(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It's going faster and faster at the moment. In just a few months, we have not just dismissed the dream or illusion of a parliamentary reshuffle of the United States with Bernie Sanders as Democratic president, but also seen Covid-19 hit the United States with violent force. More than 100.000 Americans have so far died, and coronaThe pandemic has revealed how bad things are in the world's economic, cultural and military center.
21 million workers are now unemployed.
If the United States has previously been in the front in international crises, this time the country has shone through a horrific handling of covid-19. TrumpThe government first stole the virus and has since tried with conspiratorial charges against China, thereby concealing how ill-equipped the US health care has been. 15 percent of the U.S. population – 21 million workers – is now unemployed. It's just a matter of time before millions of Americans will be forced from home and home because they can't pay their bills. If the 20th century stood in the United States sign, much suggests that the new century will take the form of an agonizing and contradictory out there for the world's self-proclaimed superpower.
African American George Floyd
As if Bernie's defeat and coronathe pandemic was not enough, we are now experiencing the most widespread protests and unrest in recent American history after police killed the 46-year-old African American George floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Floyd was arrested for trying to pay cigarettes with a fake $ 20 bill at a convenience store. That it is an incident at all, Politiet Priority at a time when the United States is fighting a pandemic can only help but two cops pulled out after an employee called the police. Floyd was sitting in his car when he was arrested. The officers forced him out of the car, after which another two officers arrived. Floyd was handcuffed and pushed down to the ground with his face against the tarmac while the policeman Derek chauvin pressed one knee down on Floyd's neck. He continued with that for almost 9 minutes. Floyd repeated at least 16 times that he couldn't breathe, and for the last three minutes he seemed unconscious. The other three officers did not respond to Floyd's emergency calls, but prevented a concerned passerby from approaching Floyd. All the while, a spectator shared the entire process on social media.
The day after the murder, the four officers were fired.
The day after the murder, the four officers were fired. During the day, hundreds of people gathered at the intersection where Floyd was killed. In the evening, the protesters moved to the nearby police station, where it clashed with police firing with tear gas and rubber bullets. In a matter of days, the protests spread to hundreds of cities in the United States, where fierce fighting between police and protesters ensued. Stores were looted and police cars burned off. On Thursday, May 26, the police station in question was set on fire Minneapolis. The following day, Chauvin was charged with manslaughter. On June 3, they were charged with the other three officers.
The National Guard deployed
The protests have lasted more than a week now and are the most comprehensive in USA since the late 1960s. It started in Minneapolis, but quickly spread to many other cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, LA, Louisville, New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Oregon, Richmond, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Washington.
In many places fierce battles between police and protesters. Police believe the habit has progressed hard with rubber bullets and tear gas in large numbers, but they have been met by a surprisingly resolute resistance. In many cities, police have withdrawn and left neighborhoods for protesters who have looted luxury stores and malls as well as set fire to cars and buildings, including police stations. If they have not exactly joined the demonstrations, as has happened in several places. On the web, images of battles between protesters and violent police – and sequences in which entire rows of police cars are set on fire – are flowing. On the night of Friday, May 29, there were so fierce fighting between police and protesters in front of the White House that Trump was led to safety in a bunker under the White House, something that usually only happens in the event of a war or a terrorist attack.
Entire rows of police cars are set on fire.
Because otherwise militarily militarized police – that have taken over a lot military hardware staple used in Afghanistan and Iraq – unable to keep up, the National Guard has been deployed in more than 26 states to fight the protests. President Trump says the protesters are thugs and thieves and he has not just threatened to do Antifa (Anti-fascist action) to a terrorist organization, but has also threatened to put the military on the streets if protests do not come under control. Thus, 1600 soldiers have already been placed on the outskirts of Washington DC.
Sunday, May 30, was introduced curfew in 12 cities, however, which has not yet put a damper on the protests. On the contrary, they are merely strengthened. Thus, on June 2, there were major demonstrations, looting and fighting with the police in all 50 states of the United States. The scale of the protests cannot help but surprise. It is the most explosive protest wave in recent American history. It took a long time for the 1960s struggle against structural racism and opposition to the Vietnam War to reach a similar scale. And from reports and participant observations, it appears to be a far more multiracial and complex group than on previous occasions. Occupy remained largely young white students, and Black Live Matter consisted mainly of African Americans, but the new protests amass a far more diverse crowd of dissatisfied people who are apparently not afraid of the police. They continue to walk on the streets despite curfew, contagion and brutal police. We see a real challenge to state repression and fear politics.
A murder too much
The protests highlight a huge crisis that is both political and social as well as economic. The US economy has been slowly shrinking since the early 1970s, and a growing proportion of the ever-smaller value that has been created has been steadily declining. The United States is an extremely unequal society today. For a long time had a part of the American working class access to credit, but it put an end to the financial crisis. More and more people have been forced to survive through precarious and informal work or crime. Therefore, the number of inmates has grown and grown. Especially people racialized as blacks have been objects of this development.
When yet another African American was killed by police, it was a murder too much. Floyd is just the latest in a seemingly endless series of police murder on African Americans. On March 13, for example, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was shot by police as they stormed her apartment while she was sleeping. On May 27, 38-year-old transgender Tony McDade was shot by a white police officer shouting "Stop, n-r" in connection with an arrest.
And on May 25, Floyd had been killed. The United States is in flames. Against the protests and the demand for the dismantling of a capitalist system that consistently racialises the population and makes a difference to people, we have a political establishment that appears divided. The election of Trump was a symptom of the absence of unified citizenship: The American capitalist class is divided into contending factions, a group with Silicon Valley at the forefront of globalization, but other parts of the ruling class support Trump's nationalism and protectionism. Trump himself instigates right-wing and fascist groups to defy assembly bans and is now threatening those who demonstrate against police violence to join the military. Things are tightening.
To distinguish between the good and the bad protesters.
Politicians and commentators have the habit of trying to distinguish between the good and the bad protesters. The good ones are the ones who march and dance or make performative appearances, the bad ones are the ones who defend themselves against the police, strike again and loot shops. However, in a riot like the one we see in the United States now, it makes no sense to distinguish between the expression of protest, between violence and nonviolence. They are interconnected and express an irrevocable demand for change. The burning of shops and police cars is a response to the structural violence that poor Americans are constantly exposed to, not least if they are racialized as blacks. They respond and reject, and do so wherever they are. To reject the looting and to say that they do not express political criticism is to misunderstand the situation. They are system critical, that is the whole racial capitalist system they want to get rid of. And brutal capitalismwho predestinates them to a miserable life where they can be killed by the police at any moment.
If the protests are apolitical, then it is because the protesters initially do not have access to the political system, but are excluded from it. Their demands for a different and better life are not legitimate. In that sense, the protests are against the political, the whole system, against the two parties and a state apparatus that does nothing to protect them from a pandemic – but merely prisons and criminalization. what democracy means in this context is a good question. Right now, there are many indications that there will be more repression and a ban on demonstrations.
See
https://www.nytid.no/teppefall-for-det-amerikanske-imperiet/
