by Joe Kandra (artist) and Pat Daniel
Category: police violence
“When They Say We Don’t Have the Right to Protest,” Says Naomi Klein, “That’s the Moment to Flood the Streets”
by Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams
Amid a wave of sustained protest in cities across the U.S. and the globe against police brutality and racial injustice, author and activist Naomi Klein on Thursday reminded those experiencing President Donald Trump’s America that it is precisely during times when the government is pushing hardest to discourage dissent that massive displays of public opposition are needed most.
While Trump this week has dispatched with calls for calm and unity in favor of “law and order” machismo and threats of deploying U.S. soldiers, more police, and federal agents to put down demonstrations spurred by last week’s killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Klein in a Twitter post reprised a warning she first issued at the outset of the president’s term: “When they say we don’t have the right to protest, that is the moment to flood the streets.”
“One moment when it is incredibly important to resist, is in that moment when they are trying to scare you,” Klein said during the 2017 event in Chicago. “In that moment, when they are telling you to stay home, that is when you go out. When they are saying stay home—go out.”
Individuals and communities nationwide have demonstrated their inherent understanding of Klein’s guidance. Even after Trump had Lafayette Square outside the White House violently cleared of nonviolent protesters on Monday and threatened to send U.S. soldiers to patrol other U.S. city streets this week, the daily and nightly demonstrations, as Common Dreams previously reported, have only grown in strength and size as the week progressed.
Klein told the audience in 2017 that “we won’t know when it will happen,” but that when it does people should “flood the streets” en masse. “That matters more than anything,” she said to applause. “When they try to take away the right to protest, flood the streets, ok? Get ready.”
The event was related to Klein’s new book that year, titled “No Is Not Enough,” which offered an initial framework for understanding Trump’s rise to power as well as a blueprint for how best to resist his obvious racist and fascist tendencies.
Published on Thursday, June 04, 2020 by Common Dreams. Their work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Cartoon: Power potluck
by Joe Kandra, Kathie Malley-Morrison, & Pat Daniel
Turning anguish into action
By Marc Pilisuk
So many of my white friends and I are anguished over the injustice of yet another Black man murdered by police. We find ourselves agreeing with Black Lives Matter that the strong and necessary response to the recent killings involves working not only for justice in these individual cases, but also for addressing the systemic racism underlying the repeated injustices.
Calls for system change must be more than slogans to which we nod our approval. The change must involve going beyond our comfort zone—affecting how we communicate with political leaders and friends about the types of change needed, and impressing on them how urgent our efforts are. Even if we can prevent the imminent destruction to the planet posed by global warming and nuclear war, survival demands that we also work to build a more just society.
System change has many parts and provides many opportunities for involvement. A first step is to communicate to political leaders our dismay that a system providing greater funding for policing, criminalizing, and imprisoning people than for feeding, providing healthcare, and housing deprives people of dignity and healthy lives. We must also question why budgets for urban police provide military grade materials for surveilling and shooting protestors, when money for human social services is insufficient. In response to our own question, we must point out that this systemic misallocation of resources contributes to a bloated Defense Department budget that bolsters authoritarian governments that neglect the needs of their own people.
To take that first step, you can phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to obtain contact information for elected officials. You can send the same message to candidates for office and as op-eds or letters to local media. For example, you can recommend forming a nonpartisan group of experts to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward, as proposed by Representative Barbara Lee
A second action involves assisting community organizations to speak with a larger megaphone by joining together. Several groups across the country are working hard to promote racial justice in our systems, amplify Black voices, and rid our country of an implicit caste system. If you’re able to do so, you can help by splitting a donation among organizations such as these, Reclaim the Block, Movement for Black Lives, Black Visions Collective, and Violence in Boston, as recommended by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In addition, an important step we can all take is to examine the often unnoticed ways in which our own actions may unwittingly impede the needed change from a racist society to a more just and fair society. There are ways to be more reflective and to be more active in addressing racism in sectors of our personal lives, in schools, in work situations, and within families. A well thought out compilation of resources specifically for anti-racism work can be found here.
Marc Pilisuk, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus, The University of California, and Faculty, Saybrook University Berkeley, CA 94708. The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits From Global Violence and War by Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Achord Rountree. New York, NY: New York Monthly Review, 2015. Released July 2015. You can Order the book here. http://marcpilisuk.com/bio.html
This is a lightly edited post originally published by Dr. Pilisuk on the discussion group of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, of which he is a member.