If Death Doesn't Push Politicians Left, Then What Can?

By Christian Gines

I am sick and tired of seeing black bodies dead in the street for absolutely no reason at all. It is traumatic and exhausting to continue to see wanton violence perpetuated every single day. Every time I see a black person that has been killed from structural violence I think back to the first point of Afropessimism: “The slave, as an object, is socially dead, which means they are open to gratuitous violence, as opposed to violence contingent upon some transgression or crime.” Black people are killed daily without any justification. How can a representative of the state apparatus represent and legislate on behalf of the black community if we are socially dead in the eyes of the state? If wanton violence keeps occurring to us and nothing is done, what other means do we have other than Abolition?

In the eyes of the state, black people are seen as a commodity, not something that they represent, but something that they use when they need too and dispose of us when we aren’t required anymore. We are not seen as human in the country’s eyes, so why would a state actor actually represent us and our needs? How would the figurehead of the country not see us as anything but socially dead? When another black brother or sister dies, they see that as a side effect of the system. Instead of looking toward Abolition, they look towards performative action to subside the masses, and in the best scenario, they think that minor reforms will solve the issue. Arresting a police officer after they have killed a black person is not justice. Justice is a system that doesn’t allow that killing to happen in the first place. Justice is living in a system where you don’t have to worry about structural violence and gratuitous violence daily. There will never be justice in a system that feeds off of black death. We shouldn’t expect politicians, courts, voting booths, and other state-run apparatuses to do anything other than uphold anti-blackness. The state’s only goal is self-preservation. Whether that is defending capitalism, white supremacy, the (cis-hetero)patriarchy, and any other tentacles of oppression, it will do anything to stay intact. 

With talks of politicians being pushed left, I wonder how. If you look outside and see black bodies slain every day and aren’t moved left, what will move you? When we have had protest throughout the country since the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, these politicians haven’t moved to the left an inch. In some cases, they are moving to the right. In the case of Minneapolis, change only came because of the destruction of property. Does the destruction of property outweigh the killing of an innocent black body? How many black bodies have to pile up before they wake up and realize that we need different solutions. Police without body cams kill us. Police with body cams kill us. No matter what reform we try to make, the police still are killing us. America is inherently anti-black. It is a country founded off the backs of Native Genocide and Slavery. Every single institution founded in the U.S. was based on racism and oppression. From the foundation of police deriving from slave catchers. The Prison Industrial Complex, deriving from slavery. The Immigration system, founded in settler colonialism and the exclusion of Asians. The Supreme Court and its racist rulings. The medical system and experimental surgeries on slave women. The U.S. military and its imperialism that devastates countries to the brink of land degradation, starvation, and death. Every US institution has its founding in either racism, settler colonialism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia, which means that the U.S. itself is a system of oppression that we should work to dismantle. That affects of that foundation is something that we still have to deal with daily. Black people are open to violence on the regular. If the police don’t kill us, we are killed by prisons, homelessness, starvation, disease, and many other forms of violence. Knowing this and seeing this on an everyday basis, what more does a person need to be pushed left. 

If a person is apathetic and sometimes even supports the senseless use of bombings and drone strikes on our brothers and sisters in the Global South, what makes you think they will become susceptible to the calls for the end of death within the country.  How would anyone be held accountable inside of office when we can’t even keep them accountable when running for office. If they won’t meet the voter’s demands when they need our so-called votes to win in the first place, then why would they listen to us when they get into office? Politicians will run on a platform that seemingly seeks to change things when they get in office, but when they get in, they turn their backs on the everyday person. How are we then to hold them accountable? They have gained access to more power. They have gained access to more capital. They have gained access to the most extensive domestic and foreign military apparatus on the planet. They have gained access to the FBI and CIA, which allows them to undermine any effort at resistance or liberation. How will they be held accountable by constituents when the only thing they serve is the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy? How are they going to be held responsible when to maintain the structures that they benefit from and control the production cost is your life? There is no accountability in a system that is set up like that. You cannot expect a change in bourgeoisie politics because the only thing they are beholden to is money. 

