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Rebellion2020

In Times Of Rapid Change, Victory Comes To Those Who Train For It

July 3, 2020 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. , ,
One of the gifts of the Black Lives Matter movement is that it doesn’t pretend that a quick fix will solve the problem. The many signs of change — from NASCAR giving up the Confederate flag to the majority of Minneapolis City Council members resolving to dismantle their police department — are welcome, but not nearly enough. Decades of failed reforms plus research into racism have come to the same conclusion: Only radical change will deliver what we need. The present whirlwind moment will subside. What then? How do successful movements dig in for a next stage of growth? The young people who organized the Sunrise Movement built into its DNA a large commitment to training. No use taking on the climate crisis, they figured, if people are simply going to do “the usual.”

An Historic Rant

July 2, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, Art Killing Apathy. , , ,
We don’t need another post about “these times.” We can all pretty much agree that shit is weird – that we’re confused, bewildered and feel like we’re on a boat captained by Bond villains heading towards a waterfall, stuck in a cyclone, trying to build rafts out of shoelaces and hope. Indeed, the discussion of where we are has hit a bit of a monotonous groove, a broken record type feel that just grates at us whenever we hear it. Someone just needs to kick the turntable and get us another round of beers. A more interesting Pilsner pondering – one that’s at once more mysterious and more clarifying – is the future we dream of, and the past we can learn from. More than just simple cause and effect, the past is our map, and the future is our navigation plan. Without that map, how the hell can you know where you are, where you started, where the path has taken you, how the hell you got into this storm headed straight for a waterfall, and how to navigate out of it?

Silence Is Not An Option: Black Women Make History

June 30, 2020 By Keisha N. Blain, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
Mainstream media and politicians have paid almost exclusive attention to ideas and images of Black men — whether as victims of police violence or as protesters against it. Yet Black women, who are no less subject to structural racism and violence, have been at the forefront of the multi-racial Black Lives Matter Movement for years. ROAR associate editor Eleanor Finley had the opportunity to explore some of these subjects with Dr. Keisha N. Blain, an award-winning historian and Black feminist scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Blain is also president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) and author of Set the World on Fire, a history of Black nationalist women’s political activism. In the following interview, Dr. Blain describes her work and explains what history has to teach the present moment about structural racism and police violence, Black transnational activism, and the vital role of women’s leadership in Black political movements.

‘Full Spectrum Resistance’: A Field Manual For Insurgencies

June 29, 2020 Kristian Williams, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
 Full Spectrum Resistance, Aric McBay’s massive, two-volume, handbook for political action, covers the fundamentals of social change, offering advice on organization, strategy, tactics, security, communication (internal and external), and so on — all illustrated with historical case studies. McBay does not tell us what we should do. Instead, he helps us learn to think about what we should do, and answer the question for ourselves in light of our actual objectives and circumstances. This is by far the stronger approach, especially because one thing that holds our movements back is the failure to think carefully and creatively about what we are doing, to reexamine our theories and alter course as needed. Instead, we tend to engage in the same sort of actions as we always have, as if they were rituals or reenactments. Peaceniks march against military interventions; workers picket job sites; antifascists “deplatform” right-wing speakers.

Why Is This Ongoing American “Revolution” Bound To Fail?

June 27, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Observed from outer space, the United States is in a revolutionary turmoil. Fires are burning, thousands of people are confronting police and other security forces. There are barricades, banners, posters, and there is rage. Rage is well justified. Grievances run deep, through the veins of a confused and socially insecure population, in both cities and the countryside. Minorities feel and actually are oppressed. Indeed they have been disgracefully oppressed, since the birth of the country, over two centuries ago (see my latest report carried by this magazine). There are some correct words uttered and written; many appropriate sentiments are expressed. And yet, and yet… It looks like a revolution, it feels like a revolution, but it is not a revolution. It definitely is not! Why?

Massive Uprisings Confront White Supremacy

June 25, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Jurist. , , ,
On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue.  Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United States?   More than 400 years after the first Africans were kidnapped, forcibly brought to this country and enslaved, White supremacy continues to infect our society.

CHOP And The Juneteenth Longshore Strike

June 25, 2020 Socialist Revolution. , , ,
On June 19, the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union (ILWU), a militant union of 42,000 members, shut down 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as workers withheld their labor for 8 hours. The strike was organized to demonstrate the labor movement’s solidarity with black lives after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, and held on the Juneteenth anniversary of the emancipation of the last chattel slaves in the US in 1865. As part of the action, a mass demonstration marched through Oakland’s port and downtown, with several thousand in attendance. Boots Riley, a communist rapper and filmmaker, gave a militant speech to the crowd, emphasizing the critical importance of strikes in furthering the movement.

Mapping The State’s Strategy Of Repression Against The Rebellion

June 23, 2020 It's Going Down. , , ,
While the recent rebellion against the police and white supremacy has been historical, it has also been coupled by an attempt by the State to drown the uprising in a sea of tear-gas and rubber bullets. While demonstrations and actions continue, the State is now gearing up for a more long-term strategy of repression, as a vast network of FBI agents, attorneys, and local police comb through hours of footage and social media, looking for targets. Already, over 10,000 people have been arrested across the so-called US and around 75 currently have federal charges; many of which carry extensive prison sentences. Moreover, there are reports of FBI door-knocks and visits to those that have recently been arrested. Often times people are being asked if they are involved in “antifa” while some are even propositioned with becoming informants.

