Since George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 25 May,
about 140 cities in
all 50 states throughout the US have seen protests and demonstrations in response to the killing.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested around the US during the protests, as police forces regularly use pepper spray, rubber bullets, teargas and batons on protesters, media and bystanders. Several major US cities have
enacted curfews in an
attempt to stop demonstrations and curb unrest.
Jarah Gibson was arrested while non-violently protesting in Atlanta, Georgia, on 1 June.
“The police were there from the jump and literally escorted us the whole march,” said Gibson.
Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
She said around 7.30pm, ahead of Atlanta’s 9pm city-wide curfew, police began boxing in protesters. While protesters were attempting to leave, Gibson tried to video-record a person on a bicycle who appeared to be hit by a police car and was arrested by police. She was given a citation for “pedestrian in a roadway,” and “refusing to comply when asked to leave”.
“The police are instigating everything and they are criminalizing us. Now I have my mugshot taken, my fingerprints taken and my eyes scanned. Now I’m a criminal over an illegal arrest,” added Gibson. “I want to be heard and I want the police to just abide by basic human decency.”
Protesters clash with New York City police in Manhattan on 31 May. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images
Ruby Anderson was arrested while non-violently protesting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 31 May. The police refused to provide a reason for her detention until they were placed in a police van, where they were told the charge was loitering. They were given a wristband that stated “unlawful assembly” and ultimately charged with disorderly conduct.
“While I was arrested, I was standing next to two white people who were doing the same thing as me, standing between a group of officers and a group of black teenagers. I was the only one arrested in my group of three, I was the only black person,” Anderson said.
Reports of excessive police force throughout the protests have emerged around the US.
More than 130 reports of journalists being attacked by police have been recorded since 28 May.
On 2 June, six police officers in Atlanta, Georgia, were
charged with excessive force during an arrest of two college students on 30 May. A staggering
12,000 complaints against police in Seattle, Washington, were made over the weekend of 30 May in response to excessive force at protests.
A Denver, Colorado, police officer was
fired for posting on Instagram “let’s start a riot”. In New York City, videos surfaced of NYPD officers
pointing a gun at protesters,
driving an SUV into a crowd of protesters,
swiping a protester with a car door, an officer
flashing a white supremacy symbol, and another officer
shoving a woman to the ground, which left her hospitalized.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dan Rojas was arrested on the morning of 27 May. Though there were no protests occurring at the time, Rojas had decided to clean up fragments of rubber bullets, teargas and frag canisters on the public sidewalk in his neighborhood when
six police officers confronted him and arrested him.
A police officer aims a non-lethal launcher at protesters as they clash in Washington DC on 31 May. Photograph: Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images
“They put me in handcuffs, took my property off of me, and they
shoved a local reporter out of the way. They put me in a squad car and arrested me for rioting at 10.30 in the morning, the day after a peaceful protest,” said Rojas, who was not released until over 48 hours later. “At the end of it no charges were filed, everything was dropped and I was never told the probable cause they had to arrest me.”
Several non-violent protesters arrested during demonstrations requested to remain anonymous for fear of police retaliation as they still face citations and pending charges. The protesters described police tactics of “
kettling ”, where protesters were surrounded and blocked by police forces from leaving, often until curfews took effect or arrests were made for obstructing a roadway.
“The curfews are a way to give police more power, exactly the opposite of what protesters want. These curfews, like most other ‘law and order’ tactics, will disproportionately impact the very same communities that are protesting against state-sponsored violence and brutality,” said Dr LaToya Baldwin Clark, assistant professor of law at UCLA.
One protester in Los Angeles, California, told how she was returning to her apartment before the city’s 6pm curfew, while police were blocking protesters and obstructing exits.
Atlanta police clash with a demonstrator during a protest on 2 June in Atlanta. Photograph: John Bazemore/AP
“I was arrested two streets away from my apartment, it had just turned 6pm,” said the protester. She noted during the arrests, bystanders were protesting against the arrests from their apartment balconies, while police were aiming rubber bullets, teargas and pepper spray at them.
“They handcuffed us all with zip tie handcuffs and left us in a police bus for about five hours … I asked for medical assistance and they denied it to me, I was handcuffed for over five hours with a bleeding hand that eventually turned purple until I was finally released.”
She was eventually released at 1am on 2 June, with a citation for being out past curfew.
“The police set us up to get arrested. They shut off the streets forcing us on to Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Once we were on the bridge, the police blocked both exits in front and behind us,” said a protester in Dallas, Texas, who was arrested on 1 June and later released without charges.
She added: “They shot teargas at us and shot a protester with a rubber bullet and it injured her hand. The police made us all get on the ground, proceeded to zip tie our hands together, lined us up on the side of the highway and left us there for hours.”
Protesters and police clash in Columbia, South Carolina, on 31 May. Photograph: Jason Lee/AP
In Cincinnati, Ohio, a resident in a neighborhood where protests were occurring on 31 May saw several protesters were at risk of being caught outside past the
city’s curfew at 8pm.
“It felt like a trap to me. I felt if I could pick some people up and take them to their cars, I could stop people from getting arrested, so I jumped in my car, drove down the street, saw a group of people hiding, they had their hands up, and they climbed into the car, and shut the doors. We tried to drive, but were stopped,” said the resident. “We were asked to leave the car, zip-tied on the side of the road, loaded on to a bus, and they detained us for a few hours doing paperwork.”
A protester in Houston, Texas, described police kettling her and other protesters before getting arrested on 31 May for obstructing a roadway.
“We weren’t allowed to go home,” she said. “We tried our best to go home and were told ‘no, you’re not leaving.’ From then on, the cops said anyone outside their circle is going to jail and they would push us further from the sidewalk. They had us closed in.”
THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
Blacks not the only victims of rogue cops
The videos below are of a 2014 incident in Independence, Missouri where former policeman Timothy N. Runnels arrested Bryce Masters, a 17-year-old boy. The first video is two minutes and is very disturbing, especially the ending. The second video is 54 minutes and includes the arrival on the scene of backup and ambulance. The second video shows a brief split screen of what Masters shot of the incident before Runnels tased him into cardiac arrest.
The incident was covered in depth by The Intercept and by the website for Britain's Daily Mail . The incident was also covered at Officer.com . In 2018 in nearby Kansas City, the Star 's Tony Rizzo reported: "Federal prosecutors later charged Runnels criminally with violating Masters' civil rights, and the former officer was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison. Runnels, 35, is scheduled to be released from custody in January 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons." Here's the only clear photo of Runnels I could find on the Net. If you see him, steer clear.
Blacks are by no means the only victims of police brutality. Police departments must do a better job of identifying and quickly getting rid of any thugs on their payrolls, but they're being protected by the police unions. We need our police, but not the criminal rogues.
VIDEO VIDEO To watch the videos at YouTube, click on these URLs:
Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped).
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
Democrats announce toothless police reform bill
With a great deal of rhetoric accompanied by a political stunt, the Democratic congressional leadership on Monday released its “Justice in Policing 2020” bill.
Prior to the press conference to present the measure, more than 20 Democratic lawmakers, all wearing African kente cloths, knelt in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing the 46-year-old African American worker.
The group of Democrats included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass and senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
At the press conference, Bass, Pelosi, Schumer and other sponsors of the bill repeatedly cited the nationwide mass demonstrations against the murder of Floyd and touted their bill as a “transformational” and “bold” attack on police violence and systemic racism.
But their statements and the token character
of the reforms included in the bill make clear
that the measure is nothing of the kind.
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
It is also aimed at containing and dissipating social protests by workers and youth against not only racism and the fascistic Trump administration, but also the social inequality, repression and poverty that are embedded in the capitalist system and magnified by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democrats are well aware that even their collection of mild reforms has no chance of being passed by the Republican-controlled Senate or signed into law by President Trump. Just minutes after the Democrats’ press conference, Trump, who later met behind closed doors with law enforcement officials, tweeted: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
The major provisions of the bill include:
* Changes in the wording of statutes dealing with police abuse that somewhat lower the legal threshold for obtaining a conviction. The bill alters the federal standard for criminal police behavior from “willfully” violating the constitutional rights of a victim to doing so “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
It also changes the standard for determining whether the use of force is justified from whether it is “reasonable” to whether it is “necessary.”
* It somewhat limits, but does not eliminate, the application of “qualified immunity” to police offenders. For the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has interpreted the “qualified immunity” doctrine, which applies to public officials pursuing their official duties, to vacate civil suits and throw out criminal cases against police who break the law or use unwarranted force.
Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark argued in 2019 that “qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people’s constitutional rights with virtual impunity.” The Obama administration repeatedly intervened in Supreme Court cases to uphold the blanket use of “qualified immunity” to shield cops from civil suits or criminal prosecution.
* The bill limits, but does not eliminate, the transfer of military equipment to the police. Obama continued the practice of militarizing police departments with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, drones and other tactical weapons.
* The bill creates a national register of police misconduct.
* It bans chokeholds.
* It establishes a grant program allowing—but not requiring—state attorneys general to create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive force.
* It requires body cameras for federal uniformed police officers and dashboard cameras for marked federal police vehicles. These federal forces comprise only a small fraction of the 687,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the US. The bill also mandates that state and local agencies use federal funds to “ensure” the use of body and dashboard cameras.
* The bill bans racial profiling.
* It grants subpoena powers to the civil rights division of the Justice Department for “pattern and practice” investigations of police departments.
* It makes lynching a federal hate crime.
At the press conference, Bass, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, went out of her way to profess her support for the police. “I am certain that police officers, professionals who risk their lives every day, are deeply concerned about their profession and do not want to work in an environment that requires their silence when they know a fellow officer is abusing the public,” she said.
She went on to present police officers as the unwitting victims of poor training and policing practices and a lack of “transparency.”
Pelosi called the bill a “transformational” and “structural change,” ran through its main provisions, and concluded by saying, “Police brutality is a heartbreaking reflection of an entrenched system of racial injustice in America.” She called the bill a “first step,” promising “more to come.”
New York Senator Schumer, known as the senator from Wall Street, referred nervously to the massive demonstrations that have continued in New York City and in cities and towns across the US for nearly two weeks, noting in particular their multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity.
He then proceeded to define the issue of police violence exclusively in racial terms, saying, “The poison of racism affects more than just our criminal justice system. It runs much deeper than that. There are racial disparities in housing and health care, education, the economy, jobs, income and wealth and COVID has only placed a magnifying glass on them.”
This is a continuation of the narrative that has been employed by the ruling class, and particularly that faction represented by the Democratic Party, for more than 50 years, ever since the massive urban rebellions of the 1960s. Beginning with the Kerner Commission Report of 1968, there has been a concerted effort to portray the essential social category in America as race, rather than class.
BLOG EDITOR: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RELIED ON THE BLACK SLAVE CLASS UNTIL IT BECAME APPARENT THAT THE INVADING ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS WOULD MAKE A BETTER CLASS OF SLAVES.
ASK YOURSELF WHAT BARACK OBAMA EVER DID FOR BLACK AMERICA AS HE SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING 'CHEAP' LABOR MEXICANS.
This was designed from the outset to divert attention from the class exploitation upon which capitalism is based and within which racism serves as a weapon to divide the working class. All of the African-American lawmakers at the Democrats’ press conference are wealthy beneficiaries of policies that have elevated a thin layer of blacks into the upper-middle class and the bourgeoisie, while leaving black workers, and the working class as a whole, in far worse circumstances than in the 1960s.
