The real power is in the streets!
Trump must resign or be removed!
Trump and Pence must go now!
Our country is coming apart. Neither political party is in control of anything important. Only the movement for justice that is fighting in the streets of America today has the real consciousness, commitment, and power to resolve the real problems to hold the country together on the basis of the principle that all people are created equal, that governments exist to protect the rights of the people, and that among those absolutely fundamental rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–rights that must be protected for everyone. Only the movement fighting in the streets now and the leadership that it is creating can be trusted to save America from the monstrous crimes against humanity of the Trump/Pence administration and the incapacity of the “opposition party,” the Democrats, to show the consciousness, the will, or courage to resolve any current crisis.
On the one hand, we have a President, Donald Trump, and his party, the Republican Party, that has been capable of reacting to the cruel racist murder of George Floyd only by threatening to send US military forces into America’s cities, ordered by the Commander-in- Chief, to go to war with the American people and turn a situation of increasing division into the possibility of an actual civil war. Trump’s actions are those of a racist, hate-mongering madman, who in his fundamental weakness and cowardice feels his illegitimate claim to exercise abusive and increasingly authoritarian power challenged by millions of people rising up against and rejecting his illegitimate claim to leadership. Like weak despots before him, he is flailing about, threatening to use military powers he hopes he can control to suppress the people who are rejecting the evil rule of a cruel and stupid man.
During the terrible COVID-19 pandemic crisis, Trump maintained a stupid, incompetent, anti-science, and inhumane policy that has led to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Now he faces a new crisis with the same stupidity, the same incompetence, the same irrationality, and the same inhumanity, combined with his fundamentally racist and hate-filled view of the world. Vice President Michael Pence has been, throughout the entire Trump presidency, nothing other than Trump’s mindless toady and henchman. For Trump to be succeeded by Pence would leave every current crisis and problem unresolved, with no possibility for progress. Trump must go and he must take his slavish pet Pence with him, or the nation may not survive.
The official alternative leadership to Trump’s Republican Party is the Democratic Party, unofficially headed by their current presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is a veteran, longtime American politician, always a thoroughly dutiful and regular part of his party’s establishment. Biden is a mediocrity, whose worldview has remained firmly trapped in the past of the 1970’s. There is no doubt that Joe Biden is a nicer person and holds a set of less odious positions than the would-be tyrannical Donald Trump. But in the course of the struggle for justice for George Floyd, Biden has remained singularly uncomprehending, clueless, and weak. In his recent statements, Biden’s program of action has consisted of a set of proposals for the Democrats of the US House of Representatives to adopt a set of useful but insufficient reforms dealing to some degree with police brutality and racism. His call on his party to adopt bills in the US House containing these reforms has somehow failed to mention the obvious fact that the Republican US Senate would never pass, and Trump would never sign these measures. How stupid does Biden think the crowds in the streets are to be taken in by such nonsense as a serious response to their anguish and anger. Biden’s fundamental and highest level demand has been a repeated pious call on Donald Trump to become a “good president.” It seems that Biden’s only real response to the killing of George Floyd and the outrage of communities across the country is the proposal that Donald Trump become an entirely different human being and play a larger role in resolving the crisis. Biden playing the role of Trump’s public therapist is ridiculous and pathetic behavior for a man pretending to be a leader who could actually deal with the crisis of systemic racism and the fury that has erupted against it. Does Biden really think his public counseling sessions for Trump make him look like a leader?! Does he really want Trump to play a LARGER ROLE in exercising power in response to the public police murder of an innocent black man? Our nation is crying out to be rid of the monstrous racist tyranny of Donald Trump. Joe Biden offers counseling sessions for the monster.
But while the two parties fail, in the different ways, at responding to the new movement for justice, rising up in memory and in tribute to George Floyd, the victim of a public police lynching, the movement itself is learning rapidly to understand more deeply the character of the society it seeks to save and the means necessary to save it.
As a first step in preventing the tearing apart, on the basis of racism and hate, of the people of the United States, the new movement for civil rights and justice for all must demand the immediate removal from office of Donald Trump and Michael Pence. Within our own lifetimes, other peoples have risen up to make such a demand and achieved that aim, including the people of Puerto Rico, a section of the American people, just last year. The people of Puerto Rico point the way. The movement in the streets must demand the immediate resignation or forced removal of the 2 monsters from the leadership of the American government.
Of course the opposition Democrats will tremble in mindless fear at the prospect of such an event, even though it would bring them to power. The movement must make this demand anyway. Then the movement should learn the lesson of its own victory, that only the oppressed actually FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE, are really capable of carrying such a struggle to victory. The movement must maintain its own independent understanding, struggle, and organization. In the words of an old Democrat: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!” The current movement of mass action in the streets represents the only real hope for justice and unity our nation has. We must not look to the politicians or any political or economic establishment to achieve the great aims that the movement is fighting for. We cannot wait for the November election, which Donald Trump has made clear he may attempt to cancel, or, should he “allow” the election to happen, he has made clear he may not respect the results unless they are favorable to him and his tyranny. There is no reason to wait for that tyranny to seize the initiative. The movement can save the country from the tyrants now, with its own methods and, yes, its own heroism.
Frederick Douglass:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” –West India Emancipation Speech, August 3, 1857
2020.06.03