How can you make someone acknowledge your humanity? Acknowledge that you have the right to a life free from the threat of death or oppression? We have been trying this for centuries, and it hasn’t worked. Why? It hasn’t worked because the foundation of this country was the foundation of our social death. When slavery emerged in conjunction with blackness, anti-blackness emerged as well. Slavery necessitated the condition for our blackness, because how else could you justify putting someone into slavery unless they aren’t seen as human. How many videos do you need to see black people being shot by the police to believe that we need to abolish the police? Blackness’s participation in civil society is a contradiction because for civil society to exist, blackness has to be subjugated and oppressed. It has to be seen as nonhuman. To validate civil society, you must also validate anti-blackness because one necessitates the other. For a time now, we have invited people to see what is what it’s like to live at the bottom of the totem pole. Most people never take the time to even try to go through what we experience daily, and those that might help here us out do so out of their interest most of the time and come out with small reformist goals. Now that isn’t to knock any effort of reform. We should be advocating for some of our pain and oppression to be alleviated here and now, but in the long term, reform is nothing but fascism, as George Jackson says. You cannot elect and legislate away oppression. Minneapolis proves that when civil society starts to become disrupted, then change might come. Civil society only exists to maintain structures of oppression and normalize oppressive violence and demonize revolutionary violence. 

If a person or party only acknowledges your existence as a commodity or, in this instance, a voting block that allows them to get power, then you are already on the losing side. If you, after decades of loyally supporting them have nothing in return except void representation and worsened oppression, then why are you supporting them in the first place. Bourgeoisie politics will never be a mechanism for change and ending oppression. You cannot legislate away anti-blackness when that is in the foundations of something. It’s either Abolition or oppression. The representatives of the state apparatus don’t see you as anything but a tool for power. You are not human to them. “That is why you will always be open to gratuitous violence, as opposed to violence contingent upon some transgression or crime; and generally dishonored, or disgraced before any thought or action is considered.” If they don’t see you as actual people, then your death at the hands of state-sanctioned violence is nothing but a casualty of their power, and we have had far too many deaths to not fight back anymore. That is why, no matter how many black people die, politicians will not be pushed to the left. To go to the left is to go against the core institutions that they seek to uphold, and if they were to do that, they wouldn’t have power in the first place.

What's Next for the Anti-Racist Movement?

By T.R. Whitworth

Republished from Independent Socialist Group.

In my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built… And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.

- Malcolm X, 1964

The recent murders by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery have reignited the anti-racist movement in the U.S. The current situation is eerily similar to what we saw in 2014, when Michael Brown’s murder by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked protests that quickly spread around the country. Then, as now, the protests were met with fierce repression and violence by highly militarized police forces. Then, as now, the mainstream media smeared—largely peaceful—protesters as rioters and looters in an effort to discredit the movement.

While the 2014 movement under the banner of Black Lives Matter was energetic and inspiring, like many past movements against police racism and brutality, it failed to materialize real systemic changes. The Obama Administration’s Justice Department begrudgingly carried out a few more investigations of corrupt and racist police departments, but even that minor reform was quickly rolled back by the Trump Administration. Body cameras for the police, a central demand of the 2014 movement, have only been implemented in a patchwork fashion, and even where wearing one is official policy, officers frequently turn them off without consequence.

Encouragingly, the current emerging movement is even larger and more energetic than in 2014. Protests have taken place across all 50 states, many protests continuing for days. The protests are characterized by instinctive multi-racial and multi-ethnic solidarity against racism and police violence. And public support for the movement is high. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, “64% of American adults were ‘sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,’ while 27% said they were not and 9% were unsure.” Given the massive support for and participation of youth in the movement, this 64% figure is probably a conservative estimate.

The ruling class has been shaken to its core by this uprising, and the heavy-handed repressive response of police departments and the Trump Administration has so far backfired, adding steam to the protests instead of extinguishing them. We’ve seen a series of concessions in past days, granted under pressure from the protests. All four Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s murder have been fired and indicted. Six Atlanta police officers have been criminally charged for using excessive force on protesters. And institutions across the country, especially universities and colleges, have publicly severed ties with their cities’ police departments.

But the current anti-racist protest movement lacks organization, leadership, and democratic decision-making structures. Without these, it is vulnerable to fizzling out without achieving lasting change, as people succumb to protest fatigue. It is also vulnerable to being co-opted and de-radicalized by self-appointed “leaders” who would rather celebrate cops hugging black protesters than fight for systemic change.

What we need to win

The systemic changes we need include an end to racial profiling, “broken windows” policing, “stop and frisk” policies, the racist War on Drugs, and the criminalization of poverty—which disproportionately affects black communities. All police officers who espouse any form of racist or white supremacist ideas should be fired without question.

The assault on our democratic right to peaceful protest must end. The military, including the National Guard, should be immediately withdrawn from our cities and streets. The use of tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bangs, and riot gear in response to protests should be banned. We should demand the immediate release of all arrested protesters and the dropping of their charges, as well as the release of former Black Panthers and all other imprisoned black liberation activists.

All killer cops, past and present, should be prosecuted. It needs to be easier to fire police officers with excessive force complaints and criminally charge and convict killer cops. District attorneys’ offices have shown that they are not capable of prosecuting the same police officers that they work with on a daily basis and rely on to testify in court. Police departments have proven that they are not capable of investigating themselves.

