Hundreds of thousands join protests against police violence across Europe

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/euro-j08.html






By our reporters
8 June 2020

Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people took to the streets across Europe over the weekend to protest the brutal police murder of George Floyd and police violence in general. The largest demonstrations occurred in Germany, where at least 200,000 protested in a number of major cities on Saturday.

Due to the coronavirus restrictions, organisers of the demonstrations in Germany only registered a few hundred participants in each city. But they turned out to be among the largest protests in almost two decades. Around 30,000 people marched in Berlin, compared to the 1,500 who had been officially registered. Another 30,000 joined the protest in Munich, where only 200 participants had been registered.

Young people dominated the protests. At least 20,000 marched in Hamburg and Düsseldorf, while more than 10,000 demonstrated in Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg. Tens of thousands more joined major protests in Stuttgart, Freiburg, Nuremberg, Dresden and many other cities. In total, protests took place in 25 cities.
The protests were organised under the hashtags #SilentDemo, #BlackLivesMatter or #SayTheirNames, a reference to the victims of the right-wing extremist terrorist attack in the German city of Hanau. Opposition to the far-right and the consolidation of neo-Nazi structures within the state apparatus played a significant role in the protests.

Most demonstrations held moments of silence lasting 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which was the length of time police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck to choke him to death.

Many immigrants who participated drew attention to the daily examples of racism they confront. Placards on many demonstrations recalled Oury Jalloh, who burnt to death while in police custody in a jail cell in 2005. One demonstrator in Berlin carried a sign reading, “What is happiness without equality?” In Cologne, one hand-made sign read, “Respect existence or expect resistance.”

The police considered dispersing the demonstrations in several cities due to the breaching of coronavirus restrictions, but ultimately decided not to do so. Although organisers repeatedly made announcements appealing to protesters to maintain a distance of 1.5 metres between each person, the large number of participants often made this impossible.

In Berlin, the police blocked streets leading to Alexanderplatz, where most protesters were gathered. Acts of violence by police occurred in Berlin and Hamburg following the peaceful protests. Eyewitnesses told the WSWS that young people were kettled in Hamburg and attacked by baton-wielding police. Water cannons were also used to clear a square. Eye witnesses reported that 36 immigrant children and young people were detained overnight.

The issue of police brutality was discussed widely on social media, with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag used over 400,000 times on Saturday alone. Robert wrote on Twitter, “Fascism takes many forms…,” and watching the rampage of the police and national guard in the United States, “It’s very reminiscent of the pattern of fascism.”

More than 90 arrests were made during clashes in Berlin. A video shared widely on Twitter showed an example of the violence of German police. It included the comment, “Was George Floyd not enough?”

While the largest protests took place in Germany, tens of thousands took to the streets across Europe. In Paris, over 5,000 people sought to make their way to the US embassy but were prevented from doing so by the police after the authorities banned the demonstration. Security forces sealed off the embassy with metal barriers and roadblocks. Major protests involving thousands also occurred in Bordeaux, Lille, Rennes, Marseille and Lyon.
Félix, a social worker who assists refugees, tried to attend the Paris protest. He told the WSWS, “I arrived via Saint-Lazare to join the protest, and all the streets are blocked by the police. At each road they sent us on a bit further, so we understand that it is set up so that no one can get to the protest.

“I am concerned by this subject of police violence, and police violence above all against minority populations. It’s a movement that was launched in the United States and which has appeared here, and that is a very good thing. I want to use that to show that there are many of us united against police violence.

“The fact of the violence of the state, and a racist violence, is something that is common to France, with different forms but in any case the result is the same: It’s people being hit, killed by police, by the state supposedly defending the rule of law…”

He also spoke about the connection of the current protests to the “yellow vest” social protest movement, saying: “It’s the same fight, it’s the fight against police violence… We saw recently that these practices became more and more common. The ‘yellow vests’ showed that many people lost hands, lost eyes. It has become more common with the ‘yellow vests.’ All of it is the same phenomenon that is very worrying and that we have to fight against.”

In Britain, tens of thousands protested in London. A demonstration of at least 15,000 took place in Manchester, while large events were also reported in Sheffield (3,000), and Cardiff (1,000).

Yesterday, thousands of people gathered outside the US embassy in London for another protest. Many wore masks declaring, “Racism is a virus.”

Tens of thousands gathered in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, on Saturday. In Portugal, around 5,000 demonstrated in Lisbon. Outside the US embassy in Warsaw, Poland, a crowd of several hundred gathered to protest.

Protests also occurred in Italy. Around 1,000 participated in a march in Genoa on Saturday, while hundreds joined events outside the US consulates in Naples and Bari.