A reporter asked if the sponsors of the “Justice in Policing Act” supported calls for “defunding” the police that have been embraced by some local Democratic officials, who have generally defined it as diverting a small portion of the police budget to social services. Bass had previously made clear she did not support such calls and the campaign of Joe Biden released a statement Monday disavowing the demand.
Responding to the question, Pelosi said, “We want to work with our police departments. There are many who take pride in their work, and we want to be able to make sure the focus is on them.” She went on to warn against getting “into these questions that may come by the small minds of some.”
Government-employee unions—including those for police—put the power and interests of their workers above the public interest.
June 8, 2020
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, and the ensuing protests and urban riots, have brought police departments under enormous scrutiny and widespread hostility. Liberals conservatives
Liberal sympathy for organized labor doesn’t extend to police unions because cops are seen as the “bad proletariat.” Liberals try to paint the problems of police unions as unique to law enforcement, rather than endemic to unionized government. In the wake of the Floyd killing, some have called for the abolition of police forces—and, in Minneapolis, the city council has announced
The deeper problem is that unionization and collective bargaining have made it almost impossible to bring about meaningful reform of state and local government, policing included. The consequences are huge, because the inability to reform government means that performance suffers and public trust in key institutions declines.
Collective bargaining is not fundamentally about products or services—whether public safety, education, automobiles, or anything else—but about the power and interests of workers and management. Public-sector unions are in the business of winning better salaries and benefits, protecting job security, and advancing their members’ occupational interests. Organizational incentives, and state law, ensure that union leaders prioritize these amenities.
Police and public schools are the institutions of government with which Americans most frequently engage. Police protect our most vulnerable citizens and allow communities to thrive. Schools offer opportunities for social mobility. There are thousands of heroic and devoted police officers and school teachers. But unionization and collective bargaining have enmeshed these two crucial government functions in red tape that too often protects the inept and abusive.
Collective bargaining in the public-safety and educational sectors strips government executives of the tools they need to supervise and manage their workforces effectively. Police chiefs and school principals struggle to weed out poor performers. A few bad actors can undermine an entire organizational culture.
Upholding the law presents unique challenges, and police can have adversarial relationships with the communities whom they serve. Consequently, police-union contracts contain myriad formal rules and procedures designed to protect police officers from the inevitable complaints—some justified, others not—that arise in the course of duty. Many big-city union contracts
Language spelling out these procedures often makes up the largest part of any contract officers’ contract
Police officers accused of misconduct are, consequently, rarely disciplined or punished insofar as investigations are long, highly regulated, and allow for frequent appeals. One study
Teachers also enjoy extensive job protections that make them nearly impossible to fire. State laws and union contracts create a labyrinth of paperwork and processes. In most school districts, over 95 percent of teachers receive satisfactory ratings and get tenure (which means more job protections) after three years on the job. Many principals don’t even bother trying to dismiss bad teachers because of the costs involved. One study
Even teachers accused of sexual misconduct
As a result of such protections, New York City infamously put hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms 930 teachers held spots in the ATR
Within the confines of collective bargaining, public executives need to push for a recovery of management rights. Only then might school principals and police chiefs have a fighting chance of improving their organizations. Going further, states may want to revisit the extent to which work rules that establish disciplinary procedures should even be the subject of collective bargaining. Greater accountability in state and local government would be better for everyone, good teachers and cops included. Weeding out poor performers will improve public services, protect communities, boost organizational morale, and spur upward mobility. It’s time to put the mission of public agencies ahead of job protections for public workers.
Daniel DiSalvo
Melville House Crashes Anti-Trump Title
Jun 08, 2020
Melville House is crashing the publication of Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers by John Dean and Bob Altermeyer.
The book, Melville House promises , "will be the first book to look at Trump his followers in the context of authoritarianism by using psychological diagnostic tools, as well as polling conducted by The Monmouth University Polling Institute, to offer an eye-opening revelation of how Trump and his supporters have gotten where they are, and to consider where they may go next."
Dean is famous for having as White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. During the Watergate scandal, his Senate testimony helped lead to Nixon's resignation. Altermeyer is a psychology professor at the University of Manitoba who specializes in authoritarianism.
Trump, Barr continue threat to deploy military against nationwide protests
On Saturday, in the midst of massive nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd, President Donald Trump made clear that he has not abandoned his support for the mobilization of the military to suppress the demonstrations. He was backed Sunday by his attorney general William Barr, who defended Trump’s moves last Monday to crush the protests in Washington, D.C. as part of preparations to establish a presidential dictatorship based on the military and the police.
At 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, while tens of thousands of protesters were marching peacefully through the capital and hundreds of thousands more were demonstrating in cities and towns across the country, Trump tweeted, “LAW & ORDER!” This was an allusion to his fascistic Rose Garden declaration last Monday that he was the “president of law and order.”
Later in the evening he added another tweet: “Much smaller crowd in DC than anticipated. National Guard, Secret Service and DC Police have been doing a fantastic job. Thank you!”
Donald Trump walks from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
On Sunday, Barr was interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. He ignored denunciations by top retired military officers, including former Trump administration officials, of Trump’s threats to overthrow the Constitution, invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and impose martial law.
Barr categorically supported the right of the President to unilaterally deploy active duty troops to states over the objections of state governors. He also falsely branded as violent the peaceful protest at Lafayette Park that was broken up last Monday on Trump’s orders, and absurdly claimed there was no connection between the violent dispersal of the protesters and Trump’s photo-op holding up a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which took place only minutes after National Guard troops and federal forces had cleared demonstrators from the location.
