Dissent

It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country. We never planned to go inside the cavernous […]

African-Americans

The George Floyd protests aren’t just anti-racist – they are anti-authoritarian

The Conversation

By Lilian Bobea | — The massive protests that erupted across the United States – and beyond – after the police killing of George Floyd are billed as anti-racist mobilizations, and that they are. Demonstrators are denouncing police violence in minority communities and demanding that officers who abuse their power be held accountable. But I […]

Democracy

War Zone America

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Recently, in this Black Lives Matter protest moment, my five-year-old son looked at me and asked, “Mommy, where did all the brown people go? Did the police here shoot them?” We’d just moved to the outskirts of a more affluent rural town from a city where my son […]

African-Americans

Seattle’s BLM Autonomous Protest Zone and the Paris Commune of 1871: Anti-Capitalist Spirit still Lives

The Conversation

Oli Mould | – A new autonomous zone set up in Seattle by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement bears some striking similarities with the Paris Commune of 1871. Despite its brutal ending, the seminal event in the French capital 150 years ago set the agenda for progressive urban politics and broader social justice movements […]

Dissent

Drones and Protesters: How High-Tech Surveillance Amplifies Police Bias and Overreach

The Conversation

By Andrew Guthrie Ferguson | – Video of police in riot gear clashing with unarmed protesters in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has filled social media feeds. Meanwhile, police surveillance of protesters has remained largely out of sight. Local, state and federal law enforcement organizations use […]

Dissent

What – or who – is Trump’s Bogeyman Antifa?

The Conversation

By Stanislav Vysotsky | – The movement called “antifa” gets its name from a short form of “anti-fascist,” which is about the only thing its members agree on. President Donald Trump and some far-right activists and militants have claimed antifa is allegedly conspiring to foment violence amid the protests sweeping the U.S. In my forthcoming […]

Bill of Rights

How Trump brought US Racist Policing and Racist Foreign Policy Together on D.C. Streets

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

(Code Pink) – On June 1, President Trump threatened to deploy active-duty U.S. military forces against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in cities across America. Trump and state governors eventually deployed at least 17,000 National Guard troops across the country. In the nation’s capital, Trump deployed nine Blackhawk assault helicopters, thousands of National Guard troops […]

Democracy

The Other Looting: We’ve Just witnessed a Nationwide Police Riot, Fueled by Trump’s talk of “Terrorists”

Dan Dinello

Reacting to Protests Against Brutality and Racism, the Police Try to Crush Dissent by Brutally Beating, Gassing, and Shooting Protesters

Democracy

The 2020 uprisings, unprecedented in scope, join a long river of struggle in America

The Conversation

By Matthew Countryman | – The river was the metaphor that best captured “the long, continuous movement” of the black freedom struggle for theologian, historian and civil rights activist Vincent Harding. Harding, who had served as a speechwriter for Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in his groundbreaking 1981 study of African-American history, “There is […]