We need community control of the police through democratically elected committees of workers and community members with hiring and firing power, the ability to review and create policy and budgets, and authority to conduct independent investigations into cases of police misconduct.

Police unions like the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers should be decertified. Law enforcement unions are not like other unions. The main role of police in the U.S. is to serve the will of the capitalist class, including by enforcing racist and anti-worker policies, repressing strikes and labor activity, and putting down protests. Police unions exist to protect police officers from facing any consequences for their actions (up to and including murder). They make it difficult to discipline or fire bad cops and they oppose any public oversight of the police.

Police departments across the country must be demilitarized and their budgets reduced. Cities must stop wasting public funds on military technology and weaponry and invest the money instead in affordable housing, public transit, schools, and other social programs and services in order to make a dent in the poverty that disproportionately affects black workers. Even many police themselves complain that they are expected to do the job of social workers. Let’s take some of the public money currently spent on police budgets and use it to hire actual social workers instead.

Finally, we need a political party—a workers’ party—that will offer a real alternative to racism and austerity. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have failed for decades to meaningfully improve the conditions under which we live: widespread poverty, entrenched racism, lack of access to decent education, housing, jobs, and healthcare. Both parties play off of each other and seek to divide workers along racial lines—as well as by nationality, gender, sexual identity, etc. Despite their more “progressive” rhetoric of racial justice, when in office the Democrats have disappointed again and again. Just look at cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis, where decades of Democratic Party rule have not resulted in reforms to policing, and in many cases have actually passed some of the worst police policies, including “stop and frisk.” In fact, Democratic Party controlled major cities have been the epicenters of the majority of the murders of unarmed black people by police for decades.

How to win these demands and more

To achieve these needed systemic changes will require a high level of organization and coordination. The ruling class and their police and military forces are organized and we should be too. We should immediately form neighborhood committees, with elected members—workers, youth, and community members—and democratic structures, to decide future actions and tactics and develop a program with clear demands to direct the movement. These neighborhood committees should elect delegates to city-wide committees, which should in turn build links state- and nation-wide.

These elected neighborhood committees should prepare plans, train volunteers, and collect supplies and equipment for dealing with tear gas, rubber bullets, “kettling,” and other aggressive police tactics at protests and demonstrations. They should be ready to assess situations, make tough calls, and put forward proposals in the heat of the moment for how best to keep protesters and neighborhoods safe from police and right-wing aggression. They could also organize neighborhood patrols to document police interactions with community members.

Labor unions need to get involved and take a strong stand against police brutality and in support of the protests. Issuing public solidarity statements is a good first step, but unions should go further by organizing workplace meetings and discussions on the movement, and mobilizing members to form union contingents at protests. Unions should also use their legal resources to defend protesters. Representing 11.6% of all U.S. workers—and 12.7% of black workers—unions are among the most diverse institutions of the working class. Solidarity against racism and all forms of oppression must be a key point of struggle for the whole workers’ movement.

Protesting can only be one part of our organizing strategy. Protests are effective to the extent that they call attention to the issue, demonstrate public outrage or support, and disrupt “business as usual.” But ultimately the ruling class only cares about actions that affect their bottom line—their ability to make profit. We should begin to organize for 24-hour general strikes of workers in all sectors in cities across the country to win the movement’s demands by putting further economic pressure on the bosses who are already staggering from the blows of the health and economic crisis. They will quickly get the message to their paid-off politicians that it’s time to grant substantive reforms.

Unions should play a key role in calling for and planning any general strikes, but both union and non-union workers should participate. If the union bureaucrats won’t do it, rank-and-file union members and workers should take up the planning themselves (and then elect new union leaders prepared to genuinely represent their class, not suck up to the bosses).

We need to build a truly mass movement to unite workers of all races in the struggle against capitalism and the racist inequality and violence that the system was founded upon. Only a multi-racial working-class movement has the power to win demands like demilitarizing the police, convicting killer cops, ending the War on Drugs, and community control of the police.

Only a movement that unites workers and youth regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, or any other form of oppression, can win guaranteed jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and a living wage for all. These reforms can be paid for by taxing the rich and nationalizing big corporations, as a step toward ultimately ending capitalism and replacing it with a democratic and egalitarian socialist society with power firmly in the hands of the working class. As MLK, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton all came to conclude, the only way to defeat racism is to defeat capitalism.

Understanding the Riots

By Devon Bowers

Given light of the nationwide protests, especially in Minneapolis regarding the death of George Floyd, as well as other victims of police violence, this is a revised and updated version an article I wrote in 2014, defending the Ferguson uprising.