The interview began with the anchor, Margaret Brennan, citing a “senior administration official” who told CBS News that Trump, at a White House meeting early last Monday, had demanded the ordering of 10,000 active duty troops onto the streets of the country. According to press reports, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had opposed the demand, resulting in a shouting match between Trump and Milley.
Barr called the report “completely false.” After the interview, Brennan stated that CBS News stood by its reporting on the incident.
Barr implied that such a military mobilization had been discussed and acknowledged that elements of the 82nd Airborne Division had been deployed to bases outside the capital. But he said he and Esper agreed that those military police units should be kept on standby but not deployed onto the streets at that time. These troops, as well as troops from the Mountain Division, have since been removed from the D.C. area and returned to their home bases.
Next came the following exchange:
Brennan: Do you think that the president has the authority to unilaterally send in active duty troops if the governors oppose it?
Barr: Oh, absolutely. The—under the anti-Insurrection Act, the President can use regular troops to suppress rioting. The Confederacy in our country opposed the use of federal troops to restore order and suppress an insurrection. So the federal government sometimes doesn’t listen to governors in certain circumstances…”
It is highly significant that the precedent Barr cited to justify such an action was the Civil War, in which some 600,000 Americans were killed. Trump has given campaign speeches in which he said any effort to remove him from office would result in a “civil war.”
Then came the following exchange on the violent dispersal of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across from the White House:
Brennan: Did you think it was appropriate for them to use smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper balls, projectiles at what appeared to be peaceful protesters?
Barr: They were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the media seems to be perpetuating at this point.
Brennan: Three of my CBS colleagues were there. We talked to them. … They did not see protesters throwing anything. … And the methods they used you think were appropriate, is that what you’re saying?
Barr: When they met resistance, yes.
Brennan then recounted the scene last Monday in which Trump was asserting dictatorial powers and announcing plans to prosecute left-wing “outside agitators” as terrorists at the same time troops were moving against the Lafayette Park protesters to clear the way for Trump’s photo-op:
Brennan: Right around the same time the area is being cleared of what appear to be peaceful protesters, using some force. And after the speech is finished, the President walks out of the White House to the same area where the protesters had been and stands for a photo op. … In an environment where the broader debate is about heavy-handed use of force in law enforcement, was that the right message for Americans to be receiving? ...
Barr: Well, it’s the job of the media to tell the truth. They were not connected.
Barr’s full-throated defense of police-military repression of protests was echoed on the Sunday interview programs by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Wolf said, “I think we took the right action, and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen governors deploy the National Guard. We’ve seen governors and mayors call the federal government asking for support. And that’s what we’ve given them.”
Pressed on the decision to deploy 1,600 active duty troops to the outskirts of the capital by host Chris Wallace, who asked if that was “overkill,” Wolf indicated that a military mobilization against the protesters remained under consideration. He said, “So, again, from a law enforcement perspective, I would say making sure that we keep all our tools in the toolbox ready and available is very, very important. We don’t want to take anything off the table.”
The other dominant theme of the Sunday news programs was the public opposition of prominent retired generals to Trump’s Rose Garden coup speech and the threat to bring the military against demonstrators. The most significant such statement was the column by retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis published last Wednesday in the Atlantic . Mattis, known as the “butcher of Fallujah” for his role in the homicidal destruction of that Iraqi city, resigned as Trump’s secretary of defense in January of 2019 in protest against Trump’s announced plan to withdraw US forces from Syria.
Mattis openly accused Trump of violating the Constitution and threatening to assume dictatorial powers. He was subsequently seconded by former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen and Martin Dempsey, retired Marine General and former White House chief of staff to Trump John Kelly and other retired military brass.
The statements of these military officers, all of whom have been involved in bloody crimes of US imperialism around the world, were prompted not by devotion to democracy, but by concerns that Trump’s authoritarian moves would trigger an uncontrollable social explosion.
The main guest on CNN’s “State of the Union” program was Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 and Secretary of State at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Powell was the top military officer in 1992 when President George H. W. Bush sent in active duty troops to put down mass protests in Los Angeles against the police beating of Rodney King.
Powell, posing as a defender of the First Amendment, congratulated the former generals who criticized Trump’s actions and announced that he would vote for Democrat Joe Biden in the November presidential election.
Powell’s most significant statement in the interview was his attack on Congress for failing to address, let alone oppose Trump’s attempted anti-constitutional coup. He said:
And even more troubling, the Congress would just sit there and not in any way resist what the President is doing…
I watched the senators heading into the chamber the other day after all this broke, with the reporters saying, what do you have to say, what do you to say?
They had nothing to say.
This accurately describes the cowardice and complicity of both big business parties in the ongoing conspiracy against democratic rights that is centered in the White House. The most pernicious role is being played by the Democratic Party, the nominal “opposition” to Trump.
Not a single prominent Democrat—from Obama, the Clintons and Biden to the fake “progressives” Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—has warned the American people of the coup plans of Trump and his cabal of fascists in the White House.
This continued Sunday. Democrats interviewed on the talk shows included Senator Cory Booker, Representative Karen Bass, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Representative Val Demings, a former police chief in Florida who is on Biden’s “short list” to become his running mate. None of them even mentioned Trump’s Rose Garden speech and threats to impose martial law. As the military considers its options, the Democratic Party is allowing it to become the arbiter of the people’s democratic rights.
The Democrats are no less fearful than Trump and the Republicans that the multiracial and multiethnic protests against police violence will encourage a broader movement of the working class, already slammed by mass death and unemployment resulting from the official response to the coronavirus pandemic, which will assume revolutionary proportions.
The Most Shameful Stunt of Trump’s Presidency
Unleashing tear gas and rubber bullets for a photo op is his most dictatorial move yet.