Protests continued yesterday in various countries. In Copenhagen, a crowd estimated at 5,000 gathered outside the US embassy. Thousands also gathered in Rome and Madrid, where Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” were chanted by demonstrators. In the Hungarian capital Budapest, over 1,000 people attended outside the US embassy with banners including “Police everywhere, justice nowhere.”

In Gothenburg, Sweden, the police violently dispersed a protest of over 2,000 people on Sunday afternoon. “The demonstration was great. It was a peaceful demonstration,” Ali Fadurieh, a demonstrator, told Göteborgs-Posten. The police claimed that social distancing was not being observed to justify the crackdown, which came just four days after similar repression against a protest of over 1,000 in Stockholm.

The weekend’s demonstrations across Europe followed a massive mobilisation of 50,000 people in the Austrian capital Vienna on Thursday evening.

The size and wide geographical spread of the protests over Floyd’s murder reflect broad-based opposition to racism and police violence around the world. More fundamentally, they are being driven by pervasive state violence directed against the working class, and the poorest and most oppressed sections of society, as well as unprecedented levels of social inequality.






The concentration of vast wealth in a few hands at the top of society and the impoverishment of the vast majority is only being accelerated in every country by the policies adopted during the coronavirus pandemic. As the World Socialist Web Site noted in a recent perspective, the killing of George Floyd has acted as “a trigger event setting simmering class tensions alight.”

Police killing of Giovanni López sparks protests, political crisis in Mexico

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/mexi-j08.html






By Evan Winters
8 June 2020

Protests erupted late last week in Guadalajara and Mexico City over the brutal police murder of 30-year-old bricklayer Giovanni López in early May of this year after a video of his arrest surfaced on social media. All factions of the Mexican bourgeois establishment are scrambling to save face as scenes of brutal police repression in the state of Jalisco, led by the right-wing Citizens Movement (MC), are now circulating on social media.

The demonstrations have deepened the political crisis confronting the Movement of National Regeneration (Morena), the national ruling party led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The protests demonstrate growing international opposition to police violence triggered by the police murder of George Floyd and also reflect broad social anger over the Mexican government’s criminally negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting massive economic fallout.

Footage of the May 4 arrest in López’s hometown of Ixtlahuacán, about 30 kilometers from Guadalajara, released last week, shows a crowd of roughly ten police arresting a non-violent López as bystanders explain that he is being arrested for not wearing a face mask. López died in the hospital the next day of a traumatic brain injury. Relatives confirmed signs of torture on his body.
López’s brother claims the family initially did not release the video because they were approached by an intermediary for Ixtlahuacán Mayor Eduardo Cervantes Aguilar (Party of the Institutional Revolution—PRI), who offered them 200,000 pesos (about $9,000 US dollars) in hush money and threatened them with death if they released the video. Cervantes Aguilar refused to appear for a state hearing on Friday and his whereabouts are unknown.

Enrique Alfaro, governor of the state of Jalisco, has sought to defuse popular anger through a combination of token reforms, lies, and repression. Alfaro ordered the arrest of three of the police who arrested Giovanni López, claiming there are more arrests to come. The Jalisco state police have taken over policing responsibilities in Ixtlahuacán, where 34 of the 69 municipal police have not passed so-called confidence tests related to connections to organized crime.

The Mexican police and military wantonly use violence against the population and protesters, as was demonstrated by the role of Iguala, Guerrero police in the 2014 disappearance and presumed murder of 43 teaching students from a college in the nearby town of Ayotzinapa. An investigation by the Mexican Attorney General found that the students, who were protesting severe cuts to education, were likely killed by a local gang after being herded onto buses by Iguala police before being incinerated and dumped into a river.

However, attempts to portray López’s murder as simply the work of a particularly corrupt local police force are exposed by the brutal repression meted out by Alfaro against a demonstration on Friday at which protesters were beaten and arbitrarily detained by police, including by plainclothes police armed with sticks, bats, and pipes, who carted demonstrators away in unmarked pickup trucks. According to his mother and videos posted on social media, law graduate Jesús Isaí Luna Martínez was beaten and detained by police without provocation. Her mother saw him in the hospital but has not been able to see him since. There are reports that up to 29 demonstrators have similarly “disappeared” and have not been located yet.

The Ixtlahuacán police were fulfilling Alfaro’s mandatory face covering policy when they arrested López. Alfaro himself announced the face covering policy with a threat that those who failed to comply would face use of force. Alfaro’s MC has sought to exploit the criminally negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic by Morena national government of President López Obrador, channeling justified fear of infection behind this right-wing law-and-order party.

As in the United States, Alfaro attempted to justify the police crackdown by claiming some protesters came from other states, asserting without evidence that they were paid professional agitators associated with the Morena party aimed at subverting the MC government.

