The protests changed me in a lot of ways. One way was, I was by no means a class reductionist before. But the protests really woke me up to the real struggles of oppressed communities in the US and importantly, the revolutionary potential in those communities. I remember listening to Rev Left in my car and had to pull over for a minute to absorb it when Breht said something to the effect of "what did white socialists in America ever give us?! Bernie Sanders!? Fuck that! The real revolutionary potential is with oppressed communities."
Some major things for me were:
-The weird left-com/ Third Worldist feelings I had were done away with. I intuitively came to understood the need for a vanguard party, even though I didn't know what that even meant. I began reading ML theory around this time.
-It was the first time I saw opportunism and wreckers really start fucking shit up "within the walls" of leftist orgs and movements. "Leftists" going after bail fund organisers for being "tankies." Org leaders tailing reformists and quickly pivoting the momentum to a Biden campaign, etc. This lead to me reading more about opportunism, left sectarianism, and put me more onto ML theory.
Basically, the protests turned me into a tankie.
this was a really good read, thank you for writing this. I am the exact same way, how an com is where I want to go, but ML is the most realistic way I see of getting there. Using the best aspects of both to create an ideology that fits our material conditions feels like the best way forward.
Damn you have a real way with words. ML is cringe and not based, I am now Third World
That's fine, we all got something different from the protests, which is why we're sharing on this thread. I'm sure some people saw it as a triumph of spontaneous organising, like what people said about Occupy, or as further proof that revolution in the US is impossible because the uprisings lead to nothing. I just don't see it that way, I saw it as proof that the people in the US want a revolution and just don't know how to get there. I also don't believe the third world can "go it alone" and the people in the imperial core have a responsibility to struggle and do their part in furthering the revolutionary cause.
We have seen nothing successfull on a large scale of numbers and time communism anarchism wise in the US in general. Still the most successfull and threatening to teh status quo organization in the modern american left were the Black Panthers with a membership of barely 10k at their peak. So i guess moving towards that organizational stucture and theory is moving to the right direction for the OP
What did the protests actually do though? All I've seen is corporate anti-racist lib training
It got a whole lot of people out on the street. I think that's definitely something to admire, and a huge source of potential. If even 10% of the people who were on the streets were part of a revolutionary organization, or even fucking DSA, we'd be in a very different place.
First of all we can hardly judge any "lasting change" for the socialist/communist left project in the US from the protest at this point in time .
Also the success of the BPP and the reason they were persecuted harder than any modern socialist org was a direct result of their structure ,ideology and practice. Idk how you can look at their history and actions and pretend it aint so ,especially when they themselves were constantly highlighting how their actions come from their theory. Them being able to stay ideologicaly consistent and coherent and present a united revolutionary front that acted and reacted efficiently against the entirety of the empires state violence and interference focusing on them wasnt a coincidence that could have happened whatever their structure or ideology. Them being able to successfully implement the maoist mass line on a large scale on the heart of the empire wasnt a coincident and i surely dont believe that it could or would have been replicated by a demsoc or anarchist bbp doing mutual aid. Them even being able to amass almost 10k commited and well red revolutionary members iwthout completely collapsing by infiltration or being coopted has something to do with their structure . Their organized disciplined militancy and internationalism wasnt a coincidence either
Of course they lost, its insane that they got that far in the first place as an openly black revolutionary anti-state party in the heart of the empire. If you are 70% sure that any organizational structure and tendency could have replicated that and produced a BPP under those circumstances that seriously challenges state power systematicaly and successfully implements revolutionary power building and connection to the masses go ahead .I dont see it, at all.
Well decentralization always exists, alongside centralization, especially in Revolutionarty organizations trying to gain power and protect themselces from the state. In almost any ML revolution the party was considerably more "decentralized" when under persecution or attack from the state especially compared to the heavily centralized post revolution image. By no means horizontal or anarchist but there is always a balance in each condition
Also fuck megaphones. I don't care who's speaking atm. Grab that shit, smash it, and run. Even if it's a commrade that was using it within 3 minutes some dipshit lib or infiltrating little pig will take it over and completely defuse the tension and then the crowd gets gassed. It's was devistatingly depressing to see them do this simple tactic in multiple cities night after night.
One that always comes to mind was during the first week or first few days of the protests they had some cops shitting their pants outside their building and the crowd was vibing and spitting vitriol at them rightfully so. Then some random guy just comes and grabs the megaphone and starts talking about how we need to calm down and be peaceful and open dialogue with the police. The police then start talking with him and the crowd chills out. As soon as the cops saw the crowd chill they unleashed a hell of tear gas and rubber bullets.