June 2, 2020
The White House/Flickr
I had it in my mind that I would write something about the odd way that President Trump physically handles the Holy Bible, but I hadn’t come up with anything specific before I saw how
McKay Coppins went about it:
He wielded the Bible like a foreign object, awkwardly adjusting his grip as though trying to get comfortable. He examined its cover. He held it up over his right shoulder like a crossing guard presenting a stop sign. He did not open it.
“Is that your Bible?” a reporter asked.
“It’s a Bible,” the president replied.
I misread this the first time I looked at it. I thought Coppins was asking me to picture President Trump holding a red octagonal sign like he was presenting a gift. On my second reading, I understood he instead meant that Trump looked like a crossing guard holding up traffic, only with a Bible in his hand.
Either image does the job of conveying that there’s something unnatural going on. When Trump flashed the Bible on Monday at St. John’s Church near Washington’s Lafayette Park, he was holding it upside down and backwards, almost as if the book—or any book—has an unknown purpose.
This made is painfully clear that he was using the Bible as a prop, and that his appearance in front of the church was an effort to pander to the religious right.
In order to reach the location of the photo op, a block from the White House, he used the National Guard and the Secret Service to disperse protestors in his path. They utilized tear-gas and flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets to
clear Lafayette Park, even though it was only a half hour before an announced citywide curfew and there had been no violence or other threatening disturbances.
Linda Tirado, a freelance photojournalist, was
blinded in her left eye by a rubber bullet in Minneapolis. She also lacks heath insurance and is looking perhaps at almost a quarter million dollars in health care costs. Rubber bullets are no joke.
As for tear gas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
says , “prolonged exposure, especially in an enclosed area, may lead to long-term effects such as eye problems including scarring, glaucoma, and cataracts, and may possibly cause breathing problems such as asthma.”
Using tear gas outside is less likely to cause serious harm, but it’s not without risks. It’s highly immoral to blast tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd without a corresponding risk you’re looking to counteract.
In this case, the risk was that some harm would come to the president of the United States if he attempted to stroll through Lafayette Park while the crowds were still there. But all risk could have been avoided if Trump had decided that a visit to St. John’s Church a half an hour before curfew wasn’t a good idea.
No one in the White House thought to
notify the Church that they were coming, and this brought severe condemnation from both the city’s Episcopalian bishop and St. John’s presiding priest:
The Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the bishop of Washington who helped organize the clergy presence at the church, said Trump’s arrival at St. John’s happened without warning and left her “outraged.”
“The symbolism of him holding a Bible … as a prop and standing in front of our church as a backdrop when everything that he has said is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a church — I was horrified,” she told Religion News Service.
“He didn’t come to pray. He didn’t come to lament the death of George Floyd. He didn’t come to address the deep wounds that are being expressed through peaceful protest by the thousands upon thousands. He didn’t try to bring calm to situations that are exploding with pain.”
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, also criticized the move, accusing the president of using “a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.”
The president’s behavior was widely criticized throughout the capital, but some on his campaign team
believed it had been a success.
By late Monday, campaign officials were already tweeting a black-and-white photo of him walking to the church with a coterie of aides in his wake. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s top spokesman, posted the picture without a caption.
This was just one incident in an extremely violent day that saw the president implore the nation’s governors to get tough and “
dominate ” and then watched many of them try to comply.
VIDEO
The president’s short field trip may have given his campaign a nice picture of him “walking to the church with a coterie of aides in his wake,” but it’s likely to be remembered as one of the most shameful stunts of his entire presidency.
Protesters Would Save Him. He Was Wrong.
His gamble on creating a militarized culture war has done the opposite of what he hoped for.
June 6, 2020
Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons
It seems almost inane to remark on an electoral horse race at such a historic time. Why should we care about Donald Trump’s electoral chances when energized citizens across America are braving injury and arrest to confront white supremacy and police violence? But it’s important nonetheless.
That’s because while these problems have been centuries in the making from slavery to Jim Crow to Ferguson and beyond, Donald Trump’s particular failings as a person and a candidate are fanning the flames of the crisis. Rather than help be a part of the solution, he is intentionally exacerbating the tensions–not only because he himself is a racist whose politics of authoritarian white grievance align with the same forces driving police violence itself, but because he is desperate and in grave political peril.
This isn’t news: he has been for some time. He has consistently trailed all the leading Democratic contenders in national polling since the beginning of the primary campaign—not just nationally, but also in the swing states he needs in the electoral college. If he loses in November he and his defenders will claim he was on a pathway to victory before external forces derailed him, but this would be wrong. Even when the economy was strong, which normally bodes very well for first-term presidents’ odds at winning another four years, much of the persuadable public simply found itself so exhausted by Trump’s ongoing campaign against public decency that they were ready to vote for an alternative who did not take active measures to offend people on a daily basis.
Matters worsened for him when COVID-19 hit the United States and exposed him not just as a divisive buffoon, but a cynically incompetent one. The Administration delayed its response, worried that any action they took would hurt the stock market and erode Trump’s last remaining electoral strength. But even as the job losses mounted into the tens of millions as the nation rushed to try to contain an already widespread pandemic, the President personally promoted miracle quack cures like hydroxychloroquine and demonstrated his unbridled personal buffoonery by wondering aloud about the possibility of drinking bleach and injecting sunlight as a method of curing oneself of coronavirus.
Even before the brutal killing of George Floyd by officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, Trump knew that he would need to maximize his culture war appeal to non-college whites to make up ground lost to the faltering economy. There can be little doubt that Trump saw opportunity in the protests that followed to dust off the Nixon playbook , vowing to restore “law and order” in a country furious that the law seemed to protect only some, while enforcing a brutal order on others. If Trump’s actions threatened to turn the culture war into an active shooting war, that would just be collateral damage on the road to his political recovery.
