The Peru Protests and U.S. Infiltration of the Left

Pictured: Supporters of Pedro Castillo, the ousted president of Peru, protest in front of police in downtown Lima on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (Marco Garro/The New York Times)

By Kidus Desta

Peru has made international news in the past few months after thousands of citizens — many being indigenous and traveling from rural regions — began protesting in the capital city of Lima. Their main demand is the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, who stepped into power after former president Pedro Castillo was ousted from office and imprisoned. Castillo’s removal and imprisonment was the result of his attempt to dissolve the right-wing Congress.

Boluarte has said she will not step down until the next election. This sparked controversy since the next election is not until April 2024 and many see Boluarte as an unfit representative who betrayed Castillo, her party, and the Peruvian people. In addition to Boluarte’s resignation, many protesters are demanding Castillo’s release and changes to the nation’s constitution, which they say grants Congress too much power over the executive branch.

This concern is partly why Castillo ran on creating a new constitution as president. But fulfilling that campaign promise would require the formation of a constituent assembly, which Congress blocked. Some protesters therefore see the need to dissolve Congress so that the process of drafting a new foundational document can commence.

Peru’s current constitution was created under the far-right regime of Alberto Fujimori and is deeply informed by his capitalist politics. The constitution, for example, made it harder to tax gold and copper mines. Some hope that a constituent assembly will pave the way for a new constitutional framework that expands the state’s role in the economy and allows for more taxation on mining to fund social programs that indigenous and rural communities need. 

These communities have long felt disenfranchised. Despite comprising 26% of Peru’s population, indigenous Peruvians — the rural voices of the Andes — hold just 6.92% of federal congressional seats. Hailing from the Peruvian countryside, where he formerly worked as a schoolteacher, Castillo understood the grievances of rural and indigenous Peruvians and tried to address them as president. Boluarte and her government have gone in the opposite direction, ignoring calls to convene a constituent assembly by these marginalized groups who desire a constitution that works for them.

The Boluarte administration’s approach to governance has incited widespread outrage, with 71% of Peruvians disapproving of the president’s job performance. This sentiment — along with disapproval of Congress, which sits at 88% — lays at the heart of the current protest wave. In response, the Boluarte regime has used police repression as a means to retain power. This state violence has killed at least 53 people with the youngest being just 15 years old.

Despite the reprehensible actions of their government, the Peruvian people are firmly on the side of the protesters. According to the Institute of Peruvian Studies, 60% believe the protests are justified. An identical number agree with the central demand to free Castillo and a whopping 69% want a constituent assembly. Meanwhile, only 12% believe in keeping the constitution as is — down from 19% in June 2022. 

During the protests, conservative groups have come together to counter-protest. These counter-protests have been met with skepticism because of their initial backing by the national police, who promoted the “March For Peace” on social media and asked people to attend. Attendees included conservative politicians like far-right congressman Alejandro Muñante as well as retired military and police.

Due to the United States’ history of meddling in Latin America, many are questioning whether the superpower has a hand in the recent events in Peru. Peru — after all — has abundant natural resources including minerals like copper, lead, zinc, tin, silver, and gold. Copper has become an especially important resource in recent years due to its use in energy technology, with Goldman Sachs calling it the “new oil.”

Under Castillo’s presidency, the exploitative nature of neoliberalism was challenged by his demand that these resources benefit the people of Peru. Castillo believed that Peru’s resource endowment could help fund social programs that materially improve people’s lives. But efforts to undermine this vision may have been well underway even before Castillo left office. The day before he was ousted, Lisa Kenna — US ambassador to Peru and veteran of the CIA — met with Peru’s defense minister, “who then told the country’s powerful military to turn against Castillo.” On January 18th, Kenna held a meeting with mining and energy ministers from the Boluarte regime to discuss “investments” — a euphemism for expanding the extractive reach of Western multinationals.

In a stunning betrayal of values, Boluarte has gone from leading an anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal party to overseeing a regime which serves imperialist and neoliberal interests. Such a betrayal has precedent in Latin America. In 2016, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil was impeached and replaced by her vice president Michel Temer. Temer's vision of a pro-business economy contradicted Rouseff’s plans to bolster social programs.

During a conference at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, in a speech addressed to “members of multinational corporations and the U.S. foreign policy establishment,” Temer admitted that this impeachment occurred so that he may be installed as president to cut social programs and privatize industry. This squares with Temer’s history as a US informant and aspiring challenger to Lula in Brazil’s 2006 presidential race.

As with Temer, Boluarte’s turn against her own party is primarily an act of opportunism. By siding with the far-right Congress and its imperialist allies, Boluarte has increased the odds of retaining her position of power. This unholy trinity shows how capitalist powers like the United States can undermine leftist movements in the Global South from within.

Kidus Desta is a Hampton Institute intern and undergraduate studying political science and economics at Virginia Commonwealth University.

South Korean Dictator Dies, Western Media Resurrects a Myth

By K. J. Noh

General Chun Doo Hwan was the corrupt military dictator that ruled Korea from 1979-1988, before handing off the presidency to his co-conspirator General Roh Tae Woo.  Chun took power in a coup in 1979, and during his presidency he perpetrated the largest massacre of Korean civilians since the Korean war. He died on November 23rd, in pampered, sybaritic luxury, impenitent and arrogant to the very last breath.  

Many western media outlets have written censorious, chest-beating accounts of his despotic governance and the massacres he perpetrated (here, here, here, and here)-- something they rarely bothered to do when he was actively perpetrating them in broad daylight before their eyes.  Like the light from a distant galaxy--or some strange journalistic time capsule--only after death, decades later, do "human rights violations" in South Korea burst out of radio silence and become newsworthy.

Better late than never, better faint than silent, better partial than absent, one could argue.  Still all of them miss out on key facts, spread lies through omission.  A key dimension of Korean history and politics looks to be buried with his death. A little background history is necessary to elucidate this.

The Sorrows of the Emperor-Dictator

The imperial president, Park Chung Hee

Chun's predecessor and patron, the aging South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, had ruled the country as an absolute totalitarian despot for 18 years, but he knew in his bones that his days were numbered. He had survived two violent assassination attempts, mass civil protests, and even opprobrium from his American puppet masters, despite serving them loyally by sending 320,000 South Korean troops to Vietnam. Even Park's closest advisors were worried about the fragility of his rule.

Park Chung Hee had been a former Japanese military collaborator during Japan’s colonization of Korea. A US-installed puppet Syngman Rhee had smashed socialism in the South through genocide--a method later to be replicated in Indonesia's "Jakarta method".

Park Chung Hee (in Sunglasses) and Cha Ji Chul (right; in camo), 1961 during their coup.

But the puppet-genocidaire Rhee was in turn toppled by student protests in 1960, and the integration of South Korea into a US-led security structure and capitalist order looked precarious due to popular hatred of the US. Into this foment, Brigadier General Park took power in a vicious putsch. Park was a totalitarian fascist groomed within the Japanese military system, where he had conducted counterinsurgency against Korean independence fighters in Manchuria. (One of them, a legendary guerrilla leader called Kim Il Sung, would escape his clutches and become a life-long nemesis). He had then been trained and cultivated by the US during the 1950's, attending military school in the US. When Rhee was deposed, Park rapidly took power, pledging fealty to the US and total war against communists. Having already proven his anticommunist credentials through a massive treachery, betrayal and slaughter, he was welcomed by the Kennedy Administration. This established the Junta’s legitimacy, while maintaining the continuity of US colonial “hub and spoke” architecture in the region.

Park Chung Hee as Japanese Military Officer

Park nominally assumed the presidency through an election but then tightened his regime until he attained the powers of the Japanese Emperor, whom he had worshipped and admired during Japanese rule. He formally rewrote the constitution after the Japanese imperial system, legally giving himself the powers of Showa-era Sun God.  This, along with his dismissal of colonial atrocities to normalize relations with Japan, in obeisance to the US strategic design for the region, resulted in massive civil insurrection against him.  These protests were barely put down with mass bloodshed, torture, disappearances, and terror.  But even among his inner circle, doubts were voiced about his extreme despotic overreach.   

The Insurance Policy: Ruthless and Cunning

From the earliest days of his rule, Park Chung Hee had cultivated high ranking officers to key positions, as loyal retainers in an insurance policy in case a coup happened against him.  A secret military cabal, later to be called "Hanahwe" [also, “Hanahoe”; "the council of one"], a group of officers within the 1955, 11th class of South Korea's Military Academy, had signaled their total fealty to Park during Park's military coup in 1961.  As a result, Hanahwe members were rapidly brought in-house, rewarded with powerful roles within the military government, and formed a deadly, elite Praetorian guard within the labyrinthine power structures of the Park Administration. 

Park Chung Hee with Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963

Two of them were the leaders of this secret-society insurance policy.   One of them, Chun Doo Hwan, would be referred to as the "ruthless one", known for his amoral brutality and utter lack of conscience.  He would later be called "the slaughterhouse butcher".  The other was Roh Tae Woo, Chun's military blood brother, the "cunning one", known for his strategic, tactical, and political cunning.

Power players, left to right: Roh Tae Woo, Chun Doo Hwan, Cha Ji-Chul

Together, “Ruthless and Cunning” would prove their mettle in Vietnam, auditioning as understudies for the US Imperial war machine, and proving their bona fides by operating a rolling atrocity machine, the SK 9th Infantry "White horse" Division, where Chun’s 29th regiment would cut its teeth on brutal massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Psychopathic and Amoral, they would form a two-headed hydra, ensuring Park's rule against enemies within and without.  A third member of Hanahwe, Jeong Ho Yong, would also cut his teeth in the 9th Division in Vietnam, as would the Capital Mechanized "Fierce Tiger" Division, and various Marine and Special warfare brigades.  All would gain recognition and favor with the US military brass in Vietnam, where South Korean troops would eventually outnumber US troops on the ground.  They would also play key roles in future Korean history.  

Sex, Whiskey, and Guns: High Deductibles

Park's insurance policy kicked in when his KCIA chief pumped him full of bullets at a whiskey-sodden orgy gone bad in late autumn of 1979.  Two young women--a nervous college student and a popular singer--had been procured to serve the sexual whims of the president at a luxurious KCIA "safehouse" that had been set up for such routine vernal assignations.  During the pre-coital dinner banquet, with expensive whiskey serving as lubricant, a heated argument arose between the KCIA Chief, Kim Jae Kyu and Chief Presidential Bodyguard, Cha Ji Chol, about how to put down massive civil protests against Park's rule in Pusan and Masan. Cha Ji Chol proposed the "Pol Pot option" arguing that a massacre of 30,000 civilians would subdue civilians and put the genie back in the bottle.  This was accompanied by insults at Kim for not having implemented such "effective" measures.   Kim Jae Kyu, incensed either at the casual brutality or at the blatant criticism, put an abrupt end to the debate by drawing his pistol and shooting Cha and Park. "I shot the heart of the beast of the (Yushin) dictatorship", he would later claim.  Park's insurance policy would rapidly kick in at that point, although the deductible would be his own life.  

Enter the Praetorian Guard: Tigers, Horses, and Dragons

After Park's death, Oct 26th, Lt General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Armed Forces Defense Security Command (DSC)--Park's institutional Praetorian Guard--rapidly took matters in hand.  Chun would rapidly take over, first the investigation of the assassination, then key army positions, and then the government.  Some historians marvel at the rapidity with which Chun consolidated power and how quickly he disciplined loose factions within Park's old guard.  This ignores the rhizomatic base of Hanahwe deep within the executive and in all branches of the military, and the institutional powers baked into the DSC to preserve loyalty and deter subversion and coups. 