DO NOT TRUST ANYONE ON A MEGAPHONE THEY WILL MOST LIKLEY GET YOU SHOT OR GASSED OR KETTLED AND THEN ARRESTED
all I'm hearing is bring your own megaphone and smash it if someone tries to take it from you
It made me truly realize that peaceful protest absolutism or "the right way to protest" cannot possibly create change. I now believe that the only reason legal forms of protest are legal is because they don't create change.
Also, the left needs to figure out how to have a popular movement and not have it get co-opted by liberals, and we need to do it yesterday.
I saw chuds obsess over the fact that a whopping 7% of the protests turned violent with libs meekly conceding to them. The BLM protestors could have done everything "right" but that wouldn't changed a damn thing.
Made me believe ACAB. I wasn't sure before, but seeing the pigs guard the murderer's house convinced me.
Two main things:
It clarified to me that peaceful protest is largely ineffective, and that most people's standards for what constitutes a legitimate protest are specifically standards that render them ineffective at commanding the public's attention.
It clarified that the main political faction standing against the left really is liberals/neoliberals, and that they are really fucking good at co-opting lefty movements and redirecting their energy into symbolic bullshit. And anybody with a megaphone should be ignored as a plant for the pigs, who the fuck are these cunts with the *megaphones supposed to be otherwise? Literally trying to make their voices heard over the masses is part of the giveaway, as far as I'm concerned.
Also it fucked up my relationship with my family, because they reacted by becoming more reactionary and racist.
Seriously fuck the megaphone people. Really need to drill that home for next time.
to be honest it strengthened my belief that i should spend my time organizing within my own black community and leave any type of anti racist outreach to literally everyone else.
This past summer white allies might have been "learning more" but their emphasis on articulating things I have been known as a black person /had been articulating as a black person (sometimes i'd get messages from people being like "wow you were right the entire time") made me realize that white people are less trustworthy and just more disappointing than I thought tbh.
This summer though I did get more interested in abolition, an interest that was burgeoning for a while // I also got more into restorative justice when it comes to social dynamics, i.e. the idea that the abused/the victim/the survivor shouldnt be in a place where theyre judging the harm done.
The job of the survivor is not to put their pain into a nice bow, and its not for the survivor to be the one to provide forgiveness.
Basically we're all growing but many times during our journey of growth, we hurt a lot of people along the way. It's important to acknowledge the pain growing causes rather than just focusing on growth itself, which unfortunately many white allies I know did this summer.
I wonder who would be the mediator between america/ whiteness and black people in this country and if certain traumas inflicted on black people while white people were growing can ever be made good.
I also learned the importance of having a plan when arrested / jail support.
An action I was organizing wanted to know about how to accommodate those being arrested and my experience allowed me to let them know that emergency contacts / communications with concerned family /friends/spouses is paramount and very important to care for those arrested /effected by arrest
edit: i learned that the video of those protestors crumping at the police in protest will never fail to make me laugh and i do a pretty good impression of it if you ask my boyfriend and cat
What did you mean by white allies "learning more" disappointing you? Was it in the vein of "I have been telling you this for years, but you're only acknowledging them now that it's popular"? Or did you mean people offering token lipservice, but nothing else? Or something else completely.
I meant that it was sad to see white allies (but really white friends) who I spoke with before this summer about my experience as a black person/ who have branded themselves as anti racist suddenly realize that I had "been right the entire time" because it made it seem like they never listened to what I was saying in the first place, but also that they never internalized literally the million times that black people have been killed by the police before.
Their seemingly selective attention made me feel like BLM is only worth discussing when it conveniences them (and at this moment I still cant even identify what it was about floyd's case that made white people lose their shit this one time). . TBH theres nothing about floyds murder relative to what happened to other black people (in some cases black CHILDREN like tamir rice) murdered by the police that is especially scary, damning, senseless, or horrific. Obviously what happened to george floyd is bad based on what uniquely happened to him, but why HIM? and why NOW?
why is he the one that has suddenly changed all of these minds to the very simple idea that my life matters, despite being my friend for years, depsite listening to me seemingly actively about my oppression/ despite literally existing in america?
I genuinely feel like a lot contributed to this past summers' protests but i really think people came out because they were on lockdown and because coronavirus made bare some inequities that dont really have to only do with race.
That sucks, I can't say I know what that's like to have my experiences dismissed by friends but it sounds shitty.