 “Now, let’s get to what the white press has been calling riots. In the first place don’t get confused with the words they use like ‘anti-white,’ ‘hate,’ ‘militant’ and all that nonsense like ‘radical’ and ‘riots.’ What’s happening is rebellions not riots[.]”

- Stokley Carmichael, “Black Power” speech, July 28, 1966

"The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar."

- Karl Marx, "The Civil War in France" (1871)

In light of the uprising in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington DC, and other places across the country, many people have come out of the woodwork to condemn violent protesting and the destruction of buildings. However, we have to ask ourselves, what do they mean by violence?

When talking of violence in this context, it is rather strange. What people are condemning is property destruction, not violence. One can’t act in a violent way towards an inanimate object. Burning a building, whether it be a Target or a police precinct, isn’t violence, but in this context is pushback against a system where that has destroyed people for years. The murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor is actual violence. Two people’s lives were abruptly ended due to the maliciousness of the police. Storeowners have insurance, stores can be rebuilt and revived, we can’t revive Floyd, Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery.

On a deeper level, this is where capitalism and racism intersect. One of capitalism’s main tenets is the dominance of private property and how it must be protected. We can see that this has been transcribed in law, such as with the Stand Your Ground laws. Yet, also within the larger society there is a lack of caring for black life. In any situation, the media and general public regularly engage in victim blaming and look for anything, anything at all to assassinate the character of those who died at the hand of the police.

This can be seen in the recent past, where the media bought up Akai Gurley’s criminal record when discussing his death at the hands of a police officer or when the New York Post published an article discussing Arbery being arrested for shoplifting in 2017. The publication of such information is done with the intent to demonize victims of police and white supremacist violence, allowing supporters of such violence to have an excuse as how the victims ‘deserved it’ and ‘simply got what was coming to them.’

We have also seen that the police will flat out lie to push their narrative. In the case of Breonna Taylor, police argued that her residence “was listed on the search warrant based on police's belief that Glover [Taylor’s boyfriend] had used her apartment to receive mail, keep drugs or stash money.” However, a postal worker noted that the police “did not use his office to verify that a drug suspect was receiving packages at Breonna Taylor's apartment” and that when a different agency asked in January 2020 if Taylor’s home was receiving suspicious packages, the answer was no. The no-knock raid went on unabated and then was justified based on knowingly false information.

With regards to the riots themselves, the larger society is asking why protesters don’t remain peaceful. The answer is two-part: peace has been tried and we are going to be condemned no matter what.

We have to ask this: Why would you think that people would remain peaceful in the face of constant violence? Why would people remain peaceful cases of police violence and police murder continue with no end in sight and usually no punishment for the offending officers?

Black people have tried peace before. We were peaceful in the 1960s when we were peacefully protesting for our civil rights and were met with racist mobs, fire hoses, and dogs, we had crosses burnt on our lawns, lynchings, and a bomb put in a church. During all of that time we remained peaceful even as society enacted massive violence and repression against us. Yetviolenc, violence against the black community continues today.

The situation is currently such where if a black person is killed by the police, people immediately come out and find any way in which they can besmirch or blame the victim. This occurs even when it adds insult to death, as is the case with Floyd where the autopsy noted that his “being restrained by the police, along with his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system, ‘likely contributed to his death.” Such a statement partially puts the blame on Floyd himself for dying rather than entirely at the hands of Derek Chauvin and the other officers who sat there and watched Floyd die.

The conversation drastically changes when oppressed people fight back. Not only is the violence denounced, but then it is used as an excuse to use massive amounts of violence against the oppressed, as we see currently with not only the National Guard being called up to suppress the uprising in Minneapolis, but also active duty military police units from all over the country are being prepped.

When people lash out against one incident, one may be inclined to call that violence, but when violence against your community has been going on for decades and people lash out, that’s no longer violence on the part of the oppressed, that’s called resistance.

When the question is raised of why aren’t there peaceful protests, it is also extremely hypocritical. Many have spoken out in person and on social media condemning the riots, but at the same time they are silent on the constant police brutality that the black community deals with and they are silent on the economic violence done against black communities, pushing them into ghettos where not only is there economic poverty but also a poverty of expectations.

At the heart of this is how society condones state violence, but condemns violence by individuals. This mindset is a serious problem as it only gives more power to the state and consistently puts state forces in the right, with the victims of state violence being forced to prove their innocence, a situation made all the harder due to people already assuming that the victim is in the wrong.

Many have pushed for peace, but peace and safety are not something the black people in America receive, whether we are just looking for help after a car accident, as was the case with Renisha McBride, or we are carrying a toy gun around, as was the case with John Crawford.

This is not the time to ask for peace. This is the time to say “No justice, no peace.”