Chun, using his statutory powers, and good dose of military firepower, arrested key military leaders for the assassination, and then on Dec 12th, 1979 instigated a coup, supported by Hanahwe comrade Roh Tae Woo, now division commander of the 9th “White Horse” Division. Roh withdrew the elite unit away from its critical position on the DMZ to the Capital, where they were joined by another Vietnam/Hanahwe classmate, general Jeong Ho Yong.  These troops, with another Vietnam-veteran division, the Capitol Mechanized "Tiger" Division, and various special warfare brigades, fought the old guard in the streets before rapidly subduing them. Not long after this class reunion, Chun would declare martial law and appoint himself president with a new constitution and fill all key military ranks with his Hanahwe classmates.

A "Splendid Holiday" turns sour

Mass protests broke out again after Chun’s declaration of Martial Law on May 17th, 1980.  In the city of Gwangju, hundreds of students protested. 

Chun's response was to send a crack division of special warfare troops to smash heads, assault bystanders, and shoot protestors, in an operation named "Splendid Holiday". Beatings, rapes, and mass killings were the order of the day; “blood flowed like rivers in the streets”.

Mass Protest in Gwangju, May 1980

However, in an extraordinary turn of events, stunned protestors, instead of capitulating at the terror, responded by storming police armories and requisitioning weapons, taxis, buses, and improvised explosives, to fight the elite troops to a standstill. Despite the deployment of helicopter gunships and Armored Vehicles, 3000 Special Warfare Paratroopers, along with 18,000 riot troops, found themselves driven out of the city. In this, the liberation of Gwangju stands out as one of the most astonishing feats of civil resistance of the 20th century.

Riot Troops and Paratroopers assault protestors and bystanders in Gwangju

This victory was not to last, however. After the rebels surrendered thousands of arms as a gesture of good faith to seek amnesty, Chun's administration would assault the city with 2 armored divisions and 5 special forces brigades. An untold number of civilians--excess death statistics note 2300 individuals--would be slaughtered, searing Gwangju into the historic annals of atrocity and infamy.

Anti-government protests would go underground, and re-erupt 7 years later, when Chun's presidency, which had been awarded the Olympics found it inconvenient to perpetrate another massacre in front of the international press in the run up to the Olympics.  Chun would accede to protestors' demands for a direct election, the outcome of which conveniently passed the presidency to his Hanahwe second, General Roh Tae Woo.

The missing factor:  Who let the dogs out?  

The above are the basic historical outlines, acknowledged by most journalists and historians.  But what they miss out, is the platform and permissions that circumscribed these historic events.  In particular, two questions arise: Under what authority did Chun initiate his coups? And how did he subdue Gwangju?  The answer leads back to the same place.  

South Korea has never had a policy independent of the US--it has always been a vassal neo-colony. This was demonstrated when the US placed THAAD missiles on Korean soil, ignoring the explicit orders of President Moon Jae-In by coordinating secretly with the South Korean military. Even US Ambassador Donald Gregg, acknowledged openly before Congress that the US-South Korea relationship had historically been a Patron-Client relationship.

This is because the Southern state of Korea, from its inception, was created deliberately by the US after liberation to thwart a popular, indigenous socialist government (the Korean People's Republic) from taking sovereign power over the entire peninsula.

Since its occupation in 1945 by the US military government, South Korea has always been constrained and controlled by the US. Its politics and culture, even where it might be nominally independent, has been thoroughly colonized by the US. For example, in the early 90's, a fractious intra-party conflict broke out between two Cabinet factions of the Liberal Kim Young Sam presidency.  The “irreconcilable” fight was between cliques who had studied political science at UC Berkeley and those who had studied at Yale.  Such were boundaries of South Korean discourse and the overarching nature of US influence.

This state of affairs is most true of the South Korean military, which was cloned from the US military during the US occupation of 1945-1948, and which has been continuously under US control (Opcon) since July14th, 1950. 

A young Chun Doo Hwan at US Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg (1950’s)

Key leaders such as Park, Chun, Roh were trained and indoctrinated into US military practices and culture and had close personal connections with the US military.  Chun, for example, had attended the US Psychological Warfare school and Special Warfare school in Fort Bragg, Ranger school at Fort Benning, and Airborne training at the US Army infantry school before receiving commissions to lead Special Warfare forces.  He then in Vietnam fighting under US MACV command before ascending to key positions in the ROK military.

This dependency is starkest regarding military operational control, which the US still maintains in “wartime” to this day. ROK divisions cannot move or act independently without explicit orders from the top of the military command chain, or unless explicit permission is granted to be released from this operational control. The head of the military command chain at the time of Gwangju was General John A Wickham Jr, the head of the UNC/CFC command.  Wickham would have been subordinate to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

In other words, SK troops do not get to commit massacres on their own.  They need a hall pass from the US to engage in any military maneuvers or actions.  The US military granted them such a hall pass to travel down to Gwangju, knowing that this plan that would likely result in the slaughter of students and citizens.  The released units under the Special Warfare Command, a lethal killing machine, are all divisions with a deep integration with and long history of serving the US.

Chun Doo Hwan with Ronald Reagan, 1981

The US claims that it was utterly in the dark and in no position to refuse the release of Opcon demanded by South Korea: that the Koreans snatched up Opcon, like a bully stealing lunch money, and then went on to commit mass atrocities that the US could only sit by and watch in slack-jawed innocence. These are after-the-fact re-workings of history by creative lawyers ignorant of military realities. Militaries are instituted to have unity of command, and Chun was a US-trained, known actor in a specific chain of command, with close ties to the US brass.  The notion that a partially established coup junta of a client state could simply Swiss-cheese US military command structure and snatch Opcon to commit massacres at will strains credibility.  The absurd official portrayals of the US Military brass as hapless damsels before roguish generals is refuted by official records and smacks of satire or desperation.   

Protestors running from Troops, Gwangju, 1980

In fact, Journalist Tim Shorrock  using the declassified "Cherokee files", has detailed well the discussions that happened at the time of Gwangju: top US officials in the Carter administration 1) knew of the brewing crackdown and 2) greenlighted military action, knowing full well the costs.  According to Shorrock’s meticulous reporting:

[Troops] were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham…That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government….exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980….the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force...

This action was authorized to avoid a second "Iran" debacle, where another US-placed despot had been overthrown by popular revolt to US consternation, humiliation, and loss.  Not only did the US greenlight the massacre by US-familiar Vietnam-veteran divisions, the US deployed the USS Coral Sea to support the flank of Chun's military during the retaking of the city and heightened surveillance support with AWACS. In other words, the Gwangju massacre was a US-enabled-and-supported operation, done with explicit US knowledge and coordination.

Pentagon lawyers have argued that they had previously "released opcon" to the Korean military, so that these massacres were not done under direct US control. That is a distinction without a difference, akin to a pit bull owner saying that they took their beast off the leash, and therefore are not responsible for the deadly consequences.  The ROK military was a US-trained-and-coordinated combatant force; some units involved had served directly under the US I Corps in Vietnam only years prior to Gwangju.  The very fact that the US released opcon, knowing full well their capacities, military histories, and what was on the cards, makes the whole argument a poor exercise in plausible deniability.  No one who has the smallest understanding of how armies work would fall for "the pit bull ate my homework" excuse.   

The US has also argued that the Special Warfare division was exempt from opcon at the time.  This, too, is a legal fiction--Special Warfare Troops, of all ROK troops, are the most tightly integrated and bound to US command, where they have a long history of training, coordinating, and working with and as proxies for the US military. (The US maintains this pretense because SWF are designed to infiltrate into NK, where the necessity to avoid US command responsibility requires a legal fiction of "independence").

The same could also apply for Chun's coups as well.  The Dec 12th coup involved the movement of the Vietnam-veteran 9th division, far away from its position guarding the DMZ to attack the incumbent government, along with maneuvers of the Capital Mechanized Division and Special warfare troops.  The May 20th coup also involved large troop maneuvers to threaten and dissolve the Korean parliament.  South Korea is a small, crowded peninsula, bristling with arms and military bases on hair trigger alert, surveilling and monitoring every inch of its territory for military movement.  To assert that the US command was aware of the coups is not conspiracy that presumes US omniscience.  It's simply assuming clear signaling on a crowded dance floor to avoid inadvertent collisions.  It's inconceivable that such a massive troop maneuver would not have been signaled up the chain at minimum to avoid a friendly fire incident.  

Return OPCON, Restore Peace

So where do these facts leave us? 

As the media stir up the flies around Chun's sordid past, they also seek to bury with his body the fact that South Korea's military is an appendage of the US military, and that its warts, chancres, and tumors are grown from within the US body politic. Exorbitant atrocities such as the Bodo League Massacres, or the Gwangju Massacre, accrue to the secret debit account of the US imperial ledger, where human rights violations vanish off the books, and where moral debt and karmic interest are never calculated or reconciled.  

Despite a confusing, bifurcated organizational structure (Independent command control vs. Subordinated operational control; Peacetime Opcon vs. Wartime Opcon), the bare political fact is that South Korea's military falls effectively under US control, not simply in “wartime”, but whenever it is politically expedient or strategically necessary. This card was obvious when the ROK military simply defied Moon’s moratorium on THAAD missile installation and took its orders from the US, not even bothering to notify the Korean president that the missiles had been delivered in-country.  Subsequent investigation revealed that the South Korean military claimed a confidentiality agreement with the US military as the reason to hide the information from South Korea’s own commander-in-chief.  

Not only does the ROK military translate the will of the US in domestic actions--including coups and massacres, but it has also functioned as a brutal sidekick for US aggressions abroad, and serves as a strategic force projection platform and force multiplier for US containment against China. Unlike any other "sovereign" state in the world, South Korea's 3.7 million troops and materiel all fall under US operational control the instant that the US decides that they want to use them.

This is despite the fact that since the inception of its civilian government in 1993, SK has sued the US for the return of Opcon.  This request is now going into its third decade; the US has simply stalled, moved goal posts, changed definitions and conditions, and stonewalled to this date.

This debate around Opcon is important in the current historical moment as the US is escalating to war with China. Any de-escalation with North Korea will require the declaration of peace, predicated on the return of sovereign opcon to South Korea.  However, the US will not seek to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, because if that happens, South Korea is likely to confederate in some manner with North Korea, join China's Belt and Road Initiative and then become integrated as an ally of China.  This would cripple the US security architecture in the Northeast Pacific.  This renders any peace with North Korea antithetical to US strategic interests. 

Secondly, the US escalation for War with China requires the capacity to access and threaten the Chinese continent across a series of leverage points. Inescapably, South Korea will be a key theater of battle, because of its geostrategic position as a bridgehead onto China.  Also, the temptation to leverage a force of 6.7 million South Koreans (3.7 M troops +3 M paramilitary) as cannon fodder for war against China is simply too irresistible to pass on.  In light of this, Korea expert Tim Beal argues that in this moment of heightened tension with China, the most dangerous place in the Pacific is not the South China Sea or the East China Sea, but on the Korean Peninsula.  

We will see this conflict heighten as South Korea enters into a new presidential election cycle between a US-favored conservative candidate, and a China-sympathetic progressive candidate.  

Nevertheless, South Korea’s history offers a stark and ominous lesson, one that the MSM would prefer you ignore: a battle is brewing, with very high stakes.  Under pressure, the US has taken brutal actions to maintain control and hegemony. It may do so again.  