The Trump orbit considers the iconography of jingoistic militarism and the violent suppression of protest to be a political winner. Consider, for instance, Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre 9/11 tribute tweet promoting a video that featured riot police, the military, and high school football squaring off against young protesters replete with counterculture stereotypes, including flag-burners, anti-police sentiment and even men with long hair (how dare they.)
Trump, like Nixon before him, uses “law and order” as a way of “talking about race without talking about race.” In this narrative, a president who supports American “traditional culture” and stands strong against people who agitate for racial justice will win over a “silent majority” of people who just don’t want to be disturbed and want to have some peace and quiet from their politics.
In this context, the killing of George Floyd was not a crisis, but an opportunity.
A president with an ounce of self-respect, dignity and compassion would have done her best to understand the anguish and grief facing the black community as yet another black person was killed needlessly and with zero remorse by a police force accustomed to no accountability. A president who made a semblance of caring about the country as a whole would have made at least a show of sympathy. Trump could not do even this.
This is, first and foremost, because Trump is the same man who published a full-page ad recommending the execution of the innocent Central Park 5, and has refused to apologize for or even retract his position. He is the same man who, as president, implemented a policy of separating immigrant children from their parents to lock them in cages without blankets or toothpaste, as an explicit deterrent to other potential (nonwhite, of course) immigrants seeking a better life. As Adam Serwer unforgettably said, the cruelty is the point.
Trump enjoys and encourages state brutality against people of color, and black people in particular. It excites him and his most ardent followers. But his response isn’t just based on personal predilections. It’s also based on political considerations. Trump sees shades of a 1968-style law-and-order culture campaign that can carry him to re-election when literally nothing else can.
Any normal president would have made an Oval Office address to the nation as soon as major protests began. Trump, despite his braggadoccio, showed characteristic cowardice and indecision for days, choosing to post inflammatory tweets while hiding in a White House bunker. When he finally did make a public address, it was little more the chest-puffing false bravado of a petty tyrant.
He has encouraged governors to use extreme force against protesters, using “antifa” and a small minority of looters and criminals as an excuse. In a tweet that was flagged with a warning by Twitter for its glorifcation of violence, he used a phrase that harkened back to the segregation era to threaten lethal force against protests. He has repeatedly threatened to use the military to suppress dissent. He has rebuffed the calls of Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District of Columbia to demilitarize the response to the protests, and has vowed to replace the troops she refuses with forces beyond her control. He has turned the District of Columbia, a plurality black city, into a militarized zone with non-uniformed secret police, and the White House as a closed-off fortress in its center.
Across the country, police have intentionally targeted journalists, leaving many with disfiguring injuries. Can there be any doubt that this unprecedented violence against the press was spurred on by Trump’s endless war with any media that holds him accountable? Given that Trump received the support of 84 percent of America’s police officers, how could it be otherwise?
And most egregiously, in what will surely be viewed as one of the most ill-advised stunts in presidential history, the Trump Administration had federal security forces use tear gas and projectiles to vacate Lafayette square by force of arms so Trump could make a show of walking over to St. John’s Church and posing awkwardly with a bible held upside down.
The message that Trump wanted to send with this stunt is not hard to decipher. It cast him as the warrior of white evangelical Christianity, waging a holy crusade by force of arms against those who would oppose it as the dominant force in American electoral politics.
Trump will fail, however, because neither the bastions of white culture nor the nation’s security apparatus are on his side this time. No matter what Trump did previously, the elements that represented these conservative institutional bastions would not condemn him. But Trump’s effort to use the military as both a political and kinetic weapon against Americans exercising their constitutional rights has caused the people who should be his allies to turn against him. It earned him stinging, humiliating rebukes from respected military leaders such as four-star Marine Corps General and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Conservative columnist George Will has called for the removal of Trump and the Congressional leaders who enable him. This despicable act even earned him condemnation from televangelist Pat Robertson, one his bedrock supporters in the white Christian evangelical movement.
Meanwhile, people of all races across America have watched in horror as police continue to commit violent acts of brutality against the people who are legally and peacefully protesting police brutality. Statistically speaking, white people have historically not believed that institutional racism in the police force is an issue worth their attention. Now, for the first time, a majority of whites do, and Americans of all races are overwhelmingly supportive of the protests against the killing of George Floyd. If Trump was planning on dividing Americans by race and cleaving more whites to his side, the plan is backfiring. Trump even seems to have a reverse Midas touch in recent polling on these issues: while Americans were broadly supportive of using the military to quell the civil disturbances at first, Trump’s embrace of the tactic seems to have helped drive those numbers into negative territory in just a few days.
In one sense, he’s right: people are exhausted with chaos, and they do want a respect for law and order. The problem for Trump? The chaos is in large part of his own making, and insofar as it isn’t, he’s in the way of solving the problems created by institutional racism and overlapping hierarchies of oppression. The massive wave of police brutality has woken even many previously disengaged white people up to the need for true equality under the law, and an order in which everyone, including police and the president, are held to account. And many of the same people Trump is trying to persuade now believe that kicking him out of the White House is a necessary prerequisite for making that vision a reality.
David Atkins is a writer, activist and research professional living in Santa Barbara. He is a contributor to the Washington Monthly's Political Animal and president of The Pollux Group, a qualitative research firm.
Dante Atkins is a former Hill staffer and current progressive communications consultant. Originally from Los Angeles, he resides in Washington, DC
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George Will: GOP Voters Will Forget Trump ‘Fairly Fast’ When He Loses Election
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Wednesday on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist George Will predicted President Donald Trump would lose in 2020, and that voters will forget him “fairly fast.”
Host Joy Reid asked, “If Republican voters listen to you and say it’s time to say no, let’s get rid of every single Republican in the Senate that they are capable of voting out, what will happen to the Republican Party? Do you foresee a time when Republicans develop amnesia about having been so solicitous of Donald Trump? What happened to that party long term?”
