CNN wants to “finally get back to normal”.
What is normal in the USA?
Sadly, racism is normal and the killing of black people by police has long been normalised.
It was nice having a black man in the White House but nothing changed apart from the personnel.
Real comes up from the street. After the election, the struggle continues.
No illusions in Biden and Harris!
“When Obama was President, I was marching for Trayvon Martin fresh out of college”
Trump has lost the US election but he wants to go down in flames and take the rest of the USA with him.
In a typically dishonest statement yesterday, in which he claimed ‘corruption’ in Detroit and Atlanta was endemic, his thinly disguised racism was again on display for all to see.
The postal vote is overwhelmingly Democratic and the metro areas being counted are heavily African-American, given the racist residential segregation which is still such a major feature of American life.
On that basis, with Biden now in the lead in Georgia and expected to overtake Trump in Pennsylvania, Trump is finished.
We appreciate that Trump doesn’t want to lose because he knows he will also lose his presidential immunity and could be looking at a prison cell given his clear and present corruption.
But there is a bigger story about the US election, which was the refusal of the Democrat leadership to focus on harnessing the anger and enthusiasm of the BLM movement, or to articulate and advance policies that will attract working-class people, black and white.
Trump is now planning to unleash his fascist friends against American democracy, such as it is.
The right has been calling for insurrection and violence to stop the count.
Mad man Glen Beck has called for the overthrow of the US government.
Buy peole are taking to the streets again – and again the police are showing whose side they are on. In New York City 25 people were arrested on a peaceful protest and an advocate observer was roughed-up by the forces of racism and disorder.
We send our solidarity to our sisters and brothers in the BLM movement in the US and progressive forces beyond that as the y prepare to meet the threat from the deranged christian and fascist right and others among the delusional (and disappointed) MAGA hordes.
But to date, the protests by Trump supporters have been small and violence more at the level of threats and talk than actual action.
But make no mistake, Trump is pushing to block democracy by any means. necessary, and that unfortunately is not confined to unfounded law suits.
Finally, how dare Trump and his racist supportes try to stop black peoples’ votes being counted in Detroit and Georgia.
For those black people who were foolish enough to vote for the enemy, hopefully things are a little clearer, although we suspect there’s no telling stupid – yes we are talking about you 50 Cent, Ice Cube and the other rich backers of white supremacist Trump. They let the myth and cult of the entrepreneur cloud their judgement – it is working people, black and white, who make the world go round.
Rappers are not essential workers – especially the ones who have turned their back on the community to assist the architects of the new Jim Crow.
It’s hard trying to vote in America if you are black as an ‘I am Change’ BLM march to get out the vote discovered.
Although we’ve come along way since the legal segregation and oppression that was the Jim Crow regime, the same methods used then to keep black people away from the polls, are returning in force.
On Saturday racist cops in North Carolina decided to take it upon themselves to pepper spray families and children on a peaceful ‘get out the vote’ march in North Carolina.
Suffice to say none of the cops involved in launching the pepper spray attack have been disciplined. In fact they probably got rewarded when they returned to the police precinct for services to the Trump campaign.
“I saw a little girl, probably five, being carried off sobbing and coughing. She was dressed as a fairy or a princess”
‘I Am Change’ march participant
Amy Goodman at Democracy Now has the full story:
How the ‘get out the vote’ BLM march was attacked
Police in Alamance County in North Carolina pepper-sprayed a peaceful get-out-the-vote march Saturday, descending on the crowd after they stopped near a Confederate monument to kneel in honor of George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis in May.
Viral videos of the violent police action show officers in riot gear attacking the marchers, including young children and elderly people, who had intended to walk to a polling place on the last day of early voting in North Carolina.
At least eight people were arrested, including march organizer Rev. Greg Drumwright, who says police gave the crowd of hundreds only 14 seconds to clear out before attacking.
“We never made it to the polls,” says Drumwright. “We believe that this interaction, this interference from the local authorities, has obstructed our marchers from not only lifting up our First Amendment rights but also our rights to vote.”
More from Democracy Now here
The murder of Walter Wallace is the latest brutal outburst of racism from American police.
Wallace had a history of mental health issues but instead of getting the help he needed, he ended up dead at the hands of cops who don’t know how to shoot to injury – they always shoot to kill.
The murder of 27-year-old Wallace led to two days of mass protests in Philadelphia as black and white protesters demanded justice for the slain man.
In last week’s protests, at least five police cars were torched and some 91 people arrested.
The Pennsylvania national guard were shipped in at the end of last week to put down the revolt, but the temperature is expected to rise again when the body cam footage is released on Wednesday – the day after the presidential election.
A 9pm curfew has been imposed across Philadelphia.
As usual the white supremacists in the White House were quick to condemn ‘mobs’ and said nothing at all about yet another killing by racist cops.
At a campaign rally in Arizona on Wednesday last week, the thug in chief Donald Trump said: “Last night, the city of Philadelphia was ransacked by violent mobs and Biden-supported people.
“These were all Biden-supported people, and he wouldn’t even call them out.”
The police did have plenty to say though.
Someone called John McNesby from the the police union (lodge) said the police involved in the murder “are traumatised by being involved in a fatal shooting”.
Yeah right!
Derek Chauvin – the cop who killed George Floyd is out of prison and wandering around as a free man as he waits for a trial at which he will no doubt walk free.
As 400 years of history attests, to get racial justice in America requires struggle.
No Justice No Peace, no racist police.
Derek Chauvin and the other three ex Minneapolis police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd appeared in court on Friday.
Chauvin has been charged with first degree murder.
The other three accomplices to the murder of George Floyd – Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao – are charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter and are free on bail.
Police defence claims that Floyd died from an overdose although the world saw him die because a policeman had his knee pressed on his neck for 8 minutes and 45 seconds.
As civil rights lawyer Ben Crump put it: ‘The only overdose was an overdose of police force.
The world saw what happened. ‘Who are you going to believe? Your eyes, or these killer cops?’
The ex cops were greeted with jeers and abuse from protesters when they left the court.
In the UK there were solidarity protests to demand justice for George Floyd on Friday.
A police officer in Georgia was fired as of Friday after videos on TikTok that drew millions of views showed him using a Taser in the arrest of a Black woman, the authorities said.
The Police Department in Gwinnett County, which is about 20 miles northeast of Atlanta, said it had begun its investigation into the officer, Michael Oxford, before the video spread widely on TikTok.
Investigators examined whether Officer Oxford, who is white, used de-escalation techniques and whether he violated departmental policy on Aug. 18 when he arrested the woman, Kyndesia Smith. more