I genuinely feel like a lot contributed to this past summers’ protests but i really think people came out because they were on lockdown and because coronavirus made bare some inequities that dont really have to only do with race.
I gotta agree with you there, good explanation. I can't speak for your white friends, but I know it can be really easy to just mentally check a box saying "I am an anti-racist ally" and then continue living your life of privilege guilt-free because "you're on the right side." The protests provided a real release valve for white liberal guilt, I think.
It was especially hollow to see that for a month people on my social media feed focused on black issues (and restorative justice in general)... then it mostly just disappeared. Most of those white people who posted in june to "listen to black voices" were all posting about "vote for Biden" in August. For as intense as last summer was for BLM, people had far too short of an attention span for it.
definitely agree with you regarding the fact that there was a frenzied month where black issues mattered only for the focus to disapear. I think part of what contributed to this short term care was the fact that social media took on this very aggressive immediate discourse of "YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE YOU STAND UP FOR BLACK LIVES. NOBODY SHOULD WONDER ABOUT YOUR POLITICS. IF YOURE A GOOD PERSON YOULL CHECK ON YOUR BLACK FRIENDS" without really explaining how and why allies should be sharing stuff / how they should be conducting themselves when checking in individually with their friends.
There was such a focus on LETTING THE BLACK PEOPLE KNOW YOU CARE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA INFOGRAPHICS that a lot of the really nuanced stuff that we've both mentioned in our comments/ throughout this thread were lost.
not that white people shouldnt be treated aggressively and made to answer yes or no immediately to asks for solidarity, but maybe expecting an immediate yes or no is a reason why white people think giving monosyllabic answers / performative easy stuff means doing the work
(and at this moment I still cant even identify what it was about floyd’s case that made white people lose their shit this one time).
Every other murder has had some kind of shaky excuse, some imbalance of information. We either had no video, or if we did, the cops got to say they were "scared" and while many people don't accept that, others do, and those others have a dampening effect on the actions that can be taken, and on the size of the movement. But Chauvin just fucking slowly strangled him to death for no reason. It was shocking to a lot of people, and an opportunity for people who weren't so shocked.
It was clear cut, more clear cut than EVER. That's unfortunately the bar.
But the bar is going up- people lost faith in the pigs.
made an account to say this:
(and at this moment I still cant even identify what it was about floyd’s case that made white people lose their shit this one time)
I wonder who would be the mediator between america/ whiteness and black people in this country and if certain traumas inflicted on black people while white people were growing can ever be made good.
I really, really hope so. But of course I'm long on hope and short on answers.
It was a series of genuine, energetic social movements that wanted to address long-standing issues within American society (namely white supremacy and police being police), with mountains of video evidence and testimonies to make its case. In spite of all that, it was hijacked, attacked, diluted, discredited, smeared, and neutered, with nothing concrete to show for it but some empty gestures and milquetoast local-level reforms. I saw liberals, both online and real-life, go from enthusiastically supporting it to weakly defending it at best against the inevitable reactionary pushback. I saw people with "Back the blue" shirts/masks/hats in public, even after the incident after incident making it clear the true nature of what the police are. I saw the increasingly-authoritarian atmosphere of US politics happen in real time, backed by both parties differing only in degrees. And all of this for issues that have stretched backed to the Civil Rights Era with little in the way of tangible progress.
In the end, it displayed the deep, "spiritual" rot within the heart and soul of America. This, along with the concurrent pandemic and economic crash, transformed me from a "kinda" socialist to an unabashed Marxist.
I was gonna write something but then read your comment and decided to just +1 here instead.
I'm a lot more wary of wreckers and infiltrators now. If I had said that to myself a year ago I would've thought myself paranoid, but it's wild to see first hand in real time. In particular I remember an "unaffiliated" chapter of BLM in my area that was constantly taking megaphones at protests to shout pro cop slogans, and whose members met with the Proud Boys on live TV.
I had agreed with BLM ideologically before, but it was the first time I actually conceptualized the danger of being black in America. The cops will really just use any excuse to fuck with you or hurt you and a large swath of white society will gleefully cheer it on.
Edit: Let me rephase this for clarity. I did not walk away understanding the black experience, I did walk away with a clear knowledge of what white privilege means.
cop sees black person
Is that an air-freshner hanging from your rear-view mirror?
Pull over.
It's nice to see so many people have so much to say. Two things stand out to me.
1 - I fucking hate cops now. I have hated them for most of my life, but it is a seething, visceral daily disgust now. I flip off every cop I see and have seen public spaces decorated with similar sentiments.
