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Little Red Letter No. 58

Video: How Can Socialists Fight for the End of Policing?

The nationwide protests against racist police violence have been inspiring, and as socialist organizers we fight for political reforms like defunding the police that can meaningfully restructure our society for justice and peace. This past Friday, TC DSA’s very own Robin Wonsley joined Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and author of The End of Policing (temporarily free as an e-book), for a discussion on how we can organize for lasting political reform.

We're living through another wave of racial terrorism and police murders of black people. Working class people and working class communities of color in the United States have just lost tens of millions of our jobs through no fault of our own. As a result of the structure of the racial capitalism, the victims of COVID-19 are overwhelming black people and people of color, who disproportionately are low-wage essential workers who cannot work from home, and who disproportionately cannot afford quality healthcare. Throughout this crisis, politicians at all levels of government are overwhelmingly in the hands of the capitalist class, and are doing all they can to bail capitalists out at the expense of the working class.

We know that neoliberal capitalism leaves millions of us to starve and to be targeted, harassed, and imprisoned. We have a carceral and police system designed to target the poorest among us instead of providing universal, class-wide social programs for our health, housing, and dignity. Without universal social reforms that undermine the basis of poverty, the capitalist class divides the working class and targets the most vulnerable among us. This is how we have ended up with a years-long pandemic of US police killing people, often without consequences. They are fulfilling their role in society, and it is our job to change society to eliminate that role... (watch the video)
 

Memorials to George Floyd Fill the Boarded-Up Streets of Minneapolis

Artists authorized and otherwise took to the streets to make lemonade out of lemons.

All photos taken by me on June 3rd... (see images of murals)

- Bennett H.

image credit: Bennett H
 

Indoor Kids Fight for #Justice4GeorgeFloyd Too

Until we are all free, we are none of us free. -- Emma Lazarus

I am, at heart, an indoor kid. If you know me from the chapter, it’s because I signed you in to a general meeting or responded to an operations question via email; you might know me because the chapter chose me to represent us at the convention last year (I ran on a very indoor-kid platform!). But mostly I prefer to stay behind the scenes: I manage the member list, the slack invitations, the doorknocking turfs, sometimes the newsletter - all of them anchors for the chapter’s organizing... (read more)

- Anne B. 

Amazing Grace: George Floyd's Memorial Service

Like my comrade Anne, I’m an indoor kid. George Floyd’s memorial service was today at North Central University, a Pentecostal college, in a building I pass every day on my quarantine sanity walks. The most time I’ve spent outside in three months was this afternoon, when I sat on the curb to listen to the service... (read more)

- Tracy W.

Navigating Political Strategy in the George Floyd Uprising

It's been tricky to navigate our political strategy work in response to what feels like an unprecedented, constantly shifting, and very intense historic moment. In the Political Strategy Working Group we try to parse out the dynamics at work and how to best situate ourselves within the movement... (read more)

- Celeste R.

image credit: Bennett H.