Even if not all cases involved police wrong-doing or racism against African-Americans, it’s nonetheless the case that an arena that cannot be ignored if we are to build solidarity for justice across race, class, gender-identity, and so on is the criminal justice system, in terms of the Drug War, policing in low-income communities, private prisons, prison slave labor, the death penalty, cash bail, and so on.
I’d agree it isn’t all about race, and I’d even say race is used by corporatist Democrats and mainstream liberals to neglect class.
But communities of color are often hurt the worst by corporate and government corruption. Grassroots coalitions are needed to counter the big money control over both major parties at the local, state, federal and global levels.
I can’t see how such solidarity can occur without addressing racism and colonialism. But it should be addressed in ways that develop diverse coalitions.
Presently the issue of race and racism is framed in ways that polarize people and divide and conquer ordinary folk as big corporate money runs both parties as well as much of the media.
To what extent is “Blue Lives Matter” or the blue stripe on a black-and-white striped flag or “All Lives Matter” used in an attempt to counter Black Lives Matter ?
To what extent is a polarized mentality used to manipulate public sentiment regarding so many things, from healthcare and education to housing and policing?
But I don’t fault the mostly young activists who started BLM. They’ve been doing their best to address real problems, though framing them in a polarized media and partisan climate they didn’t create and don’t have much control over.
I hear ya.
Organizing against racist police violence is very important but there has to be a strategy for building coalitions to address the many economic aspects of systemic racism.
Doing that would connect with the issue of how giant multinational corporations run our government, to the detriment of people of all races. Some black get angry at me when I say that. I don’t mean it as making light of racist police violence and harassment of black communities. My point is that a broad, diverse economic justice movement seems to be what’s needed. It’s what MLK started working on. Those before MLK such as Randolph and Dubois emphasized economics. So did Malcolm X.
Randolph and MLK had ties to organized labor. The United Auto Workers helped a lot with MLKs work (though the AFL-CIO didn’t)
I’ve been to a lot of protests and will keep doing so. But it’s often unclear to me what marching and chanting accomplishes.
There has to be a set of demands and a way to pressure officials.
That doesn’t seem to be happening.
At least that’s my view on it.
I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on so as to help.
I’m not judging anyone. What the deputy did to Casey Goodson is a tragedy and a crime.
Correction…sorry about that. There is some things getting done. Some cities are shifting funding from police departments to services for black communities, and there are other changes underway directly involving how police operate.
At any rate, I show up to protests as much as I can. I bought a 3ft x 5ft Black Lives Matter flag to hoist on my van when I heard about Casey Goodson
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