Will said, “I’m fairly confident that Mr. Trump will be defeated in the election. The next morning, a lot of Republicans will say, ‘Trump? I don’t recognize the name.’ They’ll get over this fairly fast. Our parties are very durable. Our two parties have formulated the political competition in this country since the Republicans first ran a presidential ticket in 1856.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
When it is a matter of upholding the global interests of American imperialism, the Democratic leaders are full of fire and brimstone. But when confronted with the direct threat of dictatorship, they are meek as church mice. Absolutely nothing good will come from the Democratic Party. It is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies. It is thoroughly hostile to the sentiments that are animating the massive and expanding protests against police violence and the broader social anger among workers that is behind them.
A call to the working class! Stop Trump’s coup d’état!
4 June 2020
The White House is now the political nerve center of a conspiracy to establish a military dictatorship, overthrow the Constitution, abolish democratic rights and violently suppress the protests against police brutality that have swept across the United States.
The political crisis unleashed on Monday night—when Donald Trump ordered military police to attack peaceful protesters and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy federal troops to states to establish martial law—is rapidly escalating.
Democracy in America is teetering on the
brink of collapse. Trump’s attempt to carry out
a military coup is unfolding in real time.
There is no other way to interpret the sequence of events that have occurred over the past 24 hours. In a series of extraordinary public statements, high-level political and military figures leave no doubt they believe that Trump is seeking to establish a military dictatorship.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stated at a press conference that he opposed Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military throughout the country. The use of active duty soldiers to patrol US cities, Esper said, should be a “last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.”
Trump, according to an official who spoke to the New York Times , “was angered by Mr. Esper’s remarks, and excoriated him later at the White House…” The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, indicated that Esper may soon be dismissed from the president’s cabinet.
Responding to Trump’s threats, Esper has reversed himself and ordered 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne currently in Washington DC not be sent back to Fort Bragg, as had previously been announced.
Esper’s comments were followed by an extraordinary denunciation of Trump by former Marine General James Mattis, Trump’s first secretary of defense. We quote Mattis’ comments in some detail not because we give any political support to “mad dog Mattis,” who played a leading role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but because he provides a blunt assessment from someone who is intimately familiar with what is happening within the military.
Mattis accused Trump of attempting to overthrow the Constitution. “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” he writes, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
Mattis continued:
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
Mattis concluded his statement by implicitly comparing Trump’s concept of the military to that of the Nazi regime.
Admiral Sandy Winnefeld, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in an email published in the New York Times : “We are at the most dangerous time for civil-military relations I’ve seen in my lifetime. It is especially important to reserve the use of federal forces for only the most dire circumstances that actually threaten the survival of the nation. Our senior-most military leaders need to ensure their political chain of command understands these things.”
None of these military figures are devoted adherents of democracy. Their statements are motivated by fear that Trump’s actions will be met with massive popular opposition, with disastrous political consequences.
“Senior Pentagon leaders,” the Times reports, “are now so concerned about losing public support—and that of their active duty and reserve personnel, 40 percent of whom are people of color—that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released a message to top military commanders on Wednesday affirming that every member of the armed forces swears an oath to defend the Constitution, which, he said, ‘gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.’”
Statements were also released by all the living former presidents—Obama, Clinton, Bush and Carter. These statements were far more circumspect and made no explicit warning of a coup. They called for no specific action against Trump. It was far less an appeal to the people than a cautious effort to dissuade military leaders from backing Trump.
On the side of the fascistic cabal around Trump, the Times published a comment by Senator Tom Cotton under the headline, “Send In the Troops.” This political conspirator declared, “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” Since “delusional politicians” are refusing to do what is necessary, Cotton writes, it is necessary for Trump to invoke “the Insurrection Act [which] authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.’”
The political situation is on a knife edge. Never in the history of the United States has the country been so close to a military takeover. Threatening military deployments are still underway. The Times reported on Wednesday night: “Despite calls for calm from senior Pentagon leaders, the troops on the ground in Washington on Wednesday night appeared to be ramping up for a more militarized show of force. National Guard units pushed solidly ahead of the police near the White House, almost becoming the public face of the security presence. They also blocked the streets with Army transport trucks and extended the perimeter against protesters.”
In the face of this unfolding political conspiracy, the Democratic party is acting with its habitual mixture of cowardice and complicity. Not a single major Democratic Party politician has openly denounced the dictatorial actions of the Trump administration. They are doing everything they can to keep the raging conflict within the state out of public view. The line from top Democrats is that Trump’s “rhetoric” is “unhelpful” and is serving to “inflame the situation.” Among the most pathetic responses to the crisis is that of Senator Bernie Sanders, who merely retweeted the statement of Mattis, to which he attached the comment: “Interesting reading.”
During the long-forgotten impeachment trial that was held in January, the Democrats insisted that it was necessary to remove Trump immediately because he had allegedly withheld military aid to the Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. They advocated the removal of Trump because he was seen as insufficiently aggressive in his relations with Russia.
But now, when Trump is attempting to carry out a military coup and the overthrow of constitutional rule in the United States, the Democrats offer no serious opposition to Trump, let alone demand that he be removed from office. When it is a matter of upholding the global interests of American imperialism, the Democratic leaders are full of fire and brimstone. But when confronted with the direct threat of dictatorship, they are meek as church mice.
Underlying their cowardice are basic class interests. Whatever their tactical differences with Trump, the Democrats represent the same class interests. What they fear more than anything else is that opposition to Trump may assume revolutionary dimensions that threaten the interests of the capitalist financial-corporate oligarchy.
