Monday, July 13, 2020

Truest statement of the week

If power is measured by corporate endorsements  and the kiss-up antics of Democratic politicians, the movement popularly known as “Black Lives Matter” is awesomely powerful, its name painted into the streets  of cities across the nation. Record-breaking contributions have also flowed to a broad range of social justice organizations from the public-at-large, with bail funds amassing almost $100 million . Even tiny projects have seen their previously forlorn GoFundMe accounts suddenly stuffed with contributions. 
The cash windfall alone is enough to make one giddy – including life-long activists old enough to have participated in the radical mass movements of half a century ago. The “fascist pigs” have not been “offed,” but some of them have been indicted and Democratic politicians now claim they want to rein in the ‘warrior cops” that only yesterday were hailed as “heroes” of the constant “wars” waged against Black and brown America. “Policing” as we have known it has been discredited in ways that cannot easily be reversed, with 70 percent of white people under age 45 agreeing that George Floyd’s killing was part of “a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African-Americans.” Sixty percent of white folks of all ages told New York Times pollsters  they feel “positively” about the “Black Lives Matter” movement – meaning a significant slice of Trump supporters object to police behavior, as do overwhelming percentages of Black and brown Americans.
There is no doubt that, in the arena of public perception, we have witnessed a stunning rout of the forces that erected the modern Black Mass Incarceration State in response to the Black rebellions and radical movements of the 1960s. The Democratic Party – whose politicians of all races have for five decades been the hands-on urban managers of the world’s largest police state – pretends to have suddenly seen the light. In Covid-19/Great Depression Two America, the servants of capital say we are all Black Lives Matter -- until the “crisis of legitimacy” passes. 
But the oligarchs that rule this country and both its corporate parties have no intention of dismantling the racist police state, beyond staffing the blue legions with more Black, brown and female officers, embedding the multiracial occupation army deeper in our communities and increasing their intelligence capabilities. The “reforms” trotted out by local and national Democrats do not alter -- but rather, enhance and make culturally more palatable – the police mission to contain, control and politically neutralize Black America. 

-- Glen Ford, "Don’t Let the Democratic Party Bury the Movement" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).





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