The White World and Black Reality

http://solidarity-us.org/atc/196/black-reality/
Date Written:  2018-09-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23397

White people on the left must deal with racism to create true solidarity and resist Trump's politics.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Black rights and lives are under fierce attack by the capitalist system - again. It might seem with the teachers' strikes, the #MeToo movement for women's rights and anti-police brutality protests that the tide is possibly turning against the right. It hasn't, so far.

Most liberals and many progressives fall into the trap of believing that elections in November 2018 and beyond are the key to stopping racist and reactionary forces. Pointing to Trump's victory, they attack those who reject this strategy. Supporters of democratic socialism within the Democratic Party are being blamed - in advance! - for future election defeats.

The central lesson of history here and abroad is the opposite. It is not elections that cause change. They can only reflect what has been won or lost. Mass popular resistance, legal and extralegal, is how change and victories are achieved.

Martin Luther King did not ask for permission from the Democratic Party to organize mass actions against segregation. The 1963 March on Washington was aimed at the Democratic President and Congress.