There is a movement, however, an abolitionist movement, that wishes to rid
society of the criminal justice system. Angela Davis is one of its supporters.
Their solutions for dealing with anti-social behavior in poor communities are
complex. So I think that some of the talk about removing funding from police
departments is related to this abolitionist movement.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Maurice Peret
Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 11:37 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: WILL THIS BE THE RADICALIZATION OF BLACK LIVES
MATTER?
Thank you, Miriam, for sharing this. Sadly, what swelled as a real potential
mass movement in the wake of murderous cop assaults last spring and summer
wherein genuine leadership might have developed out of the diverse and
multinational character of demonstrations in large cities and small rural towns
alike around this country and indeed around the world, it was sabotaged by the
very petty bourgeois elements mentioned in this commentary, from both the BLM
as well as Antifa groups who essentially act in the very anti-working class
fashion they claim to oppose. The evidence of this was in the devolutionary
acts of violence and looting extolled by self-proclaimed leaders of BLM. That
is when the crowds significantly diminished. It is also from this antagonistic
alien class framework that calls for defunding or abolishing the police. It is
a nowhere demand which has little support among those who live in the
neighborhoods ravished by just this sort of anarchic nonsense. That's not how
you build a movement. It is the natural outcome of dead-end identity politics
which effectively distorts and desecrates legitimate gains by the working class
such as affirmative action and voting rights. It is something to notice how
these elements love to talk about racism, sexism, gender-based bias, white
privilege, agism, ableism, and nearly every other kind of division except
class. The single most important task that stands before us is to do what
Malcolm X did so tirelessly, not awaken people to their oppression and
victimhood but to appeal and empower their humanity. We need to have frank
conversations about class and about capitalist social relations imposed and
reinforced through extreme violence and callous disregard for the producers of
all wealth from the prison industrial complex to super exploitation in
factories, both private and sheltered. It is through that process, like the
mass demonstrations against police brutality and using union power on the job
to demand personal safety and economic security measures of the employers, that
we learn and struggle together and develop confidence in each other to organize
to win. That's what the Bolsheviks accomplished in 1917 in Russia, what
millions of workers did in organizing the Counsel of Industrial Organizations
here in the United States, the largely proletarian led civil rights and Black
Liberation movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and what the Cubans did beginning
in 1959 and continue to defend to this day. The prevailing question that seems
to occupy the minds of workers today is whether we can actually pull this off.
I am convinced that it is possible not from an abstract utopian dream but from
what history teaches us, that we can because we indeed have. These are real
examples that we can learn from and emulate.
Regards,
Maurice
On 12/4/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
WILL THIS BE THE RADICALIZATION OF BLACK LIVES MATTER?
By Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report.
December 3, 2020 | STRATEGIZE!
Ten Black Lives Matter Chapters Are Demanding That Those Who Have
Amassed Millions Of Dollars In The Movement's Name Submit To Both A
Financial And Political Accounting.
"It is clear that the chapters raising questions about BLM from the
frontlines are doing so not out of a desire to destroy but to
strengthen the movement by generating this discussion."
On Monday a group of local Black Lives Matter chapters issued a
statement to the public calling for more transparency and
accountability from the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN), the
umbrella structure for the Black lives matter structures.
In what appears to be an ongoing internal discussion, the chapters
claimed that BLMGN not only did not collaborate on political visioning
and collective analysis with the chapters but shockingly, with the
millions reported in the media that was raised from foundations and
corporations, "most chapters have received little to no financial
support since the launch in 2013."
The lack of accountability and questions regarding the use of funds
were almost inevitable because it was designed that way.
Counterinsurgency efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere discovered that
these methods are effective and adopted them as part of the playbook
for corrupting and redirecting potential oppositional groups.
This does not mean that everyone participating in this effort were
opportunists - quite the contrary. There were thousands of Black
activists across the country who sincerely supported and participated
in what has become the Black Lives Movement.
"Most chapters have received little to no financial support since the
launch in 2013."
These activists for the most part had no idea that questions emerged
from the very beginnings of this "movement," which only intensified in
relationship to the George Floyd demonstrations, especially when it
appeared that the state had successfully placed BLM at the head of
something it had not organized.
Most of the activists who hit the streets just wanted to do the work
and didn't know that questions about whether this movement was more
valuable as an instrument of the ideological re-legitimization of the
system than it was as an instrument for advancing the oppositional,
anti-capitalist radical Black movement, especially as it seemed to
align itself with right-wing neoliberal Democrats from Obama, Clinton,
Warren and now to Biden.
So, with the field being flooded with cash from the enemy to keep the
focus on easily incorporated themes of "racial justice" and "criminal
justice reform," issues of both financial and political accountability
were always beneath the surface. Now those issues have found the light
of day and accountability is being called for.
I hope that this effort will result in a serious discussion around the
politics of BLM more so than the money issue, even though both are
intertwined by the source of the money and the reasons why resources
were generated to support this effort.
"Issues of both financial and political accountability were always
beneath the surface.
The situation that faces African workers and the colonized peoples of
this settler colony are dire. There is no capitalist solution to the
crisis of capital at this stage of its development. No Keynesianism, no "new
deals,"
no appeals to U.S. exceptionalism or "making America great" will
reverse its rot. The material contradictions of the capitalist order
have accelerated social-economic forces toward either a unique period
of a "new" national expression of U.S. fascism (colonialist fascism
was the base upon which racialized capitalism was erected ), or of a
revolutionary situation in which socialist revolution is presented by
left forces as a viable option.
This dual trajectory is understood by the rulers and is the basis for
why they have consciously moved to pre-empt the radicalization of the
present moment by propping up what has now become a diversionary
movement meant to de-politicize, even in the midst of dramatic
mobilizations across the country, in reaction to the lynching of George Floyd.
Throughout the first few months of Covid pandemic in April and into
May, stories started to surface that revealed how environmental
racism, neoliberal privatization that devastated the public health
system, poverty, Black and Brown workers concentrated in the lowest
rungs of the employment ladder - the "essential" workers - had created
the conditions that made the virus a plague for us.
"The rulers have consciously moved to pre-empt the radicalization of
the present moment by propping up what has now become a diversionary
movement meant to de-politicize."
But those stories just about disappeared for several months, beginning
at the end of May. And what happened? George Floyd.
The streets were filled with righteous indignation demanding "justice"
for Floyd and correctly linking the other cases of police violence
such as the execution of Breonna Taylor. Yet, while the marches
demanded that we say the names of Floyd and Taylor and remember Rice
and Sandra Blaine - out of sight in run-down nursing homes,
overcrowded hospitals, and alone in apartments, our folks were dying
in silence. The movement would not claim them; would not say their
names or, it seemed - fight for them.
And even as the lines for food extended for miles, the unemployment
check stopped coming and people were driven into the streets by
landlords released from moratoriums against evictions. Somehow these
crimes of capital did not fit the definition of an assault on our
people. It was as if this was neither a "racial justice" issue nor a
crime of racialized capitalism.
It is clear to me that the chapters raising questions about BLM from
the frontlines are doing so not out of a desire to destroy but to
strengthen the movement by generating this discussion. Will it be a
tough conversation?
Yes. Because partially obscured by the liberal appropriation of
intersectionality is the issue of class that the largely
petit-bourgeois classed-based leadership of the movement will not even
acknowledge, let alone struggle with.
But that may soon change.
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.
