Executive branch and has had his program of radical nationalist economic reform, including gutting Obamacare, curtailed. Instead, he has become an administrator of the neoliberal agenda like the last five presidents before him.
It is those ruling class forces who fear the masses and will give Trump or even Biden, if he is elected, free reign to continue to jettison the last vestiges of liberal democracy in order to maintain the rule of capital. When it was clear to the Obama Administration that he was not going to be able to co-opt the occupy movement, he moved with decisive action to shut it down across the country.
Trump will move just as decisively and with same level of ruling class support to shut down the protests when he sees it politically advantageous to do so.
Two things must happen fairly quickly. On the ideological level, a shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system. It is clear that the state is unwilling and unable to protect the fundamental human rights of the people. The demand for People(s)-centered human rights provides a broad, radical framework for advancing concrete demands that can unite broad sectors of the population.
And secondly, and most importantly, the theme and message around the importance of organization must be aggressively advanced. Mass mobilizations have a place but developing the organizational forms that will build and sustain the power necessary to bring about radical fundamental change is the primary challenge and historic task.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/no-co ... and-abroad
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 03 Jun 2020
No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against the African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad
The justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action initiated by Black people with Black leadership.
“A shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system.”
So, we say: Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland; for our political prisoners; for the super-exploited Black and Brown working class; for oppressed Indigenous nations; and for the millions subjected to U.S. warmongering, sanctions and criminality. We say this to shift the focus from the individualization of this week’s rebellion back to the objective structures of white supremacist, global colonial/capitalist domination. (BAP Newsletter )
The ruling class is befuddled and confused about how to respond to the ongoing street demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd. The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy. The ferocity of the demonstrations that had not been seen since the brief uprising in 92 in response to the Rodney King verdict seems to have caught the authorities completely by surprise.
In the 1992 street actions in Los Angeles the nation and the world saw the first multi-racial, multi-national street action that was very different from the Black rebellions that rocked the U.S. in the 1960s. The racial configuration of the participants captured the range of non-European national minority communities and migrant peoples from across the Americas’ region.
“The mobilizations clearly disrupted their plans for “normalcy” with the forced opening of the economy.”
But even in a departure from what occurred in 92, the justice for George Floyd mobilizations today reflected the state’s worst nightmare – a multi-national and multi-racial action of whites, Latinx, LGBTQ, immigrant and migrant workers and Black youth, initiated by Black people with Black leadership. The response from the rulers was predictable but unsurprising in its ideological and strategic coherence to break that emerging coalition of social forces.
I posted a comment on Facebook in response to what I saw as the counter-moves being made by the state. I was asked by several people to elaborate on those points, which I offer here.
In my original Facebook post I said:
“The enemy knows how to quickly adapt in the ideological struggle: 1) undermine the emerging unity with white agitator propaganda, 2) follow up with declaration against something called Antifa as a terrorist group, 3) instruct the police to join demos and express solidarity, 4) release statements from police chiefs and others pushing the bad apples theme, and most important, 5) keep the focus on the individual and call for "justice" for that individual to avoid attention on the systemic and enduring elements of Black and Brown colonized oppression.”
The white outside agitator trope. If it wasn’t frightening enough to see images of young white kids marching shoulder to shoulder with African and other colonized peoples, seeing white kids actually engaged in militant engagement with police authorities, which went beyond the approved forms of resistance, triggered a cognitive dilemma almost as serious as when they tried to comprehend and explain how China could escape the COVID-19 with five thousand deaths while the virus was killing tens of thousands in the U.S.
That cognitive dissonance could only be achieved by resurrecting the outside agitator notion that emerged in the 30s and was directed at organizers from the Communist Party and militant union organizers who were working in the U.S. South. But that trope was given its fullest form in the Civil rights struggles in the 50s and 60s.
It’s redeployment today is geared to 1) delegitimizing Black agency by implying that resistance of this sort had to be directed by white folks, and, 2) generating suspicion and even hostility toward white participants. Granted, issues of counter-productive tactics and police infiltration are real issues. But the state saw a vulnerability in evoking the white agitator trope that the black petit-bourgeois administrators in various cities enthusiastically embraced.
Antifa as a terrorist group: With the ideological foundation of the white outside agitator, the next step was creating a more understandable target by inventing an organizational form in order to give the threat a more serious and ominous character. The problem should have been, though, that Antifa is not really an organization but an idea with a loose network of some organizations and mostly individuals, many of whom are anarchists with many other political orientations, who believe that the U.S. is facing a neofascist threat that should not be ignored.
But the fact that Antifa is a mirage is secondary when the objective is to drive an ideological agenda. The success of this, however, is yet to be determined.
Instruct/encourage police to engage in public relations shunts like taking a knee or even walking with the demonstrators in some locations. Shrinking the distance between the police and the demonstrators is easy when the issue is being framed as “justice” for George Floyd, and by implication the idea that his killers were “bad apples.”
Those kinds of political stunts are not even inconsistent with a simultaneous display of military prowess and heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators, especially if the idea is taking hold that it is the “bad apples” among the demonstrators that are deserving of policing.
The bad apple trope plays right into the monumental political error being made by resisters by keeping focus on George Floyd as an individual, even if by extension the critique extends to the police and policing as a whole. The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police as the leading edge of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.
Hundreds of Black and Latinix people are dying every day from what the Black is Back Coalition calls the colonial virus known as COVID-19. Yet because we are not watching grandma take her last breath on the ventilator after having been laying around the hospital for days, her unnecessary death and the literal deaths of thousands of our people did not bring the people out of their houses during lockdown and into the streets.
Those deaths will continue long after the other cops are charged, and the military secures the cities and people go home, because those deaths are generated by the contradictions of capitalism. They are produced by the structural violence that is inherent in a system that devalues all life but especially the life of non-European workers and the poor.
So, the state has responded. The challenge for us is how do we counter the state’s attempt to pre-empt the development of a new movement.
The definition of the “people” is an historic one that emerges out of concrete struggle with specific historical conditions. The deep structural crisis of the system of national and global capital are creating the conditions for neofascism as a capitalist reform strategy. Therefore, we must not allow the state to undermine the basis for building new forms of solidarity among people who are finding their voice.
“The bad apple notion exempts a condemnation of the institution as a whole and diverts attention away from a deeper understanding of the role of the police.”
And while Trump may be the face of this movement and the public attention fixed on his most bombastic statements and the spectacle of armed citizen groups showing up at various state capitals, he does not have complete power over the real rulers of capital. Trump barely controls the Executive branch and has had his program of radical nationalist economic reform, including gutting Obamacare, curtailed. Instead, he has become an administrator of the neoliberal agenda like the last five presidents before him.
It is those ruling class forces who fear the masses and will give Trump or even Biden, if he is elected, free reign to continue to jettison the last vestiges of liberal democracy in order to maintain the rule of capital. When it was clear to the Obama Administration that he was not going to be able to co-opt the occupy movement, he moved with decisive action to shut it down across the country.
Trump will move just as decisively and with same level of ruling class support to shut down the protests when he sees it politically advantageous to do so.
Two things must happen fairly quickly. On the ideological level, a shift must occur away from the focus on individual justice for Floyd back to a critique and opposition to the ongoing structural violence of the system. It is clear that the state is unwilling and unable to protect the fundamental human rights of the people. The demand for People(s)-centered human rights provides a broad, radical framework for advancing concrete demands that can unite broad sectors of the population.
And secondly, and most importantly, the theme and message around the importance of organization must be aggressively advanced. Mass mobilizations have a place but developing the organizational forms that will build and sustain the power necessary to bring about radical fundamental change is the primary challenge and historic task.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
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