The fact that Obama, and presidents before him, cut back on social funding left the nation ill prepared to meet epidemics. Covid-19 reveals to nearly all but the ideologically blind that the economic system, that is, capitalism, is the culprit that facilitates the rapid spread of this disease without proper resources to curtail it quickly.
With Donald Trump in the White House, it is easier to feel that the power system is hopelessly out of touch with reality, and he vulgarly encourages racism and misogyny more than other presidents.
Today, there is greater awareness in much of the population of the evils of capitalism than in my youth. Sure, then we had many socialist-communist groupings and political parties whose members understood, but that was not true of the majority of protestors as it appears to be today. While the resistance is strong, passionate and clear about the need for system change, it apparently lacks, however, plans to change societal structures, and protest actions are mostly leaderless.
Despite lack of direction, today's fighters for justice are incredibly courageous and persistent. They brave "crowd-control weapons"-flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper bombs and spray, truncheons and clubs. National guardsmen, and even some federal troops briefly, have been sent to "clear the way". Military helicopters fly over protestors violating city and state laws. Surveillance is everywhere. The FBI even accompanies local cops to visit activist homes, hoping to entrap them for "lying to an FBI agent", a federal offense punishable by years of imprisonment.
Nevertheless, cracks in the system are enlarging, and many capitalists and their government officials see that. To prevent a total collapse, some city councils are heeding activists' calls to "defund" the police-shifting some police funds to social needs, even reorganizing police forces, replacing some police with community facilitators. City, state and even federal laws are being written to, at least, placate demands and even make useful reforms. Some cities already ban police chokeholds, no-knock warrants, using military weapons, mandating body-worn cameras, and perhaps ending "qualified immunity" for cops charged with "excessive force".
The probable next president, Joe Biden, even gives lip service of support for some of these reforms and to Black Lives Matter, the major name associated with much of the protests.
Athletes' taking the knee when the national anthem is sung to the flag in protest of police murdering innocent black people, a protest launched by San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, has spread to many sectors of society, also among some police officers, and even abroad.
Because Trump is so irrational, erratic and authoritarian in character, he is not a reliable president even for the ruling class and its generals. That became crystal-clear when, for the first time in US history, leading generals, and two Trump appointed Defense (sic) Secretaries, refused to militarize the nation by sending in their troops to clobber rebels, thus sealing the idiot's political future.
Elizabeth Sutherland Martà nez edited the book, Letters From Mississippi, written by volunteers, in 1965. A new edition was published, in 2002, with an introduction written by Julian Bond. I quote from it to show how it felt for us in the struggle for equality and justice.
"It was a time when nobody stopped to wonder, 'What is the meaning in my life?'"
That expression represents our identity as a human being in fellowship, something, I am sure, hundreds of thousands of activists in the streets of the United States Military Racist Empire feel today-so liberating!
Then
In the 60s-70s, we were many who learned to see the connections between racism, police brutality, and imperialism's wars with military brutality. The US imperialist war of aggression against Vietnam and later also Cambodia and Laos, was vividly horrendous with millions murdered.
It is always African-American soldiers who are sent to die first, and it is they who are the most consciously aware of the connections between slavery/colonialism/racism and imperialism. Wall Street sends its Pentagon militarists to war against people of color, in order to steal their resources, and re-enslave them with neo-colonialism.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X helped link racial equality with anti-war struggles. Black and White marched against racism, police brutality and imperialist wars. That is one of the important reasons why both Malcolm and King were assassinated. King Malcolm in their later years both came to see and articulate the interconnectedness between fighting for justice and peace and in unifying all peoples regardless of color, race, nationality or creed. At that point they became too dangerous to the capitalist-imperialist system, the US Military Racist Empire, and had to be snuffed.
Police brutality and the civil rights movement gave rise to the black power movement. The Black Panther Party (BPP) was among several such groups formed in the mid-to-late 60s. They followed the lead of Alabama's Black Deacons, armed for self-defense. They fed breakfast to black children and taught them to be proud. I supported them through solidarity organizing with whites. I was the full-time organizer of the Committee United for Political Prisoners (CUPP) in Los Angeles. The BPP was on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI's eradication list. Not religious, the Panthers nevertheless looked up to Malcolm X, a Muslim. They, too, had to be wiped out.
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