Chun’s passing is being taken as an opportunity to distribute soporific drafts of historical amnesia--the better to sleepwalk into war or tragedy, again. 

People with a conscience should not let this misdirection pass.  To close one’s eyes to history is to enable future atrocities and war.   Only with eyes wide open does the public have a chance of staving off this coming war. 

K.J. Noh, is a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.   He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online.  He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News, Flashpoints. He believes a functioning society requires good information; to that end, he strives to combat the weaponization of disinformation in the current cold war climate.

Challenging Neoliberal Complacency: The Future of Leftist Organizing

By Mahnoor Imran

Republished from Michigan Specter.

The lesser evil has prevailed. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have defeated the demagogic megalomaniac in the White House otherwise known as Donald Trump. However, in the middle of a mismanaged pandemic that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, nationwide protests against the epidemic of police brutality, and the looming threat of climate change, Biden’s insipid promise of returning to some semblance of normalcy feels uninspiring. A return to the pre-Trump status quo will not actively transform the material conditions of the working class, and a massive shift in the political paradigm is desperately needed.

Although their win has prompted celebration, there is something to be said about the failure of establishment Democrats to provide compelling narratives that take on Wall Street, insurance companies, and the fossil fuel industry. Though progressives and leftists are frequently vilified for expressing concerns about the incoming Biden-Harris administration, both Biden and Harris have problematic records that warrant criticism about their vision for the future.

Last year, Biden assured his wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected, once more reminding us that elite centrists will always prioritize the interests of the ruling class. Despite having an atrocious record of racist tough-on-crime policies, Biden operated his campaign under the assumption that people of color were obligated to vote for him simply because he was not Trump. In addition to these things, many resistance liberals have conveniently forgotten about him leading support for the Iraq War, the Obama-Biden administration carrying out mass deportations that ripped families apart, his inappropriate displays of unwanted affection toward women, and credible sexual assault allegations against him. As Attorney General of California, Harris fought hard to keep the wrongfully convicted in prison, withheld evidence that would have freed incarcerated people, criminalized and imprisoned parents because their children were truant, and received criticism from the transgender community for denying gender-affirming healthcare and banning forums that sex workers use to protect themselves.

In the next four years, the Biden-Harris administration will continue to champion neoliberal governance and imperialist interests. Their transition team is filled with wealthy corporate executives and lobbyists from companies like Uber and Amazon who are entirely disconnected from the struggles of the working class. The team also comprises Obama administration alumni like Cecilia Muñoz, President Obama’s top immigration advisor who continually justified harsh immigration enforcement policies and rationalized the separation of parents from their children.

Though centrism may have won at the top of the ticket, it proved to be electorally shaky. In fact, many moderates lost their seats or came dangerously close to losing their seats. Although Democrats tried to blame the Left for their own shortcomings, progressive organizers, many of whom were people of color, were the ones who helped secure Biden’s win in swing states. Black communities, indigenous communities, and Hispanic communities did the heavy lifting for a democracy that never worked in their favor. Representative Rashida Tlaib, who represents one of the most impoverished districts in the country, recently told Politico that “If [voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don’t have anything else, they deserve to be heard.” Instead of paying lip service to social issues and defaulting to vague bromides about unity, the incoming Biden administration owes these communities more than just a nod of thanks. They deserve a bold vision for the future of America.

The reality is that our nation’s current modality of political and economic operation is committed to half-hearted incrementalism and assumes that anything other than that is impossible. This concession to pragmatism inhibits real progress. The pursuance of middle-ground politics paves the way for excessive globalization at the expense of developing countries, corporate tax breaks paid for through austerity, and rhetoric about civility at the expense of communities of color.

Neoliberalism is degenerative. It allows for oligarchs to dictate our political agenda and influence our political process. It launches wars based on lies and makes billions in profits by selling arms to repressive regimes. It tries to convince us that the levers of the capitalist market are capable of producing equity and sustainability. It fuels a for-profit healthcare system that burdens people with thousands of dollars in medical debt. It maintains an egregious carceral system that disproportionately harms and kills black, indigenous, Hispanic, immigrant, mentally ill, and disabled communities. It deceives us into believing that individual hard work is the key to amassing wealth and achieving the American Dream. It generates cult-like infatuations with billionaires who would be nothing without government subsidies and the workers whom they underpay and exploit.

When governments abandon their obligation to transform socioeconomic outcomes for the better, political efficacy diminishes. This points to the inextricable link between neoliberalism and the triumph of Trumpism. In four years, we may have hard-right candidates try to take the presidency again. In that terrifying prospect, the pullback might be stronger than the push forward. The only way to prevent this is for the Democratic Party to muster the moral and political courage to get behind popular movements and policies like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and defunding the police.

Unfortunately, both Biden and Harris have spent a considerable amount of energy contemptuously distancing themselves from progressivism and denouncing socialism. Although the word “socialist” is used pejoratively by Republicans to lambaste any Democrat with a pulse, the more that Democrats try to distance themselves from progressivism and socialism as if they were inherently bad, the more it legitimizes GOP framing.

Instead of waiting out an interregnum in our political history, we must continue to fight for progressive policies that are actually popular among rural, urban, and suburban voters. The future for leftist organizing and movement building is far from bleak. In fact, 67% of Americans support increasing the minimum wage to $15, 69% support Medicare for All, and 63% support free public college.

Furthermore, 26 out of 30 of the Democratic Socialists of America’s nationally endorsed candidates won their races. All four members of “The Squad” — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Presley, and Ilhan Omar — have won their reelections and will be joined by progressive insurgents Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. Every single swing-seat House Democrat who endorsed Medicare for All won their race and 99% of Green New Deal co-sponsors won their races in this cycle.

Although Biden’s win has undoubtedly exacerbated neoliberal complacency, this is a critical moment to push for an unapologetic agenda that promotes justice, challenges structural racism, combats climate change, increases political accountability, dismantles institutions of oppression, and radically redistributes wealth. We can continue to organize by supporting indigenous sovereignty, fighting for police and prison abolition, developing ecosocialist frameworks for promoting environmental justice, and creating mutual aid networks. When we build community power and cultivate solidarity, we can rise above the forces of oppression, marginalization, and vituperation that threaten to destroy us. The horizon of a liberated future is within our line of sight. We just have to keep moving forward and pushing left.

What Kind of Message Does the Biden/Harris Campaign Send to the Black Lives Matter Movement?

By Matthew Dolezal

On August 11, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he had chosen former presidential candidate and California senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate. In a campaign email, Biden proclaimed that Harris “is the best person to help me take this fight to Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation starting in January 2021.” In an overview of the news, CNN highlighted Harris’s “multi-racial background”, indicating that the Biden campaign’s decision may have partially stemmed from a desire to embrace the reinvigorated movement for racial justice in these tumultuous times.

Following the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, the nation erupted in protest, demanding justice and accountability. These massive, ongoing, nationwide uprisings are primarily a manifestation of the renewed Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As American police departments responded by doubling down on their flagrant brutality, the movement coalesced around efforts to “defund the police.” This was encapsulated in a July 6 post on the official BLM website:

“We know that police don’t keep us safe — and as long as we continue to pump money into our corrupt criminal justice system at the expense of housing, health, and education investments — we will never be truly safe. That’s why we are calling to #DefundPolice and #InvestInCommunities…”

On the surface, Biden’s VP pick may appear to be an olive branch to the BLM movement, as Harris’s identity as a black woman has been given significant attention. This is certainly a noteworthy development in the 2020 election season, as Harris is the first woman of color to run as VP on a major party presidential ticket (though others, such as Angela Davis, have run as third party VP candidates). Despite the historic nature of this news, we must also observe Harris’s troubling decade-long record as a prosecutor in the state of California, a topic that law professor Lara Bazelon summarized in a New York Times op-ed. For instance, during her tenure as San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions” and “championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.”

When Harris later became California’s attorney general, she fought to continue the death penalty, opposed investigating police shootings, opposed statewide standards for regulating police body cameras, and remained neutral on an initiative that was approved by voters in which certain low-level felonies would be reduced to misdemeanors. When asked by a reporter if she supported marijuana legalization, Harris laughed (marijuana prohibition is a major focus of the disastrous and racist War on Drugs). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, as Briahna Joy Gray observed last year, we should also zoom out from the troubling aspects of Harris’s record specifically and contemplate her decision to become a prosecutor in the first place.

Regardless of the extent to which Harris’s policies disproportionately harmed people of color and other marginalized populations, her record pales in comparison to that of her running mate. As a young Delaware senator, Joseph R. Biden supported racial segregation efforts in public schools, particularly in the area of busing. Janell Ross summarized this history last year by writing, “[Biden’s] legislative work against school integration advanced a more palatable version of the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine and undermined the nation’s short-lived effort at educational equality, legislative and education history experts say.” Biden went on to become a primary architect of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (often referred to as the “crime bill”), which resulted in what we now call “mass incarceration” — a devastating phenomenon that has had a vastly disproportionate impact on minority communities.

In conjunction with the Reagan-era “tough on crime” mentality, Biden participated in the demonization of the black community through rhetoric that included the infamous term “predator” — a dehumanizing and racist dog whistle. Unfortunately, that was the least of his racist comments; he once said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a “racial jungle”, later referred to Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean”, and — strangely enough — eulogized the infamous racist Strom Thurmond.

Possibly in an effort to draw attention away from this disturbing record, Biden began lying extensively about his involvement in the civil rights movement (in short, he was never involved). To further exhibit his profound disrespect for the black community, Biden recently responded to questions from black radio host Charlamagne by saying, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

In the era of the New Jim Crow, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both spent their careers playing the role of the oppressor. The Biden/Harris 2020 ticket proves that the Democratic Party is more interested in engaging in performative identity politics to entrench its corporate-backed power than engaging with the material needs of the American people, especially the most oppressed populations. Joe Biden’s disturbing record on race and mass incarceration was already a turnoff to many progressive voters and Black Lives Matter activists. It appears that the Biden campaign sought to patch up those concerns with a quick fix, a damage-control effort not unlike its appeal to women in the wake of renewed sexual misconduct scrutiny.

This isn’t to say Kamala Harris hasn’t made tremendous accomplishments. Systemic racism and sexism are indeed harsh realities, and women of color truly do face infinitely more barriers to success than individuals from more privileged demographics. But if we place significance on Harris’s identity as a woman of color, as we should, it must be even more important to take notice of the identities of those she harmed during her tenure as a prosecutor. After all, in the realm of systemic racism and mass incarceration, prosecutors play a central role in the draconian implementation of state power.

On the ground, this state power is enforced by the police, who have recently come under unprecedented levels of scrutiny. The institution of American policing initially arose from southern “slave patrols” and has subsequently maintained its inextricable link to white supremacy. We are now experiencing historic political momentum as the American people have flooded the streets to demand racial justice and an end to the domestic terrorism of police violence.

The Democratic Party has responded with a stubborn commitment to the status quo. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both been intimately complicit in systemic racism, mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and violent state power more broadly. Given the backgrounds of its candidates, the Democratic Party’s plea for Americans to “vote blue” in November takes on a darker meaning, symbolizing whose lives really matter in the eyes of our callous political establishment.

Anti-Black Police Terrorism

By Ameer Hasan Loggins

Republished from the author’s blog.