2 - any notion of incremental change or change within the system seems impossible. Remember when Minneapolis voted to abolish their police department? Remember when Portland and LA defunded their cops? Yeah, how's that going for them?
3 - bonus answer. I'm more ready to defend myself when I leave the house now. Too many chuds out there
I also flip off cops now and have also told them to quit their jobs to their faces, thus far without any consequences. I carry pepper spray every time I go out.
The thing that really made me a Leninist over less-centralised tendencies was Occupy. There was a revolutionary moment unlike anything for a generation. All the conditions were there and it came down to how capable the left was at organising around them. Instead of anything coming of that, it was a disorganised mess where the mass unrest was generic enough for liberals to hijack and recuperate. While I get the safety of anonymity and leaderless resistance, the lack of discipline and theoretical foundation to the kind of movement that creates is very self-sabotaging in that it limits the potential to capitalise on messaging or strategy in any kind of coherent way.
BLM immediately struck me as repeating the same problems. You could amass people in the streets but couldn't direct them toward a singular goal or use the success of that goal to pursue a larger one. There were slogans but they were generic enough that they were recuperated into a culture war between black lives matter and all lives matter. Without some kind of proper vanguard, only one cause brought people out into the streets and only with inciting incidents. Because it wasn't overtly socialist that cause didn't seize on the moment to become a wider economic protest in response to COVID's collapse. The reform-the-police wing turned it into a circus- at the Denver protest I remember a white furry setting up a booth right outside of the speaking area and they weren't discussing race relations- which only served to empower the liberals now mirroring the MAGA line word-for-word. Even when real gains were achieved, a chunk of Seattle under people's control, it became hippies planting community gardens instead of the militias calling for repeat seizures.
As it flares up again, it keeps the issue of civil rights in my mind but I have less faith now than I did in 2020 than I did after Ferguson. Some people will break windows, cops will attack them, liberals will defend and increase funding to the cops, the weakest reforms will be demanded by some people in response to them and then probably shot down by the democrats because they own the businesses with broken windows and prize those windows over black lives. That contradiction calls for something more that I don't see BLM being able to pivot to in its current form.
It's not that I think it's perfectly foolproof so much as I think it has a better chance at being able to scale up. BLM couldn't take on new protest angles or present a unified front that makes its demands clear and actions coordinated. A more centralised effort would be better at those two things. That opens up the activists to assassination like Ferguson sure, but the protests are over those same people being killed regardless of what they do. Without any direction toward something bigger or even the ability to listen to a mass line for direction, what do those deaths accomplish? Another empty spasm of protests that confront the people funding police only through minor vandalism. Socially-focused sentiments that are turned into lawn sign platitudes by those same libs whose politics result in black people being shot.
Both are valid and complement each other, but I have to contrast BLM against a project like the Black Panthers in their original form. They faced the same persecution but held it off in growing militias which coordinated internationally. They constantly engaged with the local communities to build up parallel structures which gave it cover. We got theory out of it, multiple similar groups and a widening spirit of radicalism, and if not for Reagan and the 80s/90s boom for white Americans they would have been some significant infrastructure for a wider revolutionary movement. There are still radical groups like that around BLM protests but nothing funnels people into them. PSL leaders in Denver were being arrested for the riots but walking around in daytime I didn't see any mention of PSL or NFAC or the SRA or even the DSA. There were some mutual aid setups like water tents and community orgs but none of those build the capacity for escalation or can muster a large enough crowd around a single focus. The depoliticised ones had their funding tied to the state that was surveilling them and the wealthy who abhorred the property damage. The politicised ones could fall in behind the actual BLM org if they're even the ones coordinating the daytime protests, but that group's big tent strategy only gave them as much wiggle room as democrats allow socialists. Whatever organising we do on the more radical fringe, it's still subservient to the movement orchestrating things and setting the terms of affiliation.
We need both centralized and decentralized efforts. Without the former, libs will co-opt any movements not directly destroyed by the state. Without the latter, a few well placed bullets could kill our efforts.
We need people explicitly elevated to raise class consciousness, as well as a pool of leaders ready to step into their shoes at a moment's notice.
No centralized or decentralized revolutionary party in america will gain power through a revolution against the state or through electoral means imo. I think the point is for the revolutionary organization to be the most ready to act, efficient, ideologicaly coherent and with an approach in mind to try and take and yield political power on whatever scale ,connected to the masses and able to protect itself when the entire thing collapses and when everything is under chaos in much more unpredictable and unstable conditions compared to now .
I was pretty disappointed with the way things played out in my town. I showed up to protest and was ready for tