On Tuesday, January 5, the people of Georgia made history with their defeat of two Trump-supporting Republican Senators in the runoff election. First to be declared a winner was Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is the first African American ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia. He is only the second African American to be elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction after the Civil War. A little later, with a smaller margin, Jon Ossoff clinched the second seat for the Democratic Party, giving them a bare majority in the Senate.

The Democratic sweep of the Senate, along with Biden’s win in the November election, are a break in the Republican hold on the Deep South. It shows the power of the vote by African Americans and other oppressed nationalities, whose voter registrations surged in the wake of the protests following the murder of George Floyd. Georgia and the rest of the former slave south have long suppressed the vote of African Americans, contributing to the defeat of Stacy Abrams when she ran for governor two years ago.

The victories of Warnock and Ossoff also show the rising power of the historic African American Nation in the Black Belt South. The struggle for African American political empowerment has always had a strong electoral aspect, starting with the Reconstruction period, to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continuing to today.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationFRSO #Elections #FRSOJointNationalitiesCommission

The people of Minneapolis have taken to the streets the past 72 hours, demanding the arrest of the killer cops who murdered 46-year-old African American George Floyd on Monday night, May 25. Eyewitness video was released Tuesday morning showing now former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin pinning Floyd to the ground, with Chauvin’s knee directly on the back of his neck – the video shows Floyd’s last gasps for air. You can hear him telling the killer cop that he can’t breathe and calling for his mother before you see his body going limp. Three other cops on the scene stand by, with two other cops actively helping to restrain Floyd on the ground, all ignoring the pleas of bystanders to let him breathe. Since then, tens of thousands in Minneapolis and have taken to the streets, demanding justice and retribution, which prompted the Minneapolis police to immediately terminate the four officers involved with Floyd’s murder and finally to charge and jail Chauvin May 29.

We can’t forget that Twin Cities area police have been the target of recent high-profile struggles involving police murders, including the murder in 2015 of African American man Jamar Clark by two killer Minneapolis killer cops, which prompted a wave of protests; the murder of Philando Castile in the suburbs of Minneapolis on video, as well Justine Damond in 2017, which also prompted mass protests.

The question of killer cops targeting African Americans isn’t just a story of Black people being more oppressed workers, it’s also the result of the system of national oppression, a system that chains down African Americans and subjects them to the most intense methods of brutality at the hands of the ruling class and its police force. From Minneapolis to Louisville, we see a disregard for Black life at the hands of the police, with the Minneapolis rebellion becoming a breaking point for the Black liberation movement, sparking nationwide protests.

As Martin Luther King Jr, once said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

We must continue the call to demand community control of the police as well as the indictment and convictions of all killer cops, especially those who murdered George Floyd. We must also, as what we’ve seen in Chicago with the LaQuan McDonald cover-up, fight to kick out government attorneys and prosecutors who refuse to prosecute killer cops and racist vigilantes, as they did initially in the case of Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching in Brunswick, Georgia.

On May 30, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is calling for a day of nationwide protests against the murderous policies of police departments nationwide as well as demand the mass release of inmates in prisons due to COVID-19. We unite with this call and know that the more people that hit the streets, the shakier the foundations of national oppression in this country becomes. Protests have already started taking place in cities like Memphis and Los Angeles, with many cities planning protests through the week leading into the weekend.

Our job is to organize, agitate and connect the struggle for Justice for George Floyd, Justice for Ahmaud Arbery, Justice for Breonna Taylor to our own local struggles for justice and community control of the police. We need to build organization on both local and national levels to consolidate the power of the people into a fighting force against national oppression and the criminal injustice system.

The streets are on fire for action and our job is to continue to fan the flames.

Justice for George Floyd! Indict and convict the killer cops! Community control of the police now! All power to the people!

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The Freedom Road Socialist Organization condemns the brutal murder Ahmaud Arbery, a young African American man in southern Georgia, who was killed by racist vigilantes on February 23.

Similar to the Trayvon Martin murder at the hands of racist vigilante George Zimmerman in 2012, this horrific murder highlights the savage and vicious nature of white supremacy in the Black Belt South, home to the African American nation and the majority of African Americans living in the United States. Brunswick, Georgia near where Ahmaud was murdered, is located on the southeastern edge of the Black Belt; it is a city of around 15,000 and majority African American. However, the Glynn County police department is known for its brutality towards the African American community and corruption, with even the police chief being indicted this year.

Just like the racist vigilante murders of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and Markeis McGlockton , the racist laws of Stand Your Ground and citizen’s arrest statutes only serve to show that national oppression is alive and well. In the Black nation the police and the state attorneys act as the day-to-day enforcers of this system working hand in hand with white supremacists.

In Ahmaud Arbery’s case, it’s clear the local police and state attorneys actively worked with the racist vigilantes to cover the murder up and worked to hide the video of the lynching from the public. Due to widespread public pressure, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations as of Thursday evening, May 7, brought forth charges of murder against the McDaniels, with them being apprehended and booked in the Glynn County jail. Unfortunately, similar to the case with racist vigilante George Zimmerman being put on trial for murdering Trayvon Martin and being exonerated, an arrest doesn’t necessarily mean a conviction within the racist injustice system.

Racist murders and violence by vigilantes and police serve to reinforce the social, economic and political inequality that Blacks face in the African American nation. This inequality can be seen in the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In counties in the Black Belt South in southeastern Georgia, people are dying at rates like New York City. Poverty, lack of medical care and wretched health conditions are the pre-existing conditions killing people in the Black nation, just as it is in Black communities across the country.

Our experience has shown us that justice won’t come unless we demand it. The fight for justice for Ahmaud and other victims of state sanctioned, white supremacist vigilante terror will only advance when the masses of show their power through fighting back. The way to get justice for Ahmaud Arbery lies through struggle. The people, not the police, are the makers of history and they will make their justice in the streets.

Justice for Ahmaud and all victims of racist terror!

Full equality for African Americans and self-determination and freedom for the African American nation!

Michael Sampson is a member of the Joint Nationalities Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO)

#UnitedStates #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Antiracism #FRSOJointNationalitiesCommission #AhmaudArbery

Suzuki is chair of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) Joint Nationalities Commission, which helps guide FRSO community organizing among oppressed nationalities – African Americans, Chicanos, Mexicanos and Latinos, Arab and Asian Americans, and indigenous peoples. He further noted, “The bill would have a great impact on Asian American communities, as immigration from China and India are now greater than from Mexico.”

In addition, the bill would slash immigration from Africa by ending the ‘diversity visa,’ which admits about half of all immigrants from that continent and would permanently decrease the number refugee visas. Suzuki ended by saying that “Donald Trump and the Republican Party are trying to roll the country back to 1924,” a reference to the racist 1924 Immigration Act, which restricted immigration from eastern and southern Europe and excluded Asians.

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