[WSMDiscuss] Crowds around the world march against racism (Mark MacKinnon)

[Fayyaz Baqir]

To the extent that hope in others overcomes the fear of others. If we overcome fear we overcome tyranny of capitalism. Expression of humility to embrace hope through kneel down movement seems to be the next step in that direction. There is a long way to go. But the most interesting thing is that this movement is led by and idea, not a party, a coalition, a vanguard, an ideology or intellectual Brahmins. It has moved from George Floyd's heart to the hearts of hundreds of millions across all divides. The idea is evolving step by step. We have no idea how it ends and that is the beauty of this moment. People are ahead of the leaders at this time. Their collective intuition will lead, not any ideology or framework.

Love, work, and knowledge are well springs of human life, they should also govern it. W R

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth 'you owe me'. Look what happens with a love like that it lights the whole sky. Hafiz


On Jun 8, 2020, at 12:30 PM, John Holloway <johnholloway at prodigy.net.mx<mailto:johnholloway at prodigy.net.mx>> wrote:

Attention : courriel externe | external email
And of capital?

From: WSM-Discuss <wsm-discuss-bounces at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss-bounces at lists.openspaceforum.net>> on behalf of Fayyaz Baqir <fbaqir at uottawa.ca<mailto:fbaqir at uottawa.ca>>
Reply-To: Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net>>
Date: Monday, June 8, 2020 at 11:22 AM
To: Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net>>
Subject: Re: [WSMDiscuss] Crowds around the world march against racism (Mark MacKinnon)

Beginning of the end of the Empire.


On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:52 AM, John Holloway <johnholloway at prodigy.net.mx<mailto:johnholloway at prodigy.net.mx>> wrote:
Attention : courriel externe | external email

“the anti-racism demonstrations have become the first global protest movement of the COVID-19 era.” And what follows?

                John


From: WSM-Discuss <wsm-discuss-bounces at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss-bounces at lists.openspaceforum.net>> on behalf of Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net<mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>>
Reply-To: Discussion list about emerging world social movement <wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net>>
Date: Monday, June 8, 2020 at 9:02 AM
To: Post WSMDiscuss <wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net<mailto:wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net>>, Post Crisis of Civilisation and Alternative Paradigms <crisis-de-civilizacion-y-paradigmas-alternativos at googlegroups.com<mailto:crisis-de-civilizacion-y-paradigmas-alternativos at googlegroups.com>>, Post Social Movements Riseup <social-movements at lists.riseup.net<mailto:social-movements at lists.riseup.net>>, Post Debate <Debate-list at fahamu.org<mailto:Debate-list at fahamu.org>>, Post Dalit Media Watch <PMARC at dgroups.org<mailto:PMARC at dgroups.org>>
Subject: [WSMDiscuss] Crowds around the world march against racism (Mark MacKinnon)

Monday, June 8, 2020
Viruses in movement…. The US in movement…, Resistance in movement…, Solidarity in movement…, The world in movement…
[The US is aflame, the people of the US are afire… and the people of much of the world are afire.  Though we need to be a bit cautious about the picture it gives (since news is the commodity it trades in), even the big media are seeing what is happening as the emergence of ‘a global movement’.  But there is definitely something that is happening…a common chord that has been struck.
“We [had] a statue up to someone who made their money by throwing sometimes the bodies of his commodities, our people, into water. There’s a piece of almost historical poetry here – now he’s on the bottom of the water.”
[It’s clear though where the rulers still stand, especially perhaps – and not entirely surprisingly perhaps – of colonist countries.  Spoken as a true Englishwoman, the Indian-origin Home Secretary of the now not-so-great Britain made clear whose side she’s on :
British Home Secretary Priti Patel said the destruction of Colston’s statue in Bristol was an “utterly disgraceful” act. She called for police to “make sure that justice is taken, undertaken, with those individuals that are responsible for such disorderly and lawless behaviour”.
Crowds around the world march against racism
Mark MacKinnon<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/mark-mackinnon/>
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-anti-racism-becomes-a-global-movement-as-cities-around-the-world-are/
[Image removed by sender.]
While other social causes are on pause due to the pandemic, the anti-racism demonstrations – one seen here in San Francisco on June 7, 2020 – have become the first global protest movement of the COVID-19 era.  (Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press)



Shouts of George Floyd’s name, and the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” became a global phenomenon during the weekend, as anti-racism protesters took to the streets of cities around the world.

Defying calls to stay home and maintain physical distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, marchers in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania expressed their solidarity with a protest movement that was ignited in the United States by the May 25 death of Mr. Floyd, a Black man who was suffocated when a white policeman knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

SEE VIDEO AT LINK TO ARTICLE

Hundreds of people marched through downtown Toronto streets to protest against anti-black racism on Saturday. The crowd stopped at city landmarks including the Toronto police headquarters, city hall, the U.S Embassy and Queen's Park. The Canadian Press

While other social causes, such as the push for action to prevent climate change, are either on pause or have been forced online by the pandemic, the anti-racism demonstrations have become the first global protest movement of the COVID-19 era.

