Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

What we have watched in Portland is the dress rehearsal for what Trump is preparing for Chicago: an effort to squash the Black Lives Matter protests flowing from this uprising by violent military means. He claims he is targeting the cities controlled by Democrats because of the chaos caused by the largest rebellion in U.S. history.

In truth, broad democratic forces have come together to exercise their right to protest against police murder and violence. We’ve had signals this was coming since Trump’s FBI labeled the movement as Black Identity Extremists. Now they’re seizing on the social unrest to bring about repression against all those united in struggle for Black people to have their rights to protest against police crimes and tyranny.

This is a clarion call to our movement to gather all the forces we can muster in defense of the Black Lives Matter movement, because under the Black Identity Extremist category, we’re all targets.

They’re coming after everybody in the movement, including the mothers and families who are crying out that their loved ones ought not to be murdered with impunity. They’re coming after all those involved in the movement for community control of the police and defunding the police, or as Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa puts it, real police accountability.

We cannot depend on the mayor or the city council to protect us. We must do as we have always done – depend on the organized might of the people to protect us, getting more people into the streets to demand justice – precisely at the moment when they are trying to drive us out of the streets through military occupation and terror.

If we don’t act, federal agents sent to Portland and now Chicago will be the beginning of the end of the democratic rights of the people of this country to protest for rights. It’s not a coincidence that this week also Trump refused to commit to leaving office if Biden wins.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #NationalAllianceAgainstRacistAndPoliticalRepression #MinneapolisUprising