Patrick Sikorski
The Murder of George Floyd and the Anti Racist Struggle
Points
1. As Spike Lee said there is is nothing “new” about the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota USA – it’s been going on for over 400 years.
2. What is new is that someone with a smart phone recorded the obscenity (with a sound track revealing a fragment of racist taunting from the murderer) and it went global.
3. So in the context of the biggest global pandemic for over a century which has stripped bare the gross inequalities in the richest country in the world, another black person is killed while being arrested by an officer of the law, on “suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 note”.
4. Trump declares himself the President of Law and Order and threatens the protesters and the American people with first the National Guard and then the Army under the Insurrection Act. He knows the latter isn’t feasible (just yet…..) but in the meantime he’s mobilising his base – including it’s armed militia wing. And for good measure he’s mobilising God as well, after having the steps of St. John’s Church in Washington DC cleared by tear gas of peaceful protesters.
5. Apparently recent polls show that 82% of Americans believe in God. 62% of them believe that the virus is a message telling humanity to change; 55 per cent believe that God will protect them.
6. There is more to it. He (that’s Trump!) brandishes a bible in defence of the divine rights of property over and above the people’s claim to human rights – the Founding Fathers would be proud. Not for him any liberal style support for protests at an injustice whilst denouncing the rioting and looting – no, the message is very clear - just get off the streets and get back to work and back into your ghettos.
In a leaked conversation with former staff members, Obama called the US response to the Covid epidemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”. Majority Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, reinforcing the stereotype of the white Southerner telling the black man he ought know his place, said “Obama should have kept his mouth shut”.
7. But ideology and its constant reproduction can only continue to work effectively if it has a secure basis in material reality. The material reality for most working and middle class Americans is that their standards of living, job security, pensions and health care have been systematically trashed over the last 40 years – and that includes the Obama years. And then came the Crash of 2008 and the plague of 2019.
Now half of all Americans receive health insurance through their employers. If the unemployment rate, caused by the lockdowns, continues at 20% it is estimated that as many as 43 million will loose their insurance.
8. With long practised speed and precision, the mass media both in the USA and UK, frame the events as rioters versus protestors and outside agitators versus legitimate local citizens to turn attention away from how heavy law enforcement de-legitimises all policing, at the same time as taking the spotlight off the impunity with which neo-fascists wield assault rifles both inside and outside state capitols.
9. As one American civil rights activist, Cornel West, says;
“ It also obscures the role of the repressive apparatus in preserving an order so unjust and cruel. The rule of big money, class and gender hierarchies and global militarism must be highlighted in our profound concern with anti – black police murder and brutality.”
10. The explosion of solidarity across much of the USA and finding a strong echo here in the UK and elsewhere, mark a new and decisive chapter. The response was immediate and strong – no laborious build up – just anti – racist action. Home made placards and leadership on the road, on the day and collective. Tens of thousands of overwhelmingly young people in a multi- racial rejection of a barbaric killing and the system that spawned it. It takes guts to face off riot police, deal with tear gas and batons and defy curfews. It takes magnificent moral and physical courage and the clean, clear sightedness of youth, uncluttered by the heavy loads of serial defeats, to do the right thing.
Such events set a seal with the future for those who directly partake in them and many will take up those challenges. They will form a new leadership in their communities and their workplaces. They will need to reach out to form united fronts with others who will step up to the plate. At the same time the struggle of the BAME community needs no lectures from anyone on how to conduct that struggle. They have the right to use whatever means are necessary to achieve their liberation from oppression
The Murder of George Floyd and the Anti Racist Struggle
Points
1. As Spike Lee said there is is nothing “new” about the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota USA – it’s been going on for over 400 years.
2. What is new is that someone with a smart phone recorded the obscenity (with a sound track revealing a fragment of racist taunting from the murderer) and it went global.
3. So in the context of the biggest global pandemic for over a century which has stripped bare the gross inequalities in the richest country in the world, another black person is killed while being arrested by an officer of the law, on “suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 note”.
4. Trump declares himself the President of Law and Order and threatens the protesters and the American people with first the National Guard and then the Army under the Insurrection Act. He knows the latter isn’t feasible (just yet…..) but in the meantime he’s mobilising his base – including it’s armed militia wing. And for good measure he’s mobilising God as well, after having the steps of St. John’s Church in Washington DC cleared by tear gas of peaceful protesters.
5. Apparently recent polls show that 82% of Americans believe in God. 62% of them believe that the virus is a message telling humanity to change; 55 per cent believe that God will protect them.
6. There is more to it. He (that’s Trump!) brandishes a bible in defence of the divine rights of property over and above the people’s claim to human rights – the Founding Fathers would be proud. Not for him any liberal style support for protests at an injustice whilst denouncing the rioting and looting – no, the message is very clear - just get off the streets and get back to work and back into your ghettos.
In a leaked conversation with former staff members, Obama called the US response to the Covid epidemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”. Majority Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, reinforcing the stereotype of the white Southerner telling the black man he ought know his place, said “Obama should have kept his mouth shut”.
7. But ideology and its constant reproduction can only continue to work effectively if it has a secure basis in material reality. The material reality for most working and middle class Americans is that their standards of living, job security, pensions and health care have been systematically trashed over the last 40 years – and that includes the Obama years. And then came the Crash of 2008 and the plague of 2019.
Now half of all Americans receive health insurance through their employers. If the unemployment rate, caused by the lockdowns, continues at 20% it is estimated that as many as 43 million will loose their insurance.
8. With long practised speed and precision, the mass media both in the USA and UK, frame the events as rioters versus protestors and outside agitators versus legitimate local citizens to turn attention away from how heavy law enforcement de-legitimises all policing, at the same time as taking the spotlight off the impunity with which neo-fascists wield assault rifles both inside and outside state capitols.
9. As one American civil rights activist, Cornel West, says;
“ It also obscures the role of the repressive apparatus in preserving an order so unjust and cruel. The rule of big money, class and gender hierarchies and global militarism must be highlighted in our profound concern with anti – black police murder and brutality.”
10. The explosion of solidarity across much of the USA and finding a strong echo here in the UK and elsewhere, mark a new and decisive chapter. The response was immediate and strong – no laborious build up – just anti – racist action. Home made placards and leadership on the road, on the day and collective. Tens of thousands of overwhelmingly young people in a multi- racial rejection of a barbaric killing and the system that spawned it. It takes guts to face off riot police, deal with tear gas and batons and defy curfews. It takes magnificent moral and physical courage and the clean, clear sightedness of youth, uncluttered by the heavy loads of serial defeats, to do the right thing.
Such events set a seal with the future for those who directly partake in them and many will take up those challenges. They will form a new leadership in their communities and their workplaces. They will need to reach out to form united fronts with others who will step up to the plate. At the same time the struggle of the BAME community needs no lectures from anyone on how to conduct that struggle. They have the right to use whatever means are necessary to achieve their liberation from oppression
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