An email was leaked the other day. In it, the sender praised the police, and wrote that people protesting in honor of George Floyd were involved in a “terrorist movement.” I repeat, the writer wrote that the protesters were involved in a terrorist movement. The person responsible was the president of the Minneapolis Federation of Police — Lieutenant Bob Kroll. The same Kroll who was accused by four Black officers of openly wearing a “White Power badge” on his motorcycle jacket.

For eight minutes and 46 seconds we watched. For eight minutes and 46 fucking seconds we were forced to fix our eyes on George Floyd’s face buried into the asphalt, gasping for air, crying out for his deceased mother’s help — but no help came. We watched a dying man scream, “Tell my kids I love them,” to whomever was willing to listen. We watched Floyd bawl, “Please let me stand,” while two policemen pinned his handcuffed body to the ground. We watched as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck until he could no longer cry out, “I can’t breathe.”

For eight minutes and 46 seconds…

We watched an act of terror.

We watched a man being terrorized.

We watched four officers, on camera, for eight minutes and 46 seconds, commit an anti-Black

act of domestic police-terrorism.

I was not an eyewitness, but I know what I witnessed.

What I saw, with my water-filled eyes, was not a case of mere excessive force. Nor was it simply an act of police brutality. There was something so much more precious than Floyd’s civil rights being violated. That language did not fit what I watched for eight minutes and 46 seconds. There was something morbidly perverse about how unbothered Officer Derek Chauvin was as he took Floyd’s life. There was no struggle. No sense of danger. Chauvin appeared to be at peace with his decision to lynch George Floyd.

I am calling the lynching of George Floyd an anti-Black act of domestic police-terrorism because that is what I witnessed. And I am doing so by employing the framing provided by the government of the land of the (un)free, home of the enslaved to make such a proclamation.

Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act defines domestic terrorism as an act that occurs primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. It is an act that is dangerous to human life, that is intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the government, by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. The FBI adds that acts of domestic terrorism are, “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”

Minneapolis is within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

George Floyd is a human being that had his life violently taken away. The four men who nonchalantly terrorized Floyd, are a part of a larger group of state-sponsored law enforcers. Law enforcers who throughout America have historically and contemporarily racially profiled and targeted Black civilian populations.

Some Americans have the birthright to view the police as protectors and peacekeepers. Some fully embrace the plethora of programs painting law enforcement as heroes, heroines, and damn near deities. I am not from that America. I am from the Othered side of America. Coming from where I’m from, the police protectors of the people is a fallacy. But it is a fallacy I am familiar with. It is a fallacy that is persistently pumped into the brains of Othered-American imaginations through copaganda. Film franchises like Beverly Hills Cop, Rush Hour, Big Momma’s House, and Bad Boys all are pro-police programing. But those movies do not mirror the real-life horror films being captured on cellphones and shared through social media. We are watching Black civilians being put to death in public execution videos. And the executioners are the police.

I repeat…

For eight minutes and 46 seconds, we watched four officers, on camera, commit an anti-Black act of domestic police-terrorism.

It may come as a shock to some that I am calling the police terrorists, and their anti-Black actions acts of domestic terrorism. I am diagnosing what the police do to Black folks acts of terror because it is the truth.

I am calling it police-terrorism because I need you to come to

a

complete

stop.

I need you to critically reflect and decolonize the context in which you engage with the term terrorism within itself. It reminds me of Malcolm X asking a room packed full of Black folks, one of the most crucial questions I have ever heard. The question Brother Malcolm asked was, “Who taught you [Black people] to hate yourself?” With that question in mind, I would ask, who taught you what terrorism can be imagined as being? Who taught you which individuals and groups gets the dishonor of being labeled as a terrorist? Former White House Task Force Deputy Director on Terrorism in the Reagan administration, Edward Peck said that terrorism and terrorist are, “in the eye of the beholder.”

I am looking at police-terrorism through the eyes of a Black man.

I am looking at the police the long memory of the Black experience in America.

I am looking at policing through the Black gaze.

Policing units and individuals have terrorized Black people in the United States as far back as the slave patrols and night watches, and continue to the present. When bell hooks said, “Black folks have, from slavery on, shared in conversation with one another a ‘special’ knowledge of whiteness gleaned from close scrutiny of white people,” some of that special knowledge was, and still is, dedicated to surviving encounters with the police. That special knowledge is passed down from the elders to the young folks when they reach a certain point in physical maturity. My elders called it, “lookin’ grown.” It was an acknowledgement that I clearly was not an adult, but in the eyes of all (citizens and law enforcement) invested in policing my Black boy body, I looked older. I looked less innocent. I looked criminal.

I looked killable in the eyes of those policing me.

Black parents are forced to pass down special knowledge with their children about how to hide in the shadows and the shade to avoid the adultifying policing gaze. What routes to take coming home. What clothes to wear. What tone to speak in. How to reach for your wallet. It’s all a part of the talk to try and teach your child how to survive the unfortunate potentiality of being terrorized by the police.

The predictability of police terrorism took the lives of Oscar Grant, Aiyana Jones, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Kathryn Johnston, Kayla Moore, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and countless others. The randomness of these people reminds the broader Black community that as long as you are Black and breathing, the police are willing to steal your last breath.

While the public debate has largely focused on the appalling injustice of state-sponsored terror against individual Black folks, an additional, overlooked injustice is taking place. It is the collective consequence of seeing individuals that look like you, or someone that you love lying defenseless and dead in the streets. It is when an individual being terrorized is converted into communal terror. Police-terrorism spreads acute fear, among the whole Black community. The people who are wronged are not only those who are killed, but also their Black neighbors who witness the terror through their windows. The Black bystander filming Black death on their cellphones. The Black families who bury their breathless bodies afterwards. They feel a justifiable fear or terror of the police.

This fear is not incidental, but intentional.

From the Black gaze, the police conduct themselves as a state sponsored group of, “racially motivated violent extremists,” that target the Black community, which according to the FBI, makes them a “national threat priority.” But American history has shown that protecting Black bodies from the threat of domestic terrorism is not a priority.

Reminder…It is 2020 and lynching is still not a federal hate crime in America.

Reminder…It is 2020 and the Ku Klux Klan are not classified as a terrorist organization in America.

This is America.

And in America, the police are permitted to treat Black people with, what James Baldwin would call, a special disfavor, because of the color of our skin. It is in this special disfavor that we can have our doors kicked in by the police, and be shot to death in our sleep. It is this special disfavor that can lead to the police shooting us in the back, as we run with the same feet as our enslaved ancestors fleeing from Slave Patrolmen. It is this special disfavor that can lead to the police gunning our children down in less than two seconds, while they’re playing outside. It is this special disfavor that made a policeman rape 13 Black women, and that same special disfavor made those Black women believe that no one would believe them. It is this same special disfavor that renders the souls of Black folks breathless, while we are still physically alive. It is this special disfavor that made the world stop for eight minutes and 46 seconds to witness an act of anti-Black domestic police terrorism.

Dear Black America, Don't Let Them Fool You: We Cannot Vote Ourselves Out Of This Problem

By Christian Gines

Voting is not the way to solve anything for black people, oppressed people. First, reform does not work in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Every issue we hear talked about on the news, "this [issue] disproportionately affects people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, etc." This statement shouldn't be that mind-boggling. This system isn't made to benefit us in the first place, so why would a change in that system work in the first place. When a car breaks down, you put in new parts. If you continue to put new parts in a car, it will eventually break down. That is all these reformist polices are doing. If you're not abolishing the system, then you're just allowing the car to keep on going with new parts that will enable the car to run on fumes until it breaks down. Calls to abolish and defund the police are already being coopted into reformist policies to appease the ruling class. It shouldn't be that radical to call for an abolishment of a system that kills over 1,000 people a year despite being "reformed."

Second, voting is to subdue the masses to choosing between two evils and allowing them to decide what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in the realm of discussion. As Noam Chomsky eloquently put it, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that they have free thought, but the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." As a people, we have been taught and sold that voting is the only way to make a change in society. From talking to my parents, family members, and community members doing the peak of the 2020 Democratic primary, and now they are sold on voting as our only means of creating change. Saying we have to make the change within the system. Their stance on voting has been fed to them for so long that they will fight you to the grave on this, but it is so ahistorical that we need to disprove it today. Our ancestors didn't have the right to vote, and they achieved the abolition of slavery, end of segregation, right to citizenship, right to work, right to own property, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the removal of Jim Crow Legislation, the right to vote.

When you look at any change that has happened within the The US, the change has come from outside the system, not within. As James Connolly Said, "Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class." When we vote, we are voting for whoever the ruling class has told us to vote for. Whether through endless spending with SuperPAC's or "black faces in high places," telling us who to vote for, we have no say in Democracy. As Malcolm X said, "Democracy is Hypocrisy." Voting is the way that the empire can keep us under control and keep themselves in power. The Black Panther Party couldn't vote, yet they had a Free Food, Free Housing, Free Medical Care, Free Busing, Free Clothes, and 50 other programs that we hear white liberals advocate for today. They were doing that within their community, and that's why Herbert Hoover fought to get rid of them. The BPP's initial government surveillance started because of their Free Breakfast Program. The settlers have taught us that's their way of governance is the best way, and we have fallen for that. We believe that we, the masses, and oppressed people can vote and change the system that was set up with the thought that either we weren't citizens, we weren't humans, or that we were too dumb, so there should be a safeguard.

The ruling class had a chance to maybe postpone a revolution in our lifetime with the compromise candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Sanders, running on a political revolution, had a tremendous amount of support from young people in general, but especially young black people. With his calls for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and other social democratic policies, they had a chance to satisfy the short term wants of most Americans. They had an opportunity to assuage the masses for a while, as they did with FDR's candidacy. The ruling class, though, was so caught up with their money and profits that they failed to see that Bernie Sanders was offering them. They were so scared that he would tax them that they colluded against him as they did in 2016 to ensure that their establishment candidate won. Now we are stuck choosing between the lesser of two evils again. We have one person who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, an architect of mass incarceration (who refuses to apologize for it), and full of blunders. On the other hand, we have Donald Trump. I remember when people were saying that they will vote for Joe Biden over Trump because at least we can push him left. Now, this isn't an essay on whether you should vote or not, but I will say that we have had weeks of protest worldwide, and Joe Biden has not even inched to the left. He doesn't support abolishing or defunding the police department. Even Bernie Sanders said that he doesn't support defunding the police and says that they need more funding. This was the candidate who claimed that he was for the people, and he doesn't even support our demands. The Democratic Party has sold out black people for so long that it shouldn't be controversial not to support them, but we continuously have for decades. 

The façade that we can vote our problems away is one that we cannot fall victim to today. We have tried that time and time again, and what happens? The politicians run on something, go in there and don't do anything for our community. Black and white politicians alike have sold us out time and time again. To get real change, we must stay in the streets. As you see in Minneapolis, with protesting, burning, rioting, and looting, the change will come. If you support non-violent or violent protest is your prerogative. If you support the liberation of the black community and think that we must vote to get Trump out of office, that is your choice. But one thing is for sure. We cannot vote ourselves out of this situation because if we think that is the way to solve our problems, we will end up in the same place we started.

Christian Gines is a published student writer, poet, and activist whose writings discuss race within the black community and its effect on black youth.

