Watching the people of colour in USA rise up for justice and their very lives, the first thing I would like to say is that
#BlackLivesMatter
and if you don't agree you can message me privately and I will try to
change your mind, but please do not respond publicly because right now
your opinion is violence if it is anything other than that Black Lives
Matter. Now and forever black lives must matter.
I need to say
something as a white European, to other white Europeans. Those of us
outside of USA cannot be complacent, just because it looks like it’s
happening in ‘crazy’ USA with ‘insane’ Mr Trump. It’s not about that.
It’s a complex, systemic problem, in which we are all of us complicit.
Understand: The dynamic at work here is the same dynamic that killed
over a hundred women when a clothing factory (sweat shop) burned down in
Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2012. It is the same dynamic which allowed Coca
Cola to murder trade unionists in Columbia in the early 2000s. It is the
same dynamic which means that the electronics we use are built by
people who throw themselves out of the windows of FoxCon in China, and
the metals they are using were mined by children in war torn Congo. It
is the dynamic that leads us to drown children in the Mediterranean.
This dynamic is not a simply American problem that we can feel free of
responsibility for. This is the outcome of the global economic system
called Capitalism that we are all part of.
Notice something:
people of colour the world over have a boot on their neck. Right now we
see Minneapolis. And we also see, when we want to look, the boot on the
neck of the people of Palestine. We see a boot on the neck of the people
of Western Sahara. We see the first nations peoples of Canada or
Australia. Everywhere you look you will see a boot on the neck. There is
a reason.
Oppression is necessary for the functioning of
Capitalism. No Capitalism has ever or could ever exist without this
oppression, because Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. It started (in
Britain) with the oppression of the English peasantry, the Welsh,
Scottish protestants and then they were used to oppress the Irish. Other
European peoples followed on their own trajectory. Soon it became the
peoples of the Azores and Canary islands, then the people of Southern
and Central America, the West Africans, the peoples of North America,
and then Slavery. Then the peoples of Asia, and so on. Then the ruling
classes of Europe spread this oppression the world over. And though
people fought to end slavery, wherever they did, the European powers
ruined them. Did you know Haiti is the only country in the world to have
had a successful slave revolution? Did you know that they only finished
paying off the reparations to France for the lost slave profits 143
years later? Do you think it's a coincidence that the Americans continue
to intervene in their elections, that Haiti is one of the poorest
countries in the world?
Did you know that slavery is still legal
in the USA if you are a prisoner? (The 13th Amendment).* Do you think
it's coincidence that USA has by far the highest rates of incarceration
in the world? Do you think it's a coincidence that the war on drugs was
used to send young black & latinx folk to jail in a country whose
economy and law allowed and rewarded corporations for using those folks
for slave labour? This is an economy built on slavery. This slavery
never went away. The role of the police officer is to catch new slaves,
to terrorise the slaves into staying in line. That's the historical
role, now you tell me if it ever changed.
And so it is everywhere
in the world where Capitalism holds. It is a pyramid scheme, where
every rich person must exploit and oppress ten thousand people to
maintain their wealth. How do you think fifty people own the wealth of
half the world? And it is racialised in America because of its racist
history, which has been maintained so that way they can buy the votes of
the white population a little easier. In India a similar oppression
exists but it is more through caste and religion than race (though still
also racial). The oppression is required by the economy, how it is
expressed varies historically and culturally. In Britain, Germany,
France, it still falls on the people of colour, as well as simply the
working classes of all colours, but for the most part we export that
oppression.
The fact that, for the most part, the situation in
the 20th century improved for many (by no means all) of the white
peoples, is not an indication that things are getting better. It is an
indication that the base of oppression moves around. We exported
oppression, through our military and through economic strangulation, to
the people of the Middle East, to the peoples of Latin America, to
Vietnam, wherever seemed appropriate when the moment came. When the
economy fell, whoops here’s the boot again on the necks of the Spanish
and Portuguese and Greeks. Once it was China that was oppressed to
provide the British and French wealth, now China is involved in its own
resource grab, now China will export some of its oppression to Africa
and Latin America, Tibet and Muslim peoples. The buck never stops.
Capitalism doesn't solve its problems, it simply moves them around.**
The point I'm making is that the people of colour the world over will
continue to have a boot on their neck for as long as we continue to
exist inside Capitalism.*** There is no squaring this circle. We may not
be in the USA, we might not be watching the murder outside our very
windows, but this makes us more and not less complicit.**** We, each of
us, simply by supporting the status quo, demand that our masters press
the boot down harder on their necks for fear that one day it might step
on ours. And unless things change, one day it will. We live inside
national gated communities, we bomb Iraq and Libya and Syria and then
drown their children in the Mediterranean. We watch as Global Warming
drowns the island nations and flood plains of the world, and we are
building higher walls instead of longer tables.
And for what?
What does all that black and brown and red blood buy you? Does it let
you rest? Does it leave you alone? No, it demands that you work forever
or starve. This is the price we sell our conscience for. This is the
value of our souls. For fear that we might slip down the pyramid, we
continue to prop it up.
Until and unless we join the revolution, we are all of us complicit. Our choice is simple:
Continue as we are, support the status quo, and bathe in the blood of
people of colour until the ocean comes over our walls and washes us off
of the face of the Earth and history.
Or:
Revolt. Fight for a
new world, fight our own masters, join the oppressed peoples of the
world in lifting the boot from their neck and allowing them, finally, to
breathe.
#Blacklivesmatter #NojusticeNopeace #Saytheirnames
*Amendment XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
**To learn more about crisis in Capitalism and why Capitalism can’t solve its problems, watch
David Harvey's excellent explanation of the 2008 financial crash.
***Unless, of course, the peoples of colour become strong enough to
place a boot on the white necks of the world without changing the
system. On that day we'll wish we had fought for socialism.
****
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/1500-and-counting-film
https://novaramedia.com/…/the-uk-is-not-innocent-police-br…/