Over the Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime
-Aristotle

It has been an extraordinary week. On the heels of a pandemic and months-long lockdown, a nationwide uprising erupted in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. In some 75 cities across at least 16 states, and around the world, militant, multiracial gatherings of thousands of rightfully-enraged people overwhelmed police forces, prevented arrests, forced the evacuation of, and burned, a police precinct, and damaged and burned dozens of buildings. Mainstream news reporters from around the world were arrested and fired upon with rubber bullets on live television. Police SUVs drove into crowds of people. It has been the most extensive, and the most threatening, explosion of popular rage against the machine since the uprisings of 1967-8.

Critical Hour Discussion on George Floyd, Pressure on Biden, Stealing Stimulus (5/29/2020)

Former Officer Derek Chauvin Faces Murder Charge for Killing George Floyd — Will Others Be Charged?

It’s Friday, so that means it’s panel time!

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrested Derek Chauvin on Friday on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges. Chauvin is the now-former Minneapolis Police Department officer filmed with his knee on the neck of George Floyd on Monday. "Police responded to a convenience store in the area after someone called 911 claiming a person believed to be Floyd used a counterfeit bill and appeared drunk," 24/7 News Source reported Friday. "Floyd passed out and died a short time later." Chauvin and three other officers were fired this week for their involvement in Floyd's death. Hennepin County prosecutors said the others may be charged but did not provide specifics.

More than 40 million Americans have filed claims for unemployment benefits since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and about 30 million are receiving them, according to the US Labor Department. "For millions of Americans left out of work by the coronavirus pandemic, government assistance has been a lifeline preventing a plunge into poverty, hunger and financial ruin," the New York Times reported Thursday. "The $1,200 checks sent to most households are long gone, at least for those who needed them most, with little imminent prospect for a second round. The lending program that helped millions of small businesses keep workers on the payroll will wind down if Congress does not extend it."

"Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is facing growing pressure from activists and party leaders to pick a nonwhite running mate in the wake of explosive incidents involving race and police violence that have stoked widespread outrage," the Washington Post reported Friday. "Biden has pledged to select a woman, prompting leading Democrats to publicly and privately promote several high-profile women of color for the job."
[My related article:  Joe or No?]

GUESTS:
Caleb Maupin — Journalist and political analyst who focuses his coverage on US foreign policy.
Dr. Colin Campbell — TV news reporter for more than 20 years. As a senior Washington, DC, correspondent since 2008, he has been a reporter-at-large covering two presidencies, Congress and the State Department.
Jim Kavanagh — Political analyst and commentator and editor of The Polemicist.

[My segment begins ~21:41]
Listen to "Former Officer Derek Chauvin Faces Murder Charge for Killing George Floyd — Will Others Be Charged?" on Spreaker.

The Critical Hour is a daily 60-minute news analysis and talk radio program on Radio Sputnik hosted by Dr. Wilmer Leon. Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.

Lawyers, Guns, and Twitter: Gun Battles and Class Struggle after San Bernardino

Kent State, 1970 
14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, crying over the body of 20-year-old Jeffery Glenn Miller. Photo: John Filo

As can be expected, in the aftermath of the horrific San Bernardino mass murder committed by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in December, the issue of “gun control” and “gun violence” comes to the fore again, highlighted by a teary appeal from President Obama for new “gun safety” measures. I’ve dealt with the issue of gun rights in a comprehensive essay after a previous mass shooting (Sandy Hook), and I stand by the position laid out therein.¹

There are two considerations that, I think, count for something:

1)   The right to own firearms is an important political right. That is not a right-wing position. In fact, I consider the defense of that right part of the populist tradition in left revolutionary politics. Therefore, any necessary regulations on that right – and there will be some – must be as carefully considered as the limitations on any other important right.

2)   The American capitalist state is an apparatus whose main purpose is to protect class rule and its accompanying injustices, and to project compliance-inducing aggression on behalf of the American elite and its favored allies — locally, nationally, and internationally. Any mitigations of these injustices and aggressions are not the products of the liberal state’s inherent neutrality and altruism. They are the hard-won, always-precarious, fruits of social movements that scare the liberal capitalist state into forgoing particular wars, advancing particular minority and civil rights, establishing remunerative social welfare policies. etc.

In most “gun control” discourse, the first point — that gun ownership is a fundamental political right — counts for less than nothing. Most such discourse, in fact, considers it important that gun ownership not be considered a right, but some kind of frivolous luxury. Those who think that should acknowledge it, and advocate openly for the rescission and denial of that right, as do now the major organs of mainstream liberal opinion in the United States, the Washington Post (“The problem with Obama’s promise not to take away your guns”) and the New York Times (“it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up”). The strongest, most forthright, statement of this position is given by Israeli-American sociologist Amitai Etzioni in his Huffington Post column, “Needed: Domestic Disarmament, Not 'Gun Control'”.²

The Bicycle Thief: Presumptions of Innocence in "Post-Racial" America

Or, How it came to be that Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were shot.