Understanding the Role of Police Towards Abolitionism: On Black Death as an American Necessity, Abolition, Non-Violence, and Whiteness

{Photo credit: Ashley Landis/AP}

By Joshua Briond

In Blood In My Eye, the late great George Jackson writes: “the purpose of the chief repressive institutions within the totalitarian capitalist state is clearly to discourage and prohibit certain activity, and the prohibitions are aimed at very distinctly defined sectors of the class—and race— sensitized society. The ultimate expression of law is not order—it’s prison. There are hundreds upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace. Anglo-Saxon bourgeois law is tied firmly into economics[...]Bourgeois law protects property relations and not social relationships.”  And while thousands across the country take to the streets to protest state violence, in the aftermath of the public lynching of George Floyd, we have been seeing the structural reality the likes of George Jackson (amongst other Black political prisoners and revolutionaries) brilliantly and elegantly theorized on and experienced, once again holds true. 

In this moment, it is crucial to understand the role of the police at their core, as merely a hyper-militarized bottom of the barrel armed force of the ruling class. Our ruling class owned media tries to portray both state and federal level police as neutral actors enforcing public safety—when in fact their role has always served to disrupt (radical) political activity by any means necessary. The past few days have sprung speculation regarding the police and media conspiring and exporting counterinsurgency—which is clearly happening. But what if, instead, we saw policing under white supremacist capitalism as inherently and in a constant state of counterinsurgency—because such an act is how empire sustains itself—especially if we know that, historically, police have surveilled, repressed and infiltrated individuals, organizations, and political parties that they have deemed ideological enemies because their interests represent a legitimate threat to the capitalist white supremacist status quo. 

“Power responds to all threats. The response is repression. If the threat is a small one, the fascist tactic is to laugh it off, ignore it, isolate it with greater the corresponding violence from power. The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal lifestyle of as many members of the society as possible[...] Nothing can bend consciousness more effectively than a false arrest, a no-knock invasion, careless, panic-stricken gunfire.”

—George Jackson (Blood In My Eye)

The issue is not simply “police brutality.” But, the mere existence and functionality of the inherently anti-black, subservient to capital institution of polic[e/ing]. “Police brutality” like many liberalized frameworks, individualizes structural oppression and power. Such framing leaves space for reformism, as if there’s only certain aspects of policing that needs to be readdressed. It’s an undeniable fact that technically “not all cops kill” but instead of moral posturing, we can focus on the political and ideological functioning of policing in service of whiteness, capital(ism), and settler-colonialism, as being in direct contradiction of the lives and well-being of racialized, colonized, and working-class people. Focusing the problem on the mere existence of polic[e/ing], as an institutionalized direct descendant of chattel slavery previously branded ‘slave patrolling,’ we’re able to discuss the inherent (racialized & class-based) violences within the institution at-large. And it allows us to reckon with the entire institution instead of individual actors, their political or moral standing, as well as individualized notions of “justice” in the face of terror, violence, and death at the hands of the police. “Justice” under this racial capitalism, is an impossibility—an ideological liberal mystification. The scarcity in the realm of political imagination that [neo]liberalism champions leads to a reality in which many people’s analysis and understanding of “justice” is merely individualized imprisonment and tepid-at-best liberal reforms. Advancing our collective understanding beyond the individual “bad” or killer cop toward an understanding of structural violence, is crucial to building an abolitionist politic grounded in empathy and community.

We have been bombarded with dozens of videos and photos of cops kneeling, crying, giving impassioned speeches, and public displays of some of the most shallowest forms of performative solidarity—an age-old tactic wielded to “humanize” officers and neutralize the perceived threat in the protesters, while also attempting to control the media narrative —only for these same cops to turn around and within minutes unleash terror on the self-proclaimed “peaceful” protesters as they chant and march in-advocacy for the ending of Black terror and death at the hands of the police. If the mere pleading for the ruling class and its on-the-ground agents to stop massacring Black people with impunity is enough of a crime to be met with chemical warfare, “rubber” bullets, harassment, beatings, and mass imprisonment—what does that say about the functionality of these institutions? 

When we see agents of the ruling class in militarized “riot” gear, oftentimes comment sections filled with disapproval, American liberals claiming “they look like they’re in war,” and viral tweets from imperialist veterans not-so-subtly declaring that type of militancy should be preserved for Black and brown people and countries abroad—and not home. We must counter these liberal narratives by highlighting that there is no significant political, ideological, or moral difference between domestic police and the military. Both serve the same class and ideological apparatus and represent an occupying force wherever they’re stationed. The military predominantly operates as the global police of the world, or as George Jackson would call it the “international wing of repressive institutions.” But, when the domestic police are overwhelmed, they call in their big brother (US military) to help fight their battle—hand-and-hand as enemies of the people—in a mission to terrorize and politically repress racialized, colonized, and working class people. So when Trump says “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and grants the military immunity to terrorize and shoot protesters that is nothing more than the head of empire simply carrying on the legacy of terrorists-in-chief before him, reaffirming the purpose of the mere existence of the military, as fascist enforcers of capitalist, colonial, and imperialist violence and their right to do what they already do to colonized and oppressed people in third world and global south countries. 

We must realize that we mustn’t give cops, in all forms, the benefit of the doubt or go out of our way to plead to their conscience—in which most, if not all of them lack—because their articulation of the situation at hand, as evidenced by their preparedness and tactics, is that of war. And in all of its possibly well-meaning glory, going into battle with the mindset of pleading to their (lack of) conscience or going out of your way to prove you’re one of the “good” and “peaceful” protesters—through chants and other means—won’t stop the terror of chemical warfare that will transpire when the political performance ends. The police are uncompromising in their belief in the current oppressive social order, they have legally, morally, and politically pledged their lives to it, and we must be uncompromising in our fight towards tearing it down and building anew. There’s a reason cops show up to even the most “peaceful” of protests with militarized riot gear prepared at any moment to immobilize activists, organizers, and journalists while conspiring with the media apparatus to demonize protests and all of its participants.

 “The political act is defined as criminal in order to discredit radical and revolutionary movements. A political event is reduced to a criminal event in order to affirm the absolute invulnerability of the existing order.”

 —Angela Davis (If They Come in the Morning)

The nearly non-materially existing dichotomy between “good protester” and “bad protester” or “non-violent” and “violent” are not only useless identifiers, but an unfortunate fundamental misunderstanding of the structural powers that be, at-large. The ideology of Black liberation is inherently violent to the forces of capital and white supremacy. We must move beyond the media fueled tropes rooted in colonial moral posturing, that serves no one but our ruling elites. History has shown us, it does not matter whether or not you’re a “good protester” or “bad protester,” “non-violent” or “violent,” and/or “innocent” or “guilty.” If you are for liberation for Black people, you are a threat to the interests of capitalism and white supremacy, and must be systemically repressed, by any means. To fight for the liberation of Black people, especially but not limited to the skin that has historically marked criminality, makes you an enemy of said nation who’s global economy is predicated on the terror and death of the colonial, namely Black, subject. Liberation, and the pursuit of it becomes a racialized affair under a system of colonial and imperialist domination in-which whiteness—a system of racial othering—is exclusively depicted as proximity to power and capital, which Black and other subjects of said domination have neither. It is crucial for the sustainment of this moment that we, first of all, not allow media political discourse to divide and conquer the wide variety of effective tactics that have been wielded by activists and organizers since the beginning of time; while also collectively understand the functionality of police and prisons as they are: inherently anti-Black politicized tools of the ruling elite to maintain their hegemony.

“The legal apparatus designates the Black liberation fighter a criminal, prompting Nixon, Agnew, Reagan et al. to proceed to mystify with their demagogy millions of Americans whose senses have been dulled and whose critical powers have been eroded by the continual onslaught of racist ideology. As the Black Liberation Movement and other progressive struggles increase in magnitude and intensity, the judicial system and its extension, the penal system, consequently become key weapons in the state’s fight to preserve the existing conditions of class domination, therefore racism, poverty and war.”

—Angela Davis (If They Come in the Morning)

Our understanding of non-violence should be that of an organized and meticulous tactical approach exercised by the oppressed, as opposed to a moral philosophy, endorsed and preferred by the ruling class and its agents. We never hear the ruling class, advocate for non-violence with their singular approach when they are hegemonizing and tyrannizing oppressed peoples across the globe, while being cheered on and thanked by many of its citizens. Non-violence, as a moral philosophy, in a society where violence against the marginalized is the norm—where millions are incarcerated, houseless, subjected to state sanctioned violence, and live in poverty—is, in and of itself just another form of colonial physical and ideological subjugation and therefore, violence. But, so much of non-violence is predicated on the premise of legality—despite its social and political limitations. Laws are only laws because we, whether knowingly or not, coercively consent to them. At any given time our government can utilize and maneuver the boundaries of legality and illegality as applicable to the material interests of the ruling class. What we’re seeing on live display is the state and all of its willing agents and participants are very much willing to terrorize and self-detonate than grant Black people even the slightest bit of freedom; and history has shown us it is not only appropriate but necessary to meet them with the only language that they understand. 

As Kwame Ture has noted, public pleas and non-violence only works when your opponent has a conscience, and the United States of America has none. Therefore, we must move beyond public outcries for vague calls for “love,” “unity,” and “peace,” waxing poetic, and pleading for our oppressors to somehow manage to adopt a conscience and do what goes against the very ideological and economic foundation of all their colonial institutions: stop terrorizing and killing us. We must move beyond the cycle of inaction and emotional appeals, through stagnantly and continuously debating the semantics of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and other moral and political posturing, when the reality of our situation is clear: Black lives can never truly matter under captivity of white supremacist capitalism and colonial patriarchy that directly and consequently begets Black oppression. How can it, when Black death is a necessity of racial capitalism and the institutions (such as policing and prisons) that exist to uphold it? So instead of public appeals to the ruling class and its agents to recognize the “humanity” in those relegated to slave; we recognized the reality in which racialized terror and violence is quite literally the point—as the mere existence of Black lives are in direct and inherent contradiction with the forces of capital—and a necessity for the continued maintenance of the current white supremacist capitalist, imperialist, (settler-)colonial order. It is crucial for us to remember that these institutions, namely policing and prisons, that continue to so violently persist, are merely an extension of European colonialism and slavery. 

“...with each reform, revolution became more remote[...]But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define [fascism] in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be ‘reform.’” 

—George Jackson (Blood In My Eye)

The only realistic solution to a reality in which anti-Black terror, violence, and death is an inevitability to the functionality of a system, is abolition. Yet, ironically enough, the lack of political imagination, beyond the electoral strategy and reformism, and the inability to envision a world, or even country, devoid of police and prisons is rooted in (anti-Black), racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage. The notion that an (uncivilized) people must to be, at all times, patrolled and policed, or else chaos and violence would reign, has been used as a justification for countless structural violences on the part of European peoples since the origins of colonialism. If we know criminality is inherently racialized, one must ask themselves: when you envision the criminal and/or “evildoer,” what do you see? What do they look like? More than likely it is someone who is non-white and/or poor. This is something we have to seriously grapple with, even amongst abolitionist circles. The vast majority of people who, for whatever reason, are incapable of envisioning a world without police and prisons, are simply unwilling to interrogate the dominant ideological apparatus that we have all, in one way or another, internalized. 

Emphasizing the largely classed and gendered based nature of crime, is of the utmost importance. Crime is not an “inevitable” aspect of society, but an inevitable reaction to socio-economic and political structural forces at-large; specifically poverty being an inevitability of capitalism while sexual, gendered, and domestic violences are an inevitability of colonial patriarchy. If we combat the systems, we combat the social reactions. 

