zaterdag 27 juni 2020

Riots and Remembrance

Riots and remembrance -

Dear Progressive Reader,

Protests continue across the United States (and in many cities around the world) against police violence, and the legacy of slavery and colonialism. In many places, this has taken the form of pulling down statues, especially those commemorating generals and officers of the Confederacy. In almost all of the demonstrations there have been calls for an alternative to a heavily funded and militarized police force.

Jenna Ruddock provides a photo essay of some of the events in Washington, D.C. over the past several weeks. Lauren Rowello writes this week about the use, by police, of anonymity through tactics like badge-covering to cloak their abusive actions. And Dennis Bernstein speaks with San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin about his work to hold police accountable and to change the criminal justice system in his city and state.

Also this week, professor of English Rosamond S. King reminds us of how the words we use make a difference in our attitudes about situations and people, including the subtle promotion of violence. Additionally, as peace activist Kathy Kelly notes, global militarism continues to thrive under the Trump Administration. “The world that our global empire is swiftly creating, through our devastating oil wars in the Middle East and our burgeoning cold wars with Russia and China, is a world without winners,’ she says. “It includes devastating climate change, a global pandemic, and the corrosive shame of endless war.”

This weekend marks the fifty-first anniversary of another uprising against police repression. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided a bar called the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood. But unlike previous raids, this one was met by resistance from patrons and community members. The riots that followed over the next six days are regarded as the launching point of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

On June 6, 2019, New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill formally apologized for the actions of the police that week saying, ““The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong, plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize.” This year, the large public celebrations of that history are muted due to the social distancing restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Writing in The Progressive in 2004, Anne-Marie Cusac notes, “I was 3 years old during the Stonewall riots, but the place matters to me, as it does to so many other gays and lesbians. It made our lives possible. The riots,” she explains, “began after one of many police busts. But this time the people fought back, and their defiance was contagious.” In 2013, The Progressive prepared an e-book titled Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall compiled from our historic coverage of these movements. Editor Ruth Conniff wrote “When President Obama, in his Second Inaugural address, declared ‘that all of us are created equal’ and that this principle ‘is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,’ he laid out a vision of our country's progressive values and the historic journey toward a more just society that includes women's rights, racial equality, gay rights, and immigrant rights.”

Unfortunately, much of that vision remains unfulfilled. This has come into stark relief with the inequality of the effects of COVID-19, the harsh realities of racist policing evidenced by the murders of so many unarmed Black people, and the exacerbated anti-immigrant rhetoric emanating from the White House. On Stonewall’s fiftieth anniversary last year, Chase Strangio of the ACLU wrote in an op-ed for our Progressive Media Project, “For many, it feels like the gains we’ve made are in peril and the most marginalized members of the community, the very people who led the fight at Stonewall, are still often ignored. The Stonewall riots only mark the beginning of one story. LGBTQ histories are deeper and messier and more nuanced than that one story can capture. They began long before Stonewall and they will persist long after Trump.”

We are not going back, but we have a long way to go.

Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,