u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 1 https://www.rt.com/op-ed/490255-democracy-black-americans-riots/
Dr Lisa McKenzie
Dr Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic. She grew up in a coal-mining
town in Nottinghamshire and became politicized through the 1984 miners’
strike with her family. At 31, she went to the University of Nottingham and
did an undergraduate degree in sociology. Dr McKenzie lectures in sociology
at the University of Durham and is the author of ‘Getting By: Estates,
Class and Culture in Austerity Britain.’ She’s a political activist,
writer and thinker. Follow her on Twitter @redrumlisa.
31 May, 2020
Another resonant police killing of a black man in the US has triggered
another wave of riots. To those who say riots are not the answer and voting
is, I say: voting does not work for poor, black, working-class Americans.
Lucy Parsons, born in Texas in 1851, was a working-class activist
revolutionary and anarchist, whose heritage was African American, native
American and Mexican. She was labelled “More dangerous than a thousand
rioters” by the Chicago police in the 1920s. Why? Because she acknowledged
that the democratic system in the US did not work for the working class. Her
call to arms was made in 1885, in a speech to hundreds of thousands at a
rally in Chicago following the murder of two striking workers by the army:
Let us devastate the avenues where the wealthy live.
Today I write in solidarity with the international working class –
especially those in the US that are out on the streets today fighting
against the tyranny of their own government, legislative system, economic
system, and their state. Thirty million Americans are unemployed, not
because of the coronavirus but because their system does not care for those
who cannot contribute to a racist, capitalist system which can only survive
through the oppression of those with the least power.
If 30 million unemployed was the reason for their protests – which have
included rioting, the burning down of police stations and police cars, and
looting the symbols of capitalism, such as that Louis Vuitton store – that
would be reason enough. However, even the news that 30 million Americans are
jobless with little-to-no state support for their welfare has been
surpassed by the public execution of one of their citizens, George Floyd, on
the streets of Minneapolis last week. His crime: being a black working-
class man in America; his executioners: white police officers.
Consequently, black and white working-class people came out onto the streets
to protest, and they have been met with more state violence. The scenes
have been shocking, but not unexpected. When a system and political
structure is in place that does not work for you – and the ritual of voting
every four years to keep that system intact means you face more of the same
– your only political options are on the streets rather than the voting
booth. This is why rioting – violence towards state property and the
symbols of an oppressive system – is legitimate.
It is understandable that people are calling for justice and want to see the
arrest of the executioners, but let us be honest: the perpetrator in this,
and in the hundreds of state-sanctioned African American deaths in the US,
is their own administration. And how will the most oppressed and powerless
of people hold to account a system that actively works to oppress them? Some
say that voting for the ‘right’ person is the answer, but that ‘right’
person represents the wrong system.
Can we honestly ask African American people to keep voting, in a system that
is historically and institutionally racist, for more powerful white people
– or, in the case of Barack Obama, an acceptable black man who believes in
and upholds the same system as his oppressors?
It is too easy and too lazy to blame the fool Donald Trump for a system
whose very survival depends upon the perpetuation of racism, oppression, and
inequality.
I write in solidarity here, as I am not American or black – but I am a
working-class woman in the United Kingdom, another system which can only
work amid the oppression of those with the least power.
I have no clear and definitive answers here – just anger and sadness, not
only at those who commit such crimes, but also those who enable them by
allowing a system they know is neither democratic or fair to continue,
either by their eagerness to participate in it or their eagerness to defend
that system, but with reforms.
Today I want to pay tribute to those who are currently fighting for their
lives against oppressive governments all over the world – but especially to
those in the US who know their democracy is a lie, and that the change they
need is the love and solidarity that can only come from their own
communities.
I urge, as my hero Lucy Parsons did before me, that fundamental societal
change cannot come from “vote begging, nor political campaigns.” They need
the space to breathe. | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 2 欧洲人写的评论
指出美国问题根源是整个政治体系，想通过选举让一个『正确』的领袖代表一个『错误
』的系统，没门！ | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 3 Some say that voting for the ‘right’ person is the answer, but that ‘
right’ person represents the wrong system.
Can we honestly ask African American people to keep voting, in a system that
is historically and institutionally racist, for more powerful white people
– or, in the case of Barack Obama, an acceptable black man who believes in
and upholds the same system as his oppressors? | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 4 It is too easy and too lazy to blame the fool Donald Trump for a system
whose very survival depends upon the perpetuation of racism, oppression, and
inequality. | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | 6 Today I want to pay tribute to those who are currently fighting for their
lives against oppressive governments all over the world – but especially to
those in the US who know their democracy is a lie, and that the change they
need is the love and solidarity that can only come from their own
communities.
especially to those in the US who know their democracy is a lie | u***r
发帖数: 4825 | | s*****r
发帖数: 11545 | 8 "voting does not work for poor, black, working-class Americans."
This statement is full of crap.
Voting works for any group whose number is large enough to affect the
election outcome. Otherwise US won't give political correctness a damned
shit and won't be sliding into a shithole. |
| u***r
发帖数: 4825 | |
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