Another thing we’re witnessing is white people moralizing the looting, destruction of, and “violence” towards inanimate objects (despite the fact that white history is that of constant looting, destruction, and violence) as result of their moral, spiritual, and political ties to land, property, monuments, and capital built on genocide and slavery. Whiteness being so inextricable to the foundations of capital(ism) and ultimately property, inhibits white people’s ability to extend such an empathy to the lives of Black people. Property and capital, being so inextricable to the foundations of whiteness and the construction of race, as a whole, ushers in the reality in which they become God-like figures. White people’s existence on this planet and their understanding of the world makes so much more sense once you realize that, white people, globally, are the police. Whiteness allows and entails them the “monopoly on morality” to be such a thing. Whether it’s with foreign affairs, and their paternalistic analysis of non-white countries, which ultimately leads to the justifying the actions of their imperialist government—even from “socially conscious” white folks. Or, in the case of how they overwhelmingly believe they maintain the prerogative to dictate the ways subjects of white oppression retaliate against said oppression (though, to be fair, they technically do). But, the point is: the entire logic of whiteness, as a deliberately political and social invention, makes it such a construct that’s—under white supremacy—inseparable from the role of the state. therefore, white people assume these roles as agents of the state globally—whether subconsciously or not.

And, of course, this is why we have been subjected to countless imagery on social media of white people (and those aspiring to be white by-way-of proximity to capital, power, and “respectability”) putting their bodies and lives on the line to protect capital (and physical embodiments of it) and private property—in a way that they would never sacrifice their bodies or even time for Black lives and liberation. Such an imagery should serve as a spit in the face to not just Black people, but all persons concerned with our liberation from the chains of capital. If persons of the white race are willing to put their lives on the line for their god: property and capital, but wouldn’t bother doing such a thing for Black people: what does that say about how they see us? We’re beneath inanimate objects on the hierarchy of things worthy of protection. But, it also just goes to show that as much as the white American is willing to die for property relations and capital—by any means necessary—we must be willing to live and die for our collective liberation. Let this be a moment in which we’re reminded that if there’s ever scenario in which our ruling elites are ever in-need of more armed protectors of the white supremacist status quo there will be countless ordinary white people, at the front of the line, fully prepared to live out their white vigilante idealizations and sacrifice their lives and bodies to save settler capitalism.

The Sadism of American Power

[Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG]

By Kenn Orphan

It was just a couple of weeks ago that President Trump was both inciting and praising anti-lockdown protesters around the country. These included armed white militia men who stormed state capitol buildings demanding an end to public health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. Many of them were filmed harassing nurses and blocking ambulances from reaching hospitals, but to Trump they were all just “good people.” He did this all while the deaths in the US from the pandemic lurched toward the 100,000 mark, the highest recorded death toll for any nation on the planet.

But in just the span of a few days Trump’s rhetoric shifted. After the sadistic murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, he labeled the protesters against police brutality “thugs” and tweeted “once the looting starts the shooting starts.” A clear call for state violence. Floyd was a Black man who was accused of using a $20 counterfeit bill. For this he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by several white officers. One of them, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on Floyd’s neck for an agonizing 8 minutes and 46 seconds, as he gasped for air, begged for his life, and called out for his late mother. At no time did Floyd appear to be resisting and bystanders pleaded with the officers to stop their assault. Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck for 2 minutes and 53 seconds after he lost consciousness.

Trump’s shift in tone regarding the protests of this horrific act of brutality shouldn’t come as any surprise. One of his most consistent traits has been to incite violence. At his rallies he has reveled in ridiculing the most vulnerable and has encouraged his feckless fans to “beat the crap” out of those who oppose him. “The man who once said that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” was not kidding. More recently, Trump threatened protesters against police brutality outside the White House:

“The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. ‘We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and … good practice.”

But Trump is the odious symptom of a grave disease. One which has inflicted far more damage than any virus. The systemic violence of the American project has always been rooted in sadistic racism. For instance, the demonstrations that formed after the footage of George Floyd’s killing was released were largely non-violent. Despite this, they have been met with the full force of state violence. Police used tear gas, pepper spray, flash grenades, and rubber bullets, not only at protesters but also members of the press. One Black reporter for CNN was arrested while his white colleagues were not despite them being together. There were also many credible reports of agents provocateurs among the protesters. One video shows a white man in a gas mask smashing windows. The US Customs and Border Patrol even flew one of its predator drones around Minneapolis amidst the protests. Like the tanks used at Standing Rock, this is an ominous sign that America’s war machine, that has made life a misery for millions abroad, is being turned inward.

There were no such police responses to the anti-lockdown protests which were composed mostly of white people. On the contrary, multiple videos show cops gently dealing with unruly white protesters despite many of them wielding assault rifles. It is a textbook example of structural racism at work. Given the armed nature of these demonstrations, one would guess that had there been a forceful approach by the police they would have been far more destruction than the “I Can’t Breathe” protests in Minneapolis and other US cities.

Trump’s blatant racism and belligerence are not anomalies to American culture. And those tempted to say “this is not us,” yet again, should pause before doing so. At a certain point there must be a reckoning to what America started out as and what it has become. The United States was founded upon white supremacy and violence. And it is not something of the distant past. Its tendrils reach deep into the very fabric of American society today.

Like all colonial empires, sadism has always been the driving force of American power. Not freedom. Not liberty. From genocide of the native population to centuries of slavery, from Jim Crow and the internment of Japanese citizens, from the carpet bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to drone strikes in Afghanistan and Somalia, from Wounded Knee, to the Trail of Tears, to the Tulsa Massacre, to My Lai, to Abu Ghraib, to Guantanamo, the message has always been one of coercion through sadistic cruelty and violence. It explains how 48% of Americans can justify torture. It explains how so many Americans can easily forgive their war criminals. It explains how the US military could use Agent Orange, and white phosphorus, and depleted uranium in its warfare. It explains how immigrant children can be separated from their parents with nearly 70,000 of them held in squalid detention camps. And it has always thrived on supremacy. This is demonstrable in its abysmal response to the pandemic. Most of the victims in the US are people of color, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. It is no accident that they are being forced back to work in many states and abandoned to die should they become ill.

The knee that mercilessly crushed the neck of George Floyd is the same knee that has crushed the global south everywhere, both in the US and abroad. The US is not alone in this, but it surpasses every one else in terms of capital and brute strength. To think that Trump is some kind of glitch is both ahistorical and ludicrous. Indeed, there have been scores of Trumps throughout the bloody history of the US and before. There are scores of them now, and many in positions of power, from the military, to ICE, to the CBP, to the judiciary, to the police, to correctional officers, to corporate executives. Trump has definitely emboldened them. But, in truth, they do not need much encouragement to begin with, because there is a long legacy of barbarism for any of them to draw from.

Understanding the Riots

By Devon Bowers

Given light of the nationwide protests, especially in Minneapolis regarding the death of George Floyd, as well as other victims of police violence, this is a revised and updated version an article I wrote in 2014, defending the Ferguson uprising.

 “Now, let’s get to what the white press has been calling riots. In the first place don’t get confused with the words they use like ‘anti-white,’ ‘hate,’ ‘militant’ and all that nonsense like ‘radical’ and ‘riots.’ What’s happening is rebellions not riots[.]”

- Stokley Carmichael, “Black Power” speech, July 28, 1966

"The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar."

- Karl Marx, "The Civil War in France" (1871)

In light of the uprising in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington DC, and other places across the country, many people have come out of the woodwork to condemn violent protesting and the destruction of buildings. However, we have to ask ourselves, what do they mean by violence?

When talking of violence in this context, it is rather strange. What people are condemning is property destruction, not violence. One can’t act in a violent way towards an inanimate object. Burning a building, whether it be a Target or a police precinct, isn’t violence, but in this context is pushback against a system where that has destroyed people for years. The murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor is actual violence. Two people’s lives were abruptly ended due to the maliciousness of the police. Storeowners have insurance, stores can be rebuilt and revived, we can’t revive Floyd, Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery.

On a deeper level, this is where capitalism and racism intersect. One of capitalism’s main tenets is the dominance of private property and how it must be protected. We can see that this has been transcribed in law, such as with the Stand Your Ground laws. Yet, also within the larger society there is a lack of caring for black life. In any situation, the media and general public regularly engage in victim blaming and look for anything, anything at all to assassinate the character of those who died at the hand of the police.

This can be seen in the recent past, where the media bought up Akai Gurley’s criminal record when discussing his death at the hands of a police officer or when the New York Post published an article discussing Arbery being arrested for shoplifting in 2017. The publication of such information is done with the intent to demonize victims of police and white supremacist violence, allowing supporters of such violence to have an excuse as how the victims ‘deserved it’ and ‘simply got what was coming to them.’

We have also seen that the police will flat out lie to push their narrative. In the case of Breonna Taylor, police argued that her residence “was listed on the search warrant based on police's belief that Glover [Taylor’s boyfriend] had used her apartment to receive mail, keep drugs or stash money.” However, a postal worker noted that the police “did not use his office to verify that a drug suspect was receiving packages at Breonna Taylor's apartment” and that when a different agency asked in January 2020 if Taylor’s home was receiving suspicious packages, the answer was no. The no-knock raid went on unabated and then was justified based on knowingly false information.

With regards to the riots themselves, the larger society is asking why protesters don’t remain peaceful. The answer is two-part: peace has been tried and we are going to be condemned no matter what.

We have to ask this: Why would you think that people would remain peaceful in the face of constant violence? Why would people remain peaceful cases of police violence and police murder continue with no end in sight and usually no punishment for the offending officers?

Black people have tried peace before. We were peaceful in the 1960s when we were peacefully protesting for our civil rights and were met with racist mobs, fire hoses, and dogs, we had crosses burnt on our lawns, lynchings, and a bomb put in a church. During all of that time we remained peaceful even as society enacted massive violence and repression against us. Yetviolenc, violence against the black community continues today.

The situation is currently such where if a black person is killed by the police, people immediately come out and find any way in which they can besmirch or blame the victim. This occurs even when it adds insult to death, as is the case with Floyd where the autopsy noted that his “being restrained by the police, along with his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system, ‘likely contributed to his death.” Such a statement partially puts the blame on Floyd himself for dying rather than entirely at the hands of Derek Chauvin and the other officers who sat there and watched Floyd die.

The conversation drastically changes when oppressed people fight back. Not only is the violence denounced, but then it is used as an excuse to use massive amounts of violence against the oppressed, as we see currently with not only the National Guard being called up to suppress the uprising in Minneapolis, but also active duty military police units from all over the country are being prepped.

When people lash out against one incident, one may be inclined to call that violence, but when violence against your community has been going on for decades and people lash out, that’s no longer violence on the part of the oppressed, that’s called resistance.

When the question is raised of why aren’t there peaceful protests, it is also extremely hypocritical. Many have spoken out in person and on social media condemning the riots, but at the same time they are silent on the constant police brutality that the black community deals with and they are silent on the economic violence done against black communities, pushing them into ghettos where not only is there economic poverty but also a poverty of expectations.

At the heart of this is how society condones state violence, but condemns violence by individuals. This mindset is a serious problem as it only gives more power to the state and consistently puts state forces in the right, with the victims of state violence being forced to prove their innocence, a situation made all the harder due to people already assuming that the victim is in the wrong.

Many have pushed for peace, but peace and safety are not something the black people in America receive, whether we are just looking for help after a car accident, as was the case with Renisha McBride, or we are carrying a toy gun around, as was the case with John Crawford.

This is not the time to ask for peace. This is the time to say “No justice, no peace.”