AMLO has distanced himself from the protests rejecting claims that he orchestrated them with the statement “No soy jefe de pandilla” (“I am not a gang leader”), saying that Alfaro should provide evidence to back up his statements. AMLO has stated that the federal government is planning not to get involved in the investigation of López’ killing, supposedly to avoid unnecessary “partisanship.” AMLO is responsible for a massive expansion of the Mexican government’s repressive apparatus, having established the National Guard in violation of his previous pledge to end the militarization of Mexican society.

Meanwhile in Morena-governed Mexico City, police brutally repressed demonstrations calling for justice for both Giovanni López and George Floyd. After a peaceful vigil of about 300 on Thursday, a smaller youth-led protest began on Friday at the US embassy. The demonstration was met with roughly 500 riot police and marched from the US embassy to Casa de Jalisco, which represents the Jalisco government in the capital.

Social media footage shows police brutally beating demonstrators, including a sixteen-year-old named Melanie, who was thrown to the ground and kicked repeatedly, including in the head, before being taken to the hospital with bruises on her face and skull.

As a face-saving measure, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the brutality and ordered the arrest of two police officers. The Trump administration, through its ambassador to Mexico, then placed the Morena government in an uncomfortable position by unreservedly lauding the police for their “courage and professionalism towards criminals.”

Even as these protests expand, a new police killing has surfaced on social media. In a scene reminiscent of the police strangulation of George Floyd, footage has also emerged of 28-year-old Oliver López (no apparent relation) being killed on March 27 at a gas station in Tijuana by a team of five police, one holding his legs, another with a boot on his neck. Bystanders recording the video can be heard exclaiming “Lo mató, lo mató!” (“He killed him! He killed him!”) as López body stops moving. This video and the story has circulated widely on social media, with a petition for justice for Lopez gaining over 50,000 signatures after film director Guillermo del Toro shared it on his Twitter account.

The naked police murders of these two workers demonstrate that police violence in Mexico, the United States and worldwide is fundamentally class based. Giovanni López was a bricklayer and had fair skin. Although Oliver López’ occupation and image do not appear to have been released, he lived with his adoptive mother and was awaiting the birth of his second child.

Workers across the world confront the same police brutality, the same hostility from the entire political establishment, and the same underlying economic and public health grievances as workers are forced back into unsafe workplaces in the middle of a pandemic under threat of starvation. As the MORENA government allows the virus to run rampant, the country first surpassed 1,000 official daily COVID-19 deaths on June 4, the day of the first Giovanni López protests, exceeding the death toll in the United States, which has roughly twice Mexico’s population. The Mexican economy is projected to contract by 9 percent in 2020, with even AMLO expecting an undoubtedly conservative 1 million job losses.

However, the racialist narrative of the Democratic Party is fundamentally opposed to unifying these struggles on a class basis. Workers and young people the world over must reject this racialist narrative with contempt and build the strongest links possible across all races, ethnicities, genders and nationalities. All capitalist parties are increasingly relying on the police and military as the enforcers of private property and exploitation against the working class. Workers must break from all of these capitalist parties and demand the abolition of the police as an integral part of the struggle for socialism.

Buffalo, New York mayor protects police in attack on 75-year-old

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/poli-j08.html






By Jacob Crosse
8 June 2020

Two weeks after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police officers while in custody, multiracial and multi-ethnic protests have continued throughout the United States demanding justice for all victims of police violence.

Despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the protests, in which thousands have gathered for hours at a time from large northern metropolitan cities to rural southern towns to demand an end to police brutality, police officers across the country continue to batter, bruise, maim, beat, gas and tase peaceful protesters and journalists covering the marches across the country.

In Buffalo, New York, 75-year-old Martin Gugino remains in the hospital recovering from head injuries inflicted by two police officers, Aaron Torgalski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32. Both were charged with second-degree assault Saturday by Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. The pair have entered “not guilty” pleas.
The two officers were released on their own recognizance Saturday morning shortly after turning themselves in. Upon leaving the Buffalo City Courthouse the pair were greeted by a crowd of roughly one hundred cops and their sympathizers who gave the officers, who less than 48 hours ago shoved an old man to the ground and walked over his concussed body as blood poured from his head, a round of applause.

In a Saturday press conference, Democratic Mayor Byron Brown let it be known that the political leadership fully backed the Buffalo Police Department and the two charged officers. Defending his decision not to immediately fire the officers, Brown, speaking to local radio affiliate WBEN, stated: “I don’t want to jump ahead of the investigation. It is very important for officers to know they are getting due process.”

Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans, speaking on behalf of the officers to local news outlet WBFO, asserted that the officers were “simply doing their job” and that the man had “slipped.” In a separate email obtained by Madison Carter of WKBW, Evans didn’t hold back on who he felt was the real victim: “I can tell you they tried to fuck over these guys like I have never seen in my 54 years,” Evans wrote. “It is despicable.”

Speaking to the Washington Post, District Attorney Flynn admitted he waited an extra day to charge the officers responsible for the assault out of concern that the rank-and-file police would revolt against the Democratic political establishment for attempting to hold the department to a sliver of accountability. With a curfew still in effect for the city of Buffalo Friday night Flynn stated that he “didn’t want to pour gasoline on a fire,” and was “concerned about the safety of the city last night.”

Flynn’s patience and soft touch when dealing with thuggish police stands in stark contrast to his treatment of protesters and marchers. Flynn defended his record to the Washington Post stating he has only prosecuted six police officers in three years during his time as Erie County DA, before adding, “there are some who say that I’m choosing sides by arresting and prosecuting police officers, and I say that’s ridiculous ... I’m prosecuting 39 protesters.”

Elsewhere, in Detroit, Michigan, 24-year-old protester Nadia Rohr is still recovering from a skull-splitting “less lethal” round fired at her head during last Sunday’s protest. Rohr recalls standing in front of the police line and locking eyes with an officer who then trained his bright orange 40-millimeter riot gun on her. Rohr states that once she turned away from the officer, he fired his weapon, striking her in the back of the head.

Rohr briefly remembered, “a bright pink flash of light” before “coming to, I just looked down and my feet were being dragged.” Rohr’s girlfriend, Baylee Huffman, 20, helped carry her to safety and dressed the injury. Huffman, speaking to Deadline Detroit, recalled the severity of the wound, “I looked at it and all I could see was brain matter, hair and flesh.”

Officers didn’t offer any aid to Rohr. Instead she was made to walk two miles to her parked car and then drive with her girlfriend to the emergency room at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital. Doctors determined she suffered an open-skull fracture with a concussion and brain bleed which required nine stitches. Had she not been wearing her hood up at the time, doctors hypothesize that the rubber round would have lodged itself in her brain, possibly killing her.

According to a 2017 study conducted by the British Medical Journal, out of almost 2,000 rubber bullet incidents studied, nearly 3 percent, or 60 incidents resulted in fatality while 15 percent, or 300 cases, resulted in permanent injury.

In Rohr’s case she was told by her medical team that it will take at least another three weeks before she is medically cleared to go back to work. However, a full recovery will take at least another year and a half, if ever. “I can't go swimming anymore. I can't skate anymore. I can't do any hard sports because if I hit my head again, it could be fatal,” said the 24-year-old.

In Nevada, no charges will be forthcoming against four Las Vegas Metro Department police officers who shot dead 25-year-old Jorge Gomez late last Monday night during protests. Officers originally stated that Gomez had fired at the officers after being ordered to disperse and they were simply returning fire.

The story put forth by Las Vegas police has changed multiple times since it was first reported. None of the four Las Vegas police officers, Sgt. Ryan Fryman, 40, Officer Dan Emerton, 38, Officer Vernon Ferguson, 36, and Officer Andrew Locher, 53, who fired a total of 19 rounds into Gomez, were wearing body cameras. It was also revealed that officers had fired multiple bean bag rounds at Gomez earlier in the evening.

Clark County Assistant Sheriff Chris Jones, during a June 5 press conference, hypothesized that Gomez had become “radicalized” by objective events and was allegedly spotted carrying a sign at the rally that included the words “Jail Trump” and “2A” a reference to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Jones stated that officers recovered three weapons from Gomez and that he was wearing a Kevlar vest when officers gunned him down.






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Trump, Barr continue threat to deploy military against nationwide protests

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/barr-j08.html






By Barry Grey
8 June 2020

On Saturday, in the midst of massive nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd, President Donald Trump made clear that he has not abandoned his support for the mobilization of the military to suppress the demonstrations. He was backed Sunday by his attorney general William Barr, who defended Trump’s moves last Monday to crush the protests in Washington, D.C. as part of preparations to establish a presidential dictatorship based on the military and the police.

At 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, while tens of thousands of protesters were marching peacefully through the capital and hundreds of thousands more were demonstrating in cities and towns across the country, Trump tweeted, “LAW & ORDER!” This was an allusion to his fascistic Rose Garden declaration last Monday that he was the “president of law and order.”

Later in the evening he added another tweet: “Much smaller crowd in DC than anticipated. National Guard, Secret Service and DC Police have been doing a fantastic job. Thank you!”
On Sunday, Barr was interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. He ignored denunciations by top retired military officers, including former Trump administration officials, of Trump’s threats to overthrow the Constitution, invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and impose martial law.

Barr categorically supported the right of the President to unilaterally deploy active duty troops to states over the objections of state governors. He also falsely branded as violent the peaceful protest at Lafayette Park that was broken up last Monday on Trump’s orders, and absurdly claimed there was no connection between the violent dispersal of the protesters and Trump’s photo-op holding up a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which took place only minutes after National Guard troops and federal forces had cleared demonstrators from the location.

The interview began with the anchor, Margaret Brennan, citing a “senior administration official” who told CBS News that Trump, at a White House meeting early last Monday, had demanded the ordering of 10,000 active duty troops onto the streets of the country. According to press reports, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had opposed the demand, resulting in a shouting match between Trump and Milley.

Barr called the report “completely false.” After the interview, Brennan stated that CBS News stood by its reporting on the incident.

Barr implied that such a military mobilization had been discussed and acknowledged that elements of the 82nd Airborne Division had been deployed to bases outside the capital. But he said he and Esper agreed that those military police units should be kept on standby but not deployed onto the streets at that time. These troops, as well as troops from the Mountain Division, have since been removed from the D.C. area and returned to their home bases.

Next came the following exchange:


Brennan: Do you think that the president has the authority to unilaterally send in active duty troops if the governors oppose it?

Barr: Oh, absolutely. The—under the anti-Insurrection Act, the President can use regular troops to suppress rioting. The Confederacy in our country opposed the use of federal troops to restore order and suppress an insurrection. So the federal government sometimes doesn’t listen to governors in certain circumstances…”

It is highly significant that the precedent Barr cited to justify such an action was the Civil War, in which some 600,000 Americans were killed. Trump has given campaign speeches in which he said any effort to remove him from office would result in a “civil war.”

Then came the following exchange on the violent dispersal of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across from the White House:


Brennan: Did you think it was appropriate for them to use smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper balls, projectiles at what appeared to be peaceful protesters?

Barr: They were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the media seems to be perpetuating at this point.

Brennan: Three of my CBS colleagues were there. We talked to them. … They did not see protesters throwing anything. … And the methods they used you think were appropriate, is that what you’re saying?

Barr: When they met resistance, yes.

Brennan then recounted the scene last Monday in which Trump was asserting dictatorial powers and announcing plans to prosecute left-wing “outside agitators” as terrorists at the same time troops were moving against the Lafayette Park protesters to clear the way for Trump’s photo-op:


Brennan: Right around the same time the area is being cleared of what appear to be peaceful protesters, using some force. And after the speech is finished, the President walks out of the White House to the same area where the protesters had been and stands for a photo op. … In an environment where the broader debate is about heavy-handed use of force in law enforcement, was that the right message for Americans to be receiving? ...

Barr: Well, it’s the job of the media to tell the truth. They were not connected.

Barr’s full-throated defense of police-military repression of protests was echoed on the Sunday interview programs by Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Wolf said, “I think we took the right action, and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen governors deploy the National Guard. We’ve seen governors and mayors call the federal government asking for support. And that’s what we’ve given them.”

Pressed on the decision to deploy 1,600 active duty troops to the outskirts of the capital by host Chris Wallace, who asked if that was “overkill,” Wolf indicated that a military mobilization against the protesters remained under consideration. He said, “So, again, from a law enforcement perspective, I would say making sure that we keep all our tools in the toolbox ready and available is very, very important. We don’t want to take anything off the table.”



The other dominant theme of the Sunday news programs was the public opposition of prominent retired generals to Trump’s Rose Garden coup speech and the threat to bring the military against demonstrators. The most significant such statement was the column by retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis published last Wednesday in the Atlantic. Mattis, known as the “butcher of Fallujah” for his role in the homicidal destruction of that Iraqi city, resigned as Trump’s secretary of defense in January of 2019 in protest against Trump’s announced plan to withdraw US forces from Syria.

Mattis openly accused Trump of violating the Constitution and threatening to assume dictatorial powers. He was subsequently seconded by former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen and Martin Dempsey, retired Marine General and former White House chief of staff to Trump John Kelly and other retired military brass.

The statements of these military officers, all of whom have been involved in bloody crimes of US imperialism around the world, were prompted not by devotion to democracy, but by concerns that Trump’s authoritarian moves would trigger an uncontrollable social explosion.

The main guest on CNN’s “State of the Union” program was Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 and Secretary of State at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Powell was the top military officer in 1992 when President George H. W. Bush sent in active duty troops to put down mass protests in Los Angeles against the police beating of Rodney King.

Powell, posing as a defender of the First Amendment, congratulated the former generals who criticized Trump’s actions and announced that he would vote for Democrat Joe Biden in the November presidential election.

Powell’s most significant statement in the interview was his attack on Congress for failing to address, let alone oppose Trump’s attempted anti-constitutional coup. He said:


And even more troubling, the Congress would just sit there and not in any way resist what the President is doing…

I watched the senators heading into the chamber the other day after all this broke, with the reporters saying, what do you have to say, what do you to say?

They had nothing to say.

This accurately describes the cowardice and complicity of both big business parties in the ongoing conspiracy against democratic rights that is centered in the White House. The most pernicious role is being played by the Democratic Party, the nominal “opposition” to Trump.

Not a single prominent Democrat—from Obama, the Clintons and Biden to the fake “progressives” Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—has warned the American people of the coup plans of Trump and his cabal of fascists in the White House.

This continued Sunday. Democrats interviewed on the talk shows included Senator Cory Booker, Representative Karen Bass, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Representative Val Demings, a former police chief in Florida who is on Biden’s “short list” to become his running mate. None of them even mentioned Trump’s Rose Garden speech and threats to impose martial law. As the military considers its options, the Democratic Party is allowing it to become the arbiter of the people’s democratic rights.

The Democrats are no less fearful than Trump and the Republicans that the multiracial and multi-ethnic protests against police violence will encourage a broader movement of the working class, already slammed by mass death and unemployment resulting from the official response to the coronavirus pandemic, which will assume revolutionary proportions.






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Millions march in cities and towns in every part of the US to oppose racism and police violence

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/demo-j08.html






By Kevin Reed
8 June 2020

Protests and demonstrations against police violence over the weekend spread across every part of the US, involving young people and workers of all races and ethnicities in small towns and rural areas as well as major cities.

Millions marched in defiance of mass arrests, curfews, brutal attacks by police and National Guard troops and threats by Trump to call out active duty troops against the protesters. They were joined by millions more who marched in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Africa to protest the May 25 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

According to a database maintained by USA Today, demonstrations have been reported by news media organizations in 806 towns and cities across all 50 states, plus the territories of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Although the USA Today tally likely underestimates the actual number of demonstrations in the US—there have been many more protests than those reported by local news media—it does provide a picture of the scale of the demand for an end to police violence and murder that has swept across the US. The greatest number of protests have been in the following states: California (64), Ohio (64), Georgia (45), New Jersey (32), New York (32), Florida (31), Illinois (31), Texas (31), North Carolina (30) and Michigan (26).

The largest protests this past weekend were held in major US cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC. According to the New York Times, “Many of Saturday’s gatherings appeared larger than previous rallies, especially the one in Washington. At one point it seemed as if the entire city had emptied into downtown, as lines of protesters snaked their way through side streets while others converged in nearby parks before making their way to Lafayette Square outside the White House.”

Tens of thousands marched and rallied throughout Washington, DC in the ninth straight day of protests. The largest gathering was near Lafayette Square, which remained closed, although the armored military vehicles and large numbers of military and police of previous days were no longer visible. The 1.7 miles of eight-foot-tall chain link fencing along with white concrete barriers that formed a one-block radius around the property of the White House remained in place.

Other gatherings and protests took place in the US capital on Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, the US Capitol, the Dirksen Senate Office Building, 14th and U Streets, Malcom X Park, Dupont Circle, Freedom Plaza and 16th and H Streets NW. There were other rallies in the surrounding suburbs, including one at the Arlington County Courthouse.

The Washington Post reported diplomatically that when the Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, walked down the stretch of 16th Street that bore the painted designation “Black Lives Matter,” support for Bowser “was not universal.” Protests continued throughout the city on Sunday.

Many tens of thousands of protesters marched in various parts of New York City on Saturday and defied the 8:00 p.m. curfew imposed by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, although, in contrast to previous days, there was no attempt by police to disrupt the demonstrations. Mayor de Blasio lifted the curfew completely on Sunday morning and district attorneys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx announced that they would not be prosecuting anyone arrested and accused of low-level offenses such as unlawful assembly or violating the curfew.

The New York Times reported: “All afternoon on a mostly sunny Saturday that felt like the start of summer, the overwhelmingly peaceful protesters had thronged bridges, blocked streets and shouted slogans, as motorists honked in support and the police watched. At least two dozen events crisscrossed the city, from the Bronx and Queens to Manhattan and Staten Island.”
There were reports of rallies in Washington Square Park and Central Park in Manhattan, a group of medical workers named White Coats for Black Lives rallied on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a large eight-mile march was held in Brooklyn along with a rally at Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights.

Thousands of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge into lower Manhattan. Part of the throng stopped at Foley Square where the state and federal court buildings are located. Another group of marchers walked onto FDR Drive, the main north-south thoroughfare on the east side of Manhattan, forcing the police to shut down one side of the highway.

Mass demonstrations took place on Saturday in San Francisco, the most notable of these shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge for a period of time. Thousands of people marched initially on the eastern walkway but, as the crowd surged, protesters spilled onto the southbound roadway, forcing bridge authorities to block the toll plaza with trucks. Eventually, the northbound lanes were closed as well while bridge protesters marched from San Francisco to Marin County and then turned around to go back.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Around the Bay Area, throngs of people from Fremont to Santa Rosa continued to raise their voices against police brutality.” Protesters in Berkeley marched down Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and stopped traffic in both directions. In Oakland, thousands clothed in black participated in a “Walk in Unity” from Frank Ogawa Plaza to the Lake Merritt Amphitheatre.

A demonstration of tens of thousands took place in Chicago on Saturday morning, beginning with a rally at Union Park, followed by a three-mile march into the Loop that concluded with a rally on the Near North Side. On Sunday, amid a massive demonstration downtown and other protests in the metropolitan area, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot lifted the city-wide curfew.

The Chicago Tribune reported: “A multiracial crowd of hundreds of people gathered Sunday morning at one of the South Side’s busiest intersections for a peaceful protest a week after unrest over George Floyd’s death spread across Chicago.

“Starting at 79th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, at least 300 people walked a mile to a bank parking lot on State Street. Organizers began giving away 1,000 meals to hungry residents from the Chatham, Auburn Gresham and Englewood neighborhoods following unrest that left numerous nearby businesses temporarily closed.”

An indication of the extent to which the vast majority of the population is demanding an end to police murder in America is shown by the proliferation of protests in rural and small towns across the country, especially in the South, the former bastion of Jim Crow segregation and the Klu Klux Klan. The eruption of protests in areas identified by the political establishment and the corporate media as permanently “conservative,” “red state” or even “racist” has proven that there is a powerful integrated movement within the working class and among the youth against racism and violence by the police.

The scale and geographic sweep of the protests reflect not only the deep commitment of young people and workers to democratic rights and their hatred for the fascistic Trump government, but also growing class anger against social inequality and war, intensified by the government’s criminally negligent response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Workers are well aware that the ruling class and the political establishment care nothing for their lives, as demonstrated by the back-to-work drive even as the pandemic continues to rage. Instead, the pandemic is being used to carry out yet another massive bailout of the corporations and banks, driving the stock market back up to record heights, while tens of millions of jobs are permanently destroyed and basic social services are slashed.

Of particular significance were protests in smaller towns in the South and West of the country, including:

* Vidor, Texas, where a multi-racial group of two hundred people marched and rallied in a locality that was once known as a Ku Klux Klan stronghold and a “sundown town,” where blacks were subject to arrest or physical attack after dark.

* Fairmont, West Virginia, the storied coal mining town where last week hundreds marched and protested at the Marion County Courthouse.

* Sheridan, Wyoming, a town of 17,000 people on the northern border with Montana, where a “Black Lives Matter Solidarity Peaceful Protest” of 500 people was held Friday evening at the Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library. The protesters proceeded down Main Street to the Sheridan County Courthouse before returning to the library. The protest remained peaceful, despite provocations by a handful of counter-protesters.

* Norfolk, Nebraska, where 300 people protested on a busy street corner to voice their outrage at the death of George Floyd. Rally organizer Eduardo Mora, who lives in a neighboring town, said, “It was important to do it, especially in the middle of Nebraska.”






The author also recommends:

The police murder of George Floyd sparks mass protests throughout the world
[6 June 2020]






Encouraged by Trump, police rampage leaves protesters dead and wounded across the US
[6 June 2020]

The global protests and the fight against capitalism

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/pers-j08.html






8 June 2020

The protests over the police murder of George Floyd have developed into a global movement of unprecedented breadth and scope.

As of Sunday evening, there have been demonstrations in nearly 2,000 cities and towns worldwide since May 25. Large demonstrations were held this weekend in London, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Paris, Lisbon, Warsaw and many other European cities. More than 12,000 people protested in front of the Norwegian parliament in Oslo on Friday. Protests were organized in Australia, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Mexico. Tens of thousands demonstrated across New Zealand last week.

The United States is the center of the world movement. Protests throughout the country are entering their second week. There have been substantial popular assemblies in every region and state. Some of the largest of these multiracial and multiethnic demonstrations have taken place in the Deep South, once the bastion of segregation, lynch law and political reaction.
The trigger event for this social upheaval was the murder of Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. The staggering brutality of this crime horrified the public and generated an overwhelming mood of popular revulsion. But this latest killing, one of more than 1,000 committed by the US police every year, evoked such an eruption of popular anger because the United States was already a social tinderbox, waiting only for an event to ignite the explosion. The same situation exists in countries all over the world.

The global wave of demonstrations is giving expression to an immense wellspring of social and political anger. It is the response to decades of unending war, the destruction of basic democratic rights, and a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny ruling elite.

One of the most striking features of this development is its “leaderless” character. Whichever ruling party is currently dominant in any given country, the official attitude toward the growth of social opposition among workers and youth is fundamentally hostile.