The target of the conspiracy in the White House is the working class. The corporate-financial oligarchy is terrified that the eruption of mass demonstrations against police violence will intersect with the immense social anger among workers over social inequality, which has been enormously intensified as a result of the ruling class response to the coronavirus pandemic and the homicidal back-to-work campaign.
Nothing could be more dangerous than to think that the crisis has passed. It has, rather, just begun. The working class must intervene in this unprecedented crisis as an independent social and political force. It must oppose the conspiracy in the White House through the methods of class struggle and socialist revolution.
The demonstrations that have taken place during the past week rank among the most significant events in American history. In every region and state, tens and hundreds of thousands of working people and youth, in an extraordinary display of multi-racial and multi-ethnic unity and solidarity, have taken to the streets to oppose the institutionalized racism and brutality of the police. The South—the old bastion of the Confederacy, Jim Crow laws and lynch mobs—has been the scene of some of the largest of the demonstrations. The protesters are giving voice to the deep-rooted democratic and egalitarian sentiments that are the noble heritage of the great American Revolution of the eighteenth century and the Civil War of the nineteenth century.
The only viable answer to the criminal conspiracy being hatched in the White House is to raise the demand for the removal of Trump, Pence and their conspirators from office.
This can be achieved only through the intervention of the working class, which should join the protest demonstrations en masse and initiate a nationwide political strike.
No to dictatorship!
Trump and Pence must go!
Democrats cover for Trump’s coup d’état
3 June 2020
Following Trump’s announcement that he would deploy the military to crush protests against police violence throughout the country, the Democrats are working to cover up and downplay Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional coup d’état.
Trump has operationalized his efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship, based on the military and the police, through a massive military deployment in Washington, D.C., which is under his direct control. He is also escalating pressure on states to crack down on demonstrations after his threat on Monday to send in the military if they do not respond aggressively enough.
Late Tuesday night, Trump singled out New York City, writing on Twitter that “New York’s Finest are not being allowed to perform their MAGIC but regardless, and with the momentum that the Radical Left and others have been allowed to build, they will need additional help”—that is, the deployment of the military, under the president’s control.
President Donald Trump flanked by riot police in Lafayette Park after it was cleared using tear gas for the president's Monday press event outside St. John's Church across from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
In innumerable public statements, Democratic members of Congress, governors and mayors commenting on Trump’s actions ignored the fascistic and authoritarian character of Trump’s actions, focusing instead on declarations that Trump is not being “helpful” in controlling the demonstrations.
“Let’s not overreact,” said Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, calling Trump’s statements “bluster.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was asked if she would request military intervention, replied that this would only be necessary “because they’ve [the Trump administration] thrown a lot more gas on a fire that was burning.”
In contrast to the heroism of the demonstrators, who showed up by the tens of thousands in defiance of Trump’s threats, the Democrats have responded with their typical display of fecklessness, cowardice and complicity.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden delivered a 30-minute address on Tuesday full of mournful moralizing. He declared his wish that Trump had read the Bible, as he “could have learned something” and criticized Trump for fomenting “fear and division.”
Biden effectively equated the actions of protestors with the actions of the fascistic president and the police rampage he has incited. “There is no place for violence,” Biden said. “No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses. … Nor is it acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate tensions or resort to excessive violence.”
Biden avoided the central political issue—that the president is engaging in illegal actions and seeking to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer issued a perfunctory four-paragraph statement on Trump’s Rose Garden speech which did not include the word “military.”
“At a time when our country cries out for unification, this President is ripping it apart,” they said. “We call upon the President, law enforcement and all entrusted with responsibility to respect the dignity and rights of all Americans.”
Mirroring Trump’s own photo-op in Washington following his speech, Pelosi clutched a Bible before cameras while giving a two-minute address Tuesday morning. “We would hope that the President of the United States would follow the lead of so many presidents before him to be a healer-in-chief and not a fanner of the flame,” Pelosi concluded.
Only six months ago, the impeachment campaign of the Democrats concluded in the House of Representatives, which was presided over by Pelosi. The House approved articles of impeachment against Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that centered on a phone call with the president of Ukraine and allegations that Trump withheld military aid to the country in its war against Russia. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
While the Democrats considered the Ukraine call a basis for removing the President, they pass over in silence the attempt to deploy the military on US soil against domestic protests. Neither Pelosi nor any other Democrat has called for a reconvening of the House and the introduction of a new motion for Trump’s removal from office.
Trump’s demands that opposition to his government be “put down” by deployment of active duty military personnel is blatantly illegal. As Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman commented last year:
From the founding onward, the American constitutional tradition has profoundly opposed the President’s use of the military to enforce domestic law. A key provision, rooted in an 1878 statute and added to the law in 1956, declares that whoever “willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force” to execute a law domestically “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years”—except when “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”
As the WSWS has noted repeatedly, the aim of the Democrats in their opposition to Trump over the past three-and-a-half years was to carry out a palace coup
Now when there is a mass popular movement against Trump, the Democrats devote themselves to the futile effort at calming the situation. When they criticize Trump for “fanning the flames,” they are expressing their fear of a massive social eruption in the working class.
For the past three-and-a-half years, the Democrats have worked with Trump on the essential elements of the domestic policy of the financial oligarchy. Amidst the expanding coronavirus pandemic, they unanimously endorsed the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and are helping to enforce the back-to-work campaign spearheaded by the Trump administration.
Absolutely nothing good will come from the Democratic Party. It is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies. It is thoroughly hostile to the sentiments that are animating the massive and expanding protests against police violence and the broader social anger among workers that is behind them.
The struggle against the Trump regime can be taken forward only through the independent political mobilization of the working class, in opposition to the Democrats, Republicans and the entire political apparatus of the corporate and financial elite. The fight against police violence and Trump’s moves to presidential dictatorship must be fused with the struggle against inequality, exploitation and the capitalist system.
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