COVID-19 Discussions Over The U.S. Healthcare System

Pictured: Volunteers from the International Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse set up an Emergency Field Hospital for patients suffering from the coronavirus in Central Park across Fifth Avenue from Mt. Sinai Hospital on March 30, 2020 in New York. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP)

By Ekim Kılıç

Since the beginning of January 2020, COVID-19, aka Coronavirus, has continued to devastate peoples’ lives, specifically working classes across the world. Internationally, a prominent aspect of the pandemic is that all working people feel a similar level of fear and anxiety, even to some extent petty-bourgeois classes despite their considerable economic privileges. It has created an unprecedented platform in which more working people and intellectuals tend to see and discuss the inability of capitalist political economic system to address itself to a health crisis and its understanding of public health system.

One of the most affected countries is the United States, which has almost one-third of the international cases, with 815,491 as an outcome of 4,162,922 tests by April 21. On this date, the number of death reached 45,097. The total number of recovered patients is 82,620. This means that there are 2,464 cases and 136 deaths per 1M people.[1] One-third of the national cases are from the State of New York.[2] In the U.S., the primary reason that the epidemic spread like a wildfire is the weak healthcare system along with several other political and social problems here. Especially, the pandemic shook the base, revealed lack of organized working class, fetishism over individualism combined with puritan work ethic, a healthcare system abandoned at the mercy of banks and companies, widespread and dire mental health problems, homelessness, structural racism, a violent prison-industrial complex, a divided American political system over extremely libertarian federal system, and the discourses of nationalist functionalism and blind petty bourgeois ethicism.

The pandemic came as if a “god’s gift” in a time when economic measures have been taken by and for capital to prevent the deepening consequences of the 2008 financial crisis and the present galvanizing crisis. The extortion of abortion rights in several states and the elimination of union elections by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), escalating interventionist moves against Venezuela, cutting financial support to World Health Organization (WHO), and expectation for the presidential executive order to suspend immigration reveals for whose benefit the pandemic process was used.[3][4][5][6][7] Even American exceptionalists face stark contradictions, as countries such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, and Cuba have effective attitudes towards the epidemic, Russia’s military aircraft to aid the US with medical equipment, then from Vietnam, and the US’s seizure of medical equipment to Barbados, called modern piracy.[8][9][10][11][12]Also, President Trump’s attempts to blame the pandemic on Chinese conspiracy remark their unpreparedness and desperation to get away with their responsibilities, later framed COVID-19 as “Chinese Virus.”[13]

Although unions, which have a strong bureaucracy, cannot lead the workers, and the government disregards urgent measures for “essential workers,” they, especially healthcare and logistics workers, feel compelled to struggle for vital, urgent demands.[14] In that sense, the working class politics’ wave of the last years definitely shows its effect. Coinciding with the Bernie Sanders campaign in a country where even the limited healthcare demand of “Medicare for All” was almost a joke, universal healthcare became a major part of public agenda. However, in a country where nurses have to make protective uniforms out of big garbage bags due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), it turned out that the lives of workers and laborers, who are called “essentials,” hypocritically, are worthless. One has to remember that political elites have always been shamelessly outspoken with their disdain for workers.[15][16][17]

Even after the $2 trillion stimulus package is distributed, details reveal the gap between what was promised and what the reality is. For example, $1,200 aid for individuals and $2,400 for couples is much more meaningful in the Southern states, where the taxes are lower than the states like New York and California. It has to be said that these checks will almost certainly go for student loans, and rent, besides given the fact that almost 1/3 of the country didn’t pay rent for the last month and has that rent due.[18] Students that were graduated last summer or winter, are not be able to get checks. In this regard, and in these new and challenging times, it is a calamity that will trigger millennials and generation Z to question “meaning, morality and mortality in ways they never did before.” This generation has experienced life-altering disruptions, such as 9/11, the Great Recession, the decline of American prestige to a housing affordability crisis, global warming to crushing student debt according to academics at the University of Southern California.[19]

An Overview of the U.S. Healthcare System

The U.S. has always been named as the most developed capitalist country with a liberal democracy that has been perceived alongside western European liberal democracies.[20] Relying on individual liberty in a libertarian sense, the U.S. understanding and structure of organizing daily affairs leave everything to the individual, including healthcare services. Healthcare is a responsibility of the individual, not the state and society. Because of this individualistic conception, it can be said that the U.S. is the most developed country with the worst skewed and insufficient healthcare system.

Becoming an emergent discussion in the wake of former Democratic 2020 presidential primary candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign, healthcare has been a privilege in the U.S. for a long time except for some reforms called Obamacare, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law on March 23, 2010. Nevertheless, the main requirement of having health insurance with sufficient coverage is to have a full-time employment.

After emerging from the 1929 Great Depression, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) government and state institutions utilized the conditions of World War II to provide opportunities for the social democratic expansion of capital. In 1942, the Stabilization Act “limited the amount of wage increases employers could grant, but at the same time permitted the adoption of employee insurance plans.”[21] By 1949, employers benefits programs became common in collective bargaining agreements.[22] In the meantime, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) decided that, “employer contributions to health insurance premiums were tax free, which meant workers paid less out of their pocket.”[23] After FDR, President Harry Truman signed the National Mental Health Act, which called for the establishment of a National Institute of Mental Health.[24] Under the Johnson presidency, Medicare and Medicaid programs were set up in 1965. By accepting the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, the Nixon government unleashed healthcare as a profitable industry.[25]

The Obama presidency evoked hope among the US people over the crumbling healthcare system. However, insurance companies were the one which benefited from a developing market, although his reforms alleviated the situation a little by extending children on their parents coverage and mandating mental health coverage one very plan, those without insurance were burdened with the tax penalties and forced into high deductible plans.[26] Since 2016, the Trump government began to repeal Obamacare by redoing the enabling acts.[27] While it is claimed that it lessens the tax burden coming from healthcare payments, it is also constricting the accessibility to healthcare.[28]

Recently, there were around 800,000 people with “freelance contracts” working in New York. According to the contract, the employer does not have to make a person’s health insurance because the character of their job is temporary and in a limited time. If the person works at or above the 32-33 hour limit, it is considered full-time. Therefore, bosses are able to force flexible employment without any reservations, being aware of the fear of unemployment or underemployment that dominates the US job market. This exemplifies how the messy system has worsened the crisis substantially.

federal As another example, unemployment climbed by another 5 million people this week, increasing the total number of people who have applied for unemployment to 22 million in the last month. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “approximately 9.2 million workers have likely lost their employer-provided health care coverage in the past four weeks.”[29]

Neo-liberal policies in the healthcare system have left the working class and laborers vulnerable to the epidemic. However, the Trump administration focused on the economy to function as smoothly as possible, rather than taking measures that could be taken more or less against approaching epidemic. They refrained from taking the necessary precautions. Even then, for example, the statements of Trump continue to insist for reopening country on May 1, despite major obstacles from authorities.[30] His persistence on reopening the country was also a matter on April 12.[31] Several expressions of political and economic elites are supportive of this: “I’d rather die’ from coronavirus ‘than kill the country.”[32][33][34] As one of the countries that experienced the 2008 crisis deeply, the sensitivity of the USA to the capitalist capital accumulation in the face of the epidemic caused more people to die.

 An article from the American prospect addresses, for example, the share in the stimulus package for businesses. Out of $2 Trillion package, $500 billion will be used for companies. $75 billion goes to the airline industry and the mysteriously named “businesses critical to national security.” The rest $425 will be used to capitalize a $4.25 trillion, leveraged lending facility at the Federal Reserve.[35] Additionally, seven other industries are lobbying for more stimulus, such as tourism, restaurants, mortgage servicers, hotels, airlines, franchises, and distillers.[36]

Other Aspects of the Crisis

Although we have listed the other problems that have accelerated the severity of the crisis, once again, those have to be elaborated to make sense in their context. To begin with, fetish over individualism elicits an “I don’t care, no-one can decides for me” mentality, which disregards social well-being and solidarity. This fundamental bourgeois idea frustrated many people at the beginning due to its ignorance of the crisis, and refusal to heed the advice of healthcare workers. Different aspects of this same idea might be felt over the larger, individual based healthcare system: “It is every (hu)man for himself.”

Similar to this “I don’t care” individualism, even the excessive mental health problems have been treated “as an individual’s incapacity to function normally within a given setting” by serious academic researches. These problems can be found mostly among poor whites and blacks who are more prone to mental disorders than richer classes.[37] Combining with homelessness, and other problems stemming from unemployment, the mental health question requires urgent social attention, especially during the crisis. People, who are relying on social circles, families, and solidarity, are isolated, trapped, and helpless. On the other hand, homelessness, specifically student one, made states hesitate to cancel schools at the beginning. Many college students were also thrown out of their dorm, with nowhere else to go.

Over all these, as another aspect of “American” values, nowadays, right-wing demonstrators have called to end quarantine by blocking roads with caravans, carrying Confederation and Nazi flags, utilizing the 18th century American revolutionary slogan of “Give me liberty, or give me death!” The other, “liberal” side of American nationalism is not innocent in weaponizing the crisis and its human costs, framing healthcare workers as “heroes,” food and workers from other vital industries as “essentials,” “frontliners,” “soldiers,” who are, fundamentally, expendable. Even the liberal call for “stay home” and “practice social distancing” is full of lack of consideration and clarity, solely blind ethicism, a performative virtue.

Workers’ and the lives of the poor are at the stake, which involves racial and gender issues, too.[38] In the center of epidemic in the country, New York City, most of cases and deaths are coming from poor working class neighborhoods.[39] According to formal data, those who have died have been 34% Hispanic, 28% blacks, 27% white and 7% Asian.[40] Economically and racially segregated neighborhoods are particularly vulnerable in this crisis. These groups’ share in the population are 29%, 22%, 32%, and 14%, respectively. The prison-industrial complex also has figured prominently in the crisis. According to activist and journalist Shaun King, the U.S. is the only nation in the world with 250% more prison cells than hospital beds.[41] That complex is another example of structural racism: “These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents.”[42] In other words, it is not surprising that places where COVID-19 has been most devastating, are generally black neighborhoods and towns.[43] Beyond racial lines, the rate of incarceration for women incarceration follows that of the black population: “The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men’s, and who are often behind bars because of financial obstacles such as an inability to pay bail.”[44] During the pandemic, the issue of rising domestic abuse of women trapped at their home receive almost no public or media attention. Additionally, the LGBTQ population is not independent from same abusive behavior. They are also vulnerable to discrimination, homelessness and other economic problems that increase the likelihood of contracting COVID-19.[45]

There are a considerable amount of cases and deaths especially among transportation, food and market workers.[46] Lack of protective equipment and the government’s token appreciation to workers has pushed many workers to take several actions, from warehouses to hospitals. Until now, over 100 workers’ actions are recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.[47] The most unique one is that General Electric workers’ struggle for their company to shift to produce ventilators.[48] Beyond all, the common quality of workers actions are mostly led by millennial generations. In that sense, it can be counted as a sign which generation of the working class might lead advanced struggles post-pandemic. However, in terms of youth struggle, it is hard to say what might happen, because online education may continue in fall 2020, and beyond.

All in all, other aspects of the crisis are complex and entangled, and reflect all the emergent demands of the US people and working class. However, the struggle against pandemic has been shaped by the political struggle between democrats and republicans towards the 2020 Presidential Elections. The governors of Illinois, New York and several other state governors’ have critiqued president Trump for not utilizing the Defense Production Act exemplifies the tension between democrats and republicans along with federal and state fault lines.[49] For instance, while some smaller states have made commitments to end quarantine on May 1, New York and California are against that, and the federal government doesn’t necessarily intend for imposing an extension to quarantine.

