When I talk about political violence, what I mean is protective violence. Black people have had to use violence to protect themselves. If someone was trying to capture and enslave them, they felt well within their rights to use deadly force to combat that.
We have to understand the violence of policing within a long continuum of ongoing, foundational, colonial, imperial, racist violence that produces the US political economy.
Do these social movements have the means to put over their vision of the future? Not right now. They’re not strong enough. But they are producing extraordinary insights and information that helps guide the way forward.
“The thing that I find fascinating in this moment, and different from the sixties, is that these protest movements are coming together.”
Black women don’t come into view as victims of police brutality; they’re not seen as representative of how the entire community experiences racism. Nor do they come into view when the conversation is about violence against women, which of course police violence against black women is.
lasst euch vom Mut des Aufstands und der Militanten von Ferguson inspirieren. Nehmt am Kampf und an den Debatten teil, egal wo ihr seid.
These broader structural issues of police brutality, loss of economic opportunity, and exploitative practices are happening everywhere.