Protesters Blockade Central Prison In North Carolina

June 22, 2020 Calvin Deutschbein, Workers.org. , , ,
June 13 marked the beginning of the third week of protests in Raleigh, N.C., the state capital and home of the murderous Raleigh Police Department and more than 70 other law enforcement agencies. Different days have drawn different groups with varying goals, but not a day has gone by without hundreds of people turning out on the streets to support Black Liberation and oppose the police. Protests have focused on contesting city sites glorifying white supremacy. From the moment protests began at 5 p.m. on May 30, hundreds of people immediately besieged the Wake County Detention Center. Others gathered around Confederate monuments in the state capital, the Raleigh Municipal Building, which holds the offices of the mayor and city council, and the governor’s mansion. They also went to many sites of police killings around the city.

The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against All Enemies

June 21, 2020 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The masses are in motion and public opinion about U.S. policing has rapidly shifted in three short weeks. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s assassination at the hands of U.S. police departments unleased a flood of anger toward the special bodies of armed forces that occupy the streets of Black American communities across the country. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington D.C. have seen tens of thousands of people march several miles per day demanding that police departments be defunded or abolished altogether. Protestors of all hues have been brutalized and journalists have been targeted with flurries of rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas cannisters.

Labor Vs. Police: Learning From Working-Class History

June 21, 2020 Martha Grevatt, Workers.org. , , ,
Led by oppressed youth, a working-class revolt has erupted, initially over the police lynching of George Floyd. It needs and deserves the unconditional solidarity of organized labor. Unfortunately, what top labor officials have delivered is something much less. Consider a recent statement signed by New York City leaders of the Service Employees (SEIU), American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, United Auto Workers, Communication Workers (CWA), Professional Staff Congress and the New York State Nurses Association. Overall, the statement is laudable. But these generally progressive union leaders felt compelled to include a caveat that “we do not, and never will, condone violence against police nor property.” (seiu32bj.org)

Protesting For Black Lives In Trump Country

June 20, 2020 Mesha Jefferson, Otherwords. , , ,
I grew up biracial in a small, conservative town. Still, after living for years in Austin, moving back to one was a culture shock — it felt like going back in time. For the last three years I’ve lived in Volusia County, Florida — home to Daytona Beach, many small towns and suburbs, and a population that gave about 55 percent of its vote to Donald Trump in 2016. Racial divides are still evident in Daytona and the surrounding areas. Daytona itself is divided by U.S. Route 92, with poorer people of color primarily residing south of the road. The further north you go, the richer — and whiter — it becomes. I’ve had my fair share of interactions with racists here. I often feel out of place. Even in my own neighborhood, I don’t feel safe walking around without my dog or another person.

Solidarity Means Dismantling The System Everywhere

June 19, 2020 Progressive International. , , ,
A new solidarity movement is rising. From Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, Minneapolis to London, “Black Lives Matter” is a cry and a demand heard around the world. The message of this movement is powerfully simple: stop killing black people — in their homes, on the streets, and traveling across the sea to safer shores. Yet in its simplicity, it contains the seed of a radical transformation in our planetary system, raging against a machine of racist dispossession to make room for collective and communal liberation everywhere. The last decade has witnessed a sharp turn in two terrifying directions: turning in and cracking down. A new cohort of authoritarians has shunned international cooperation in a retreat to the nation-state and its ancient myths of blood and soil.

City Bar Calls For Investigation Following Arrests Of Legal Observers

June 19, 2020 By Tom McParland, Law.com. , , ,
The New York City Bar Association on Wednesday called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York Police Department to “immediately investigate” the alleged targeting of nine legal observers earlier this month during a protest against police brutality in the Bronx. In a statement, the City Bar said it was “gravely concerned” by what it called “concerted efforts” in New York, and across the country, to interfere with the work of observers at mass demonstrations protesting systemic racism and police killings of black Americans. The City Bar specifically cited reports that legal observers associated with the National Lawyers Guild had been pulled out of a crowd in the Bronx, restrained with zip-tie cuffs and detained for 20 minutes. Some officers, the City Bar said, had “illegally accessed” the observers’ privileged documents and took down their personal information, while claiming not to know the function they were serving at the protests.

‘Black Lives Matter’ Is International

June 19, 2020 Roger Harris, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. , , ,
Corte Madera, California - The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th was the spark that ignited the tinder of accrued injustice throughout the US and globally. This injustice has deep antecedents in the US and indeed in much of what is now called the Global South. There is a shared history of colonial conquest of the Indigenous and the abominable institution of the enslavement of African peoples. What happened has its roots in systemic oppression that has resonated internationally. Just as the police suffocated George Floyd, US unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Zimbabwe, and nearly one third of humanity are designed to asphyxiate those nations which aspire to pursue an independent course.
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