In the US, no Democratic or Republican politician speaks to the sentiments animating the protests. The handful of Democrats who have tried to address protests this past week—the Democratic mayors of Minneapolis and New York City, for example—were booed, heckled and driven off the platform.

The attitude of the political establishment to the democratic rights of workers and youth took its most glaring form in the absence of any official response from the Democratic Party to Trump’s attempt to stage a coup d’état and deploy the military throughout the country to suppress opposition.

One of Trump’s chief co-conspirators, Attorney General William Barr, reiterated in an interview Sunday that the president had every right to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in federal troops, even over the opposition of state governors and other officials, although he was not doing so now. Moreover, Barr vociferously defended the actions of federal police and National Guard troops who cleared Lafayette Square next to the White House, driving away peaceful protesters with a hail of tear gas, pepper balls and other riot control weaponry.

The Democratic Party’s response to Trump’s threat to deploy the military has consisted of platitudes and evasions. It has avoided any clear and unequivocal denunciation of Trump’s actions, let alone calling for his immediate removal from office. The Democratic congressional leadership, which impeached Trump for holding up military aid to Ukraine, does not lift a finger when Trump demands the military occupation of Washington.

To the extent that opposition to Trump’s coup d’état was voiced, it came from sections of the military. The media is trumpeting the statements of former General James “Mad Dog” Mattis and other retired officers. But the fact that the main response to Trump has come from ex-generals only serves to demonstrate that the military—not the civilian branches of government—has become the arbiter of the fate of American democracy. A democracy that depends for its survival on the sufferance of the military is on its last legs.

The dangers are very real. The conspirators in the White House have not ceased their plotting. The military is biding its time and considering its options. The police remain armed to the teeth.

Moreover, in the states and cities, Democratic governors and mayors have sought to make an intervention by the Army unnecessary by using the National Guard and massively armed police to do the dirty work of attacking protesters. Already, nearly a dozen people have been killed while protesting and 10,000 have been arrested.

It is entirely natural that at an early stage in the development of a revolutionary crisis, the protesting masses enter into struggle without a clear conception of what they are fighting against and what they are fighting for, but only with an understanding that they can no longer endure the present regime. But the democratic aspirations can be realized only to the extent that the working class comes forward as the leading and decisive force in the unfolding mass movement.

The enemy must be properly identified. It is not just a matter of rogue police forces or racist cops. The source of the attack on democratic rights is the financial oligarchy and the social and economic system, capitalism, upon which its wealth and power are based.

Therefore, the defense of democratic rights must be based on a socialist program aimed at the transfer of political power to the working class and a comprehensive economic restructuring of society.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for workers and young people opposed to police violence to draw the necessary conclusions from their experiences and take up the fight to build a socialist leadership in the working class. The fight against police violence must be fused with the developing and growing struggles of workers, in the United States and throughout the world, against inequality, exploitation, war, authoritarianism and the capitalist profit system.




Statement of the Socialist Equality Party

FORTRESS ON A HILL: INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN ZEESE

By Danny Sjursen, Fortress on a Hill.




June 7, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/fortress-on-a-hill-interiew-with-kevin-zeese/




[CLICK LINK FOR PODCAST]










Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance stops by the podcast to discuss his path to becoming an activist during protests in the 60’s and 70’s, what he’s learned from Ralph Nader, police brutality and militarization, Kevin’s long standing work on the Vietnam war and Venezuela, and the dynamics of “lesser evil voting.”

Kevin Zeese is a public interest attorney who has worked for economic, racial and environmental justice since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.

He co-directs PopularResistance.org which works to build the independent movement for transformational change. Kevin co-hosts, “Clearing the FOG “ radio which airs on We Act Radio , Progressive Radio Network and other outlets. He is recognized as a leading activist in the United States in the series Americans Who Tell the Truth.

Kevin was an organizer of the Occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC in 2011. He serves as president of Common Sense for Drug Policy and is a co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation, now known as Drug Policy Alliance .

He is a co-founder of Health Over Profit for Everyone which seeks to put in place National Improved Medicare for All. Kevin is an advocate of Internet Freedom and is a leader of the campaign for Title II Net Neutrality to ensure equal access and treatment for everyone on the Internet. He is one of the organizers of We Are Cove Point which seeks to stop a fracked gas export terminal in southern Maryland.

He is an election integrity advocate who a co-founded TrueVote Maryland which led a successful campaign to end the use of paperless voting machines in the state.

Kevin is co-founder of Come Home America which brings people from across the political spectrum together to work against war and militarism. He served on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network as well as on the advisory board of the Courage Foundation which supports Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.

He has been active in independent and third party political campaigns, served as press secretary and spokesperson for Ralph Nader in 2004 and as a senior advisor to Jill Stein in 2016. He ran for the US Senate in 2006; and he’s the only person ever nominated by the Green, Libertarian and Populist Parties of Maryland.