Conclusion

It has been discussed that the working class as we know it is gone, especially by the liberal intellectuals of all spectrum in defense of cold war theories. There was also an illusive reality, in which public spaces has been dominated by petty bourgeoisie and some upper sections of working class. It should be noted that another reason to this for the USA and Western Europe is the surplus value they transfer from the dependent countries through the imperialist exploitation mechanism. While this post-cold war argument has lost credibility for a long time now, it is shattered with the COVID-19 crisis.

The U.S. is experiencing a moment of “the king is naked,” where petty bourgeois classes retreated from streets, and left working class people to fulfill busses, train cars, factories, warehouses, workplaces, and unemployment lines. On the one hand, framing some sections of working class as “essentials,” primarily “hero” healthcare workers, and on the other, failing to provide essential protective equipment to these “essentials,” shows one certain aspect in the contradictions of classes: “Workers’ lives do not matter.”

Due to the same reason, it can be said that president Donald Trump is backing up right-wing demonstrators, who wants to lift the quarantine. Concurrent with deepening polarization of the U.S. political system through several impasses between the Democrats and Republicans, the presidency plays with the libertarian positioned citizen-against-the-government to take advantage of the crisis to gather and energize its avid supporter base for the upcoming elections. However, the statements of the government to end quarantine aim to make people reconcile the situation, while continuing to infuriate workers and saturate the air with fear and resentment.

Ekim Kilic is a Kurdish journalist from Turkey, and regularly reporting to the daily working-class newspaper of Turkey, Evrensel Daily. He also takes an active role as a member of the NY steering committee at the National Writers' Union UAW Local 1981. He is an MA graduate from International Affairs and Global Justice major at CUNY Brooklyn College / New York. He wrote a master thesis on a comparative analysis of working class support for right-wing nationalism in the U.S. and Turkey.

Notes

[1]  United States. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Smith, K. (2020, March 25). Abortion-rights groups sue Texas over abortion ban amid coronavirus outbreak. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abortion-rights-planned-parenthood-lawsuit-texas-non-essential-ban/?fbclid=IwAR2biSYvfz_dejWzV5P1bzlwQBCm24yeV5zmrmt9klpVFcoE8-tpUynR8hI

[4] In Midst of a Pandemic, Trump’s NLRB Makes it Nearly Impossible for Workers to Organize a Union. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://portside.org/2020-04-02/midst-pandemic-trumps-nlrb-makes-it-nearly-impossible-workers-organize-union?fbclid=IwAR24Xbuzw2sHuLdM155e96xVuX6RntvpQgsDLOMIxbMhLM57Z2H570q8M7I

[5] Borger, J. (2020, March 31). US ignores calls to suspend Venezuela and Iran sanctions amid coronavirus pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/us-ignores-global-appeals-suspend-sanctions-coronavirus-pandemic-iran-venezuela

[6] Sullivan, P. (2020, April 15). Trump WHO cuts meet with furious blowback. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/492997-trump-who-cuts-meet-with-furious-blowback

[7] Stelloh, T., Welker, K., Pettypiece, S., & Bennett, G. (2020, April 21). Trump says he is suspending immigration over coronavirus, need to protect jobs. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-he-suspending-immigration-over-coronavirus-need-protect-jobs-n1188416?fbclid=IwAR1GpqyKHb9TJHPDs4f5yQSq8jAu9ui4N-S2CByFRp9mdVE_qGy9sADrYwM

[8] Lisnoff, H. (2020, April 6). American Exceptionalism in the Face of Covid-19. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/09/american-exceptionalism-in-the-face-of-covid-19/

[9] Kuttner, R. (2020, March 24). The End of American Exceptionalism. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://prospect.org/coronavirus/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism/

[10] (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/putin-sends-military-plane-with-coronavirus-aid-to-help-u-s

[11] Sweeney, S. (2020, April 16). Vietnam ships 450,000 protective suits for U.S. health care workers. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/vietnam-ships-450000-protective-suits-for-u-s-health-care-workers/?fbclid=IwAR3cV9CBQMWO-TS1ehCi_rXl5jhmqXDO31gv35qz9P9oSYupMg6Ki6a49Lg

[12] Steve SweeneyMonday, A. 6. (2020, April 6). US accused of ‘modern piracy’ after seizing ventilators bound for Barbados. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-accused-modern-piracy-after-seizing-ventilators-bound-barbados

[13] Tisdall, S. (2020, April 19). Trump is playing a deadly game in deflecting Covid-19 blame to China. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2020/apr/19/trump-is-playing-a-deadly-game-in-deflecting-covid-19-blame-to-china

[14] Chediac, J. (2020, April 20). Essential worker strike wave: ‘We fight COVID-19 for ourselves &… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.liberationnews.org/essential-worker-strike-wave-we-fight-for-ourselves-and-for-the-public/?fbclid=IwAR3aVocvBL2JZCLrY04peKRVpMR3UyHc2fbgqfw6OATRFp7IYc0JVWONzz4

[15] Montanaro, D. (2016, September 10). Hillary Clinton’s ‘Basket Of Deplorables,’ In Full Context Of This Ugly Campaign. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2016/09/10/493427601/hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables-in-full-context-of-this-ugly-campaign

[16] Gruenberg, M. (2019, April 25). GOP lawmaker’s idiotic remark about nurses goes viral and backfires. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/gop-lawmakers-idiotic-remark-about-nurses-goes-viral-and-backfires/

[17] Alternet. (2019, April 9). When the GOP uses the word “bartender” to mock Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it shows its ugly classism. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.salon.com/2019/04/09/when-the-gop-uses-the-word-bartender-to-mock-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-it-shows-its-ugly-classism_partner/

[18] Bahney, A. (2020, April 11). New data shows more Americans are having trouble paying their rent. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/business/americans-rent-payment-trnd/index.html

[19] Polakovic, G. (2020, April 3). How does coronavirus affect young people’s psyches? Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://news.usc.edu/167275/how-does-coronavirus-affect-young-people-psyches/

[20] The Economist Intelligence Unit. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index

[21] Scofea, L. A. (1994). The development and growth of employer-provided health insurance. Monthly Labor Review, 3–10. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1994/03/art1full.pdf

[22] Ibid.

[23] How did we end up with health insurance being tied to our jobs? (2019, April 29). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.marketplace.org/2017/06/28/how-did-we-end-health-insurance-being-tied-our-jobs/

[24] National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2017, February 17). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/national-institute-mental-health-nimh

[25] Gruber, L. R., Maureen, S., & Polich, C. L. (n.d.). From Movement To Industry: The Growth Of HMOs. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.7.3.197

[26] Amadeo, K. (n.d.). Pros and Cons of Obamacare. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.thebalance.com/obamacare-pros-and-cons-3306059

[27] Simmons-Duffin, S. (2019, October 14). Trump Is Trying Hard To Thwart Obamacare. How’s That Going? Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/14/768731628/trump-is-trying-hard-to-thwart-obamacare-hows-that-going

[28] Gonzales, R. (2019, October 5). Trump Bars Immigrants Who Cannot Pay For Health Care. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767453276/trump-bars-immigrants-who-cannot-pay-for-health-care

[29] 9.2 million workers likely lost their employer-provided health insurance in the past four weeks. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.epi.org/blog/9-2-million-workers-likely-lost-their-employer-provided-health-insurance-in-the-past-four-weeks/

[30] Trump’s plans to reopen the country face major obstacles. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/18/trump-reopen-country-coronavirus-193182

[31] Harris, J. F. (n.d.). ‘I’d love to have it open by Easter’: Trump says he wants to restart economy by mid-April. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/trump-wants-to-restart-economy-by-mid-april-146398

[32] Samuels, A. (2020, April 21). Dan Patrick says “there are more important things than living and that’s saving this country”. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/21/texas-dan-patrick-economy-coronavirus/

[33] Fredericks, B. (2020, April 15). Congressman says US should reopen economy – even if more would die. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://nypost.com/2020/04/15/lawmaker-says-us-should-reopen-economy-even-if-more-will-die/

[34] Concha, J. (2020, March 25). Glenn Beck: ‘I’d rather die’ from coronavirus ‘than kill the country’ from economic shutdown. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/homenews/media/489472-glenn-beck-id-rather-die-from-coronavirus-than-kill-the-country-from-economic

[35] Dayen, D. (2020, March 25). Unsanitized: Bailouts, A Tradition Unlike Any Other. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://prospect.org/api/amp/coronavirus/unsanitized-bailouts-tradition-unlike-any-other/

[36] Gangitano, A. (2020, April 2). 7 industries lobbying for more stimulus. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/490736-7-industries-lobbying-for-more-stimulus

[37] Baran, P. A. & Sweezy P. M. (2020, March). The Quality of Monopoly Capitalist Society: Mental Health. Monthly Review. Volume 71. Pg. 41-43.

[38] Conn, M., Kelly, J., & Heimpel, D. (2020, April 3). Lack of Shelter Beds in New York for LGBTQ Youth During Pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/coronavirus/lgbtq-youth-struggle-for-shelter-from-coronavirus/41999?fbclid=IwAR0Rko479SG4K9eBvZZTWNXVZxo0Xa4HYpxoyUSNYc-xhWUD2Ri0GO35B80

[39] Virus Hits NYC Hardest in a Few Working-Class Neighborhoods. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-04-02/coronavirus-hits-harder-in-poorer-nyc-neighborhoods

[40] Workbook: NYS-COVID19-Tracker. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?:embed=yes&:toolbar=no&:tabs=n

[41] SHAUN KING: The United States is the Only Nation in the World with 250% More Prison Cells Than Hospital Beds. (2020, March 30). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.thenorthstar.com/shaun-king-the-united-states-is-the-only-nation-in-the-world-with-250-more-prison-cells-than-hospital-beds/

[42] Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (n.d.). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

[43] Johnson, A., & Buford, T. (n.d.). Early Data Shows African Americans Have Contracted and Died of… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.propublica.org/article/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate

[44] Ibid.

[45] Conn, M., Kelly, J., & Heimpel, D. (2020, April 3). Lack of Shelter Beds in New York for LGBTQ Youth During Pandemic. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/coronavirus/lgbtq-youth-struggle-for-shelter-from-coronavirus/41999?fbclid=IwAR0Rko479SG4K9eBvZZTWNXVZxo0Xa4HYpxoyUSNYc-xhWUD2Ri0GO35B80

[46] Chediac, J. (2020, April 20). Essential worker strike wave: ‘We fight COVID-19 for ourselves &… Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.liberationnews.org/essential-worker-strike-wave-we-fight-for-ourselves-and-for-the-public/?fbclid=IwAR3aVocvBL2JZCLrY04peKRVpMR3UyHc2fbgqfw6OATRFp7IYc0JVWONzz4

[47] Elk, M. (2020, April 23). COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://paydayreport.com/covid-19-strike-wave-interactive-map/?fbclid=IwAR0hqgq8wEeYT-Y8VRFcaJocbzRNd4vb_13bd32_3fZFxqYv3OO7gf6uynQ

[48] GE Workers Protest, Demand to Make Ventilators. (2020, April 16). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://labornotes.org/blogs/2020/04/ge-workers-protest-demand-make-ventilators?fbclid=IwAR2_qnmATx97jmyVzESlZ_B7KGce1YtQV4uH86rHXxHEOs3s1G0r-ygXF1w

[49] Trump, Facing Criticism, Says He Will Increase Swab Production. (2020, April 19). Retrieved April 25, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/us/coronavirus-updates.html