Some of the largest protests occurred in Europe, which has its own long and tangled history with colonialism, slavery and institutional racism. Protesters in several cities took aim at statues of white political figures who had reigned in previous eras, when racism was the commonplace.

George Floyd’s body returns to Houston for final services<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-george-floyds-body-returns-to-houston-for-final-services-2/>
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How messaging technology is helping to fuel global protests<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/article-how-messaging-technology-is-helping-to-fuel-global-protests/>
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In the English port city of Bristol, a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century politician who made much of his fortune through the West African slave trade, was torn from its plinth in the centre of town. Colston had long been celebrated in Bristol for his philanthropic work – there are still roads, schools and other buildings that bear his name – but he had few defenders on Sunday as a cheering crowd pitched his bronze likeness into the city’s harbour.

Earlier, demonstrators had knelt on the toppled statue’s neck in an apparent reaction to how Mr. Floyd was killed.

SEE VIDEO AT LINK TO ARTICLE

Tens of thousands took to the streets in the UK on Sunday as a part of global protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. David Doyle reports. Reuters

Thousands of protesters marched through London on Saturday and again on Sunday, clashing sporadically with police during demonstrations that began outside the U.S. embassy before marching toward the Westminster district that houses the offices of the British government. Many of the protesters wore masks, though it was difficult to maintain physical distancing on the tightly packed streets.

Fourteen police officers were injured during Saturday’s protests. Sunday’s clashes saw bottles, rocks and the occasional firework tossed toward a line of helmeted officers who blocked the way to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official residence and other key buildings. Tensions between protesters and police lessened after a female protester put herself between the marchers and the officers on Sunday evening, shouting “Remember why you’re here!” at her fellow demonstrators.

At London on Sunday, 12 protesters were arrested and eight police officers were injured.

Mr. Johnson posted on Twitter on Sunday that while people had a right to protest, they crossed a line when they attacked police. “These demonstrations have been subverted by thuggery – and they are a betrayal of the cause they purport to serve. Those responsible will be held to account,” he wrote.

During the demonstrations, Winston Churchill’s statue on Parliament Square was defaced with graffiti that described Britain’s Second World War Prime Minister – whose writings are replete with undisguised bigotry – as a racist. A Black Lives Matter sign was taped around the statue’s waist.

There were similar scenes in Brussels, where a statue of King Leopold II, a 19th-century monarch who oversaw the brutal exploitation of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was defaced with the word “shame.” Millions of Congolese were killed during a campaign to extract rubber from Belgium’s then-colony, but on Sunday, protesters climbed the statue – which stands in front of the Canadian embassy in the city – and held aloft the flag of the DRC.

Several people were later arrested in the city after Belgian police dispersed crowds using tear gas and a water cannon.

Multiethnic crowds rallied under the Black Lives Matter banner in European cities including Madrid, Budapest, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Lausanne and Manchester.

In Berlin, 93 people were arrested and 28 police officers suffered minor injuries during scuffles that broke out near the end of a rally on the city’s Alexanderplatz. Marchers in Rome took a knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence, the precise amount of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck before the Black man died.

Solidarity protests were also seen in Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In Israel, a small crowd of demonstrators in Tel Aviv drew comparisons between Mr. Floyd’s death and that of Eyad Hallaq, a 32-year-old autistic Palestinian man who was shot dead by Israeli police on May 30. Some of the protesters carried signs reading “Palestinian lives matter.”

As the protests spread across the globe – in many cases taking on board local instances of injustice – there was also heated debate over the targeting of monuments.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel said the destruction of Colston’s statue in Bristol was an “utterly disgraceful” act. She called for police to “make sure that justice is taken, undertaken, with those individuals that are responsible for such disorderly and lawless behaviour.”

But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees – who is the first directly elected mixed-race mayor in Europe – said that while he could not condone criminal activity, he also couldn’t say that he was sad to see the statue gone.

“I would never pretend that the statue of a slaver in the middle of Bristol, the city in which I grew up – someone who may well have owned one of my ancestors – was anything other than a personal affront to me,” the 48-year-old, who was born to a Jamaican father and an English mother, told Britain’s Channel 4.

“We [had] a statue up to someone who made their money by throwing sometimes the bodies of his commodities, our people, into water. There’s a piece of almost historical poetry here – now he’s on the bottom of the water.”

____________________________
Jai Sen
Independent researcher, editor; Senior Fellow at the School of International Development and Globalisation Studies at the University of Ottawa
jai.sen at cacim.net<mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>
Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900)
CURRENT / RECENT publications :
Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press<http://www.pmpress.org/>
Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ? (Indian edition). New Delhi : AuthorsUpfront, in collaboration with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN<https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>, MOM1Flipkart<https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>, and MOM1AUpFront<http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press<http://www.pmpress.org/>
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