Anti-Racism

Articles on racism and anti-racism. See our pamphlet "How to Beat the Racists"

Say her name

The murder of George Floyd has sparked a global movement against racism and police brutality. The discussion of racist violence and police repression have again shone a spotlight on how dangerous it is to be a black man in America. But by viewing the criminal justice system as the frontline of structural racism and men as the primary participants, we risk ignoring the violence which is a day to day reality for black women. Black women’s interaction with the state, through law enforcement, is marked by violence. Black women are murdered by the police. They are assaulted and injured by the...

Israel protest against annexation

On Saturday 6 June 6,000 people (equivalent of 45,000 in Britain) demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the plan of the new Netanyahu-Gantz coalition government to formally annex large parts of the West Bank to Israel, thus creating a bar against any future Palestinian state being more than a collection of scattered patches of land. Netanyahu has long threatened annexation, and now the government talk of moving on 1 July. Police initially tried to ban the protest on virus-control grounds, but backed down. The Joint List of Israeli-Arab parties, the soft-left Meretz, and the grassroots movement...

The police, capitalism and democracy

The great surge of protests across the world sparked by the killing of George Floyd is bringing a new generation of young activists. They deserve more than the hurried reforms now offered here and there in the USA. Reforms can stick, deepen, become a lever for more, but only through the work of a movement which works and educates week by week, year after year. The unequal toll of the pandemic, the shredding of health care and social provision, the cascade of job cuts, the climate emergency, show a whole world needs to be changed, and simultaneously on many fronts. In a society ruled by the...

"The unions and Labour should be on the streets"

Jocelyn Cruywagen (pictured above left) is a worker at Lambeth council, a rep and activist in Lambeth Unison and an anti-racist campaigner. She spoke to Sacha Ismail. Black Lives Matter is about more than just killing and violence. It’s also about black people being denied jobs, rights and equal opportunities. We need radical, revolutionary change. Labour and the unions should be leading people onto the streets with our banners and flags, yes, with social distancing measures, but taking a lead. There is the pandemic, but there is also the much longer-term pandemic of racism. We have to tackle...

Protests sweep the world

Black Lives Matter protests have swept the world, and not just the big cities. Fraser Andrews reports on the 6 June protest in a relatively small town, Milton Keynes. This was by far and away the most the most significant protest I’ve ever seen here in Milton Keynes. I estimate up to 1,000 gathered — in a city of 250,000. That’s five times the size of any anti-austerity demonstration here at the peak of that movement. Lots of home-made signs. A mostly young crowd, mostly black and other people of colour. Little organised socialist presence. As the “official” demonstration ended not long after...

People turn against Trump and racism

Three quarters of people in the US view George Floyd’s murder as part of a problem of racial injustice — a major shift from a few years ago. According to a 3-4 June Ipsos poll, 74% believe the killing was “a sign of broader problems in the treatment of African Americans by the police” and only 26% that it was an “isolated incident”. Six years ago, shortly after the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, 43% said they were signs of a broader problem, and 51% isolated incidents. In 2014, 60% of white Americans thought those killings were isolated incidents; today 70% think Floyd’s...

Is Minneapolis abolishing the police?

Three-quarters of Minneapolis’ city council members have pledged publicly to disband the city’s police department and introduce new systems of “public safety”. This is good news in that it shows the impact of anti-police protests and their success in shifting the political narrative. Minneapolis demonstrators booed and heckled mayor Jacob Frey when he refused to commit to “abolishing” Minneapolis PD. He deserves booing for his double-dealing attitude to the anti-police movement. But it’s also true that the council policy is in fact more tentative than the “instant anarchist utopia” it sounds...

Britain's police: what to do

Some ideas for the British labour movement to fight for: 1. The right of oppressed people and the labour movement to self-defence against police violence. 2. Curb police powers, including: sharply restricting the use of force; aggressive prosecution of police who kill and violate human rights; abolition of stop and search; ending undercover infiltration of social movements; disarming and demilitarisation. Replace the Independent Office for Police Conduct with a strong, elected body. Restore and expand legal aid. 3. Accountability including subordinating forces to elected local representatives...

Police in the USA: some facts

In the USA, police shot and killed 1,004 people in 2019. The comparable figure for the UK is 3, for France 26, for Germany 11. The USA has 655 people in jail per 100,000 population. The UK’s figure, high by world standards, is 140. The Netherlands, 54. The USA had 12 deaths in police custody per 100,000 arrests last year; the UK, two. US police make three arrests per year per 100 population; the UK, a more typical figure, one. Social provision in the USA is weaker than in most relatively well-off countries. In many well-off countries, even in poorer districts, generally “the state” means...

Call Starmer to account on anti-racist struggle

Momentum Internationalists has launched an open letter calling for Keir Starmer to withdraw his criticism of protesters who pulled down statue of slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol and instead back their action. Please add your name: bit.ly/starmercolston The issue with Starmer is wider. Beyond the Colston remark and a few anti-racist platitudes, he has been largely silent in this crisis. Neither his record as Director of Public Prosecutions — for example failure to prosecute the police killers of Jean Charles de Menezes, or aggressive prosecution of people after the 2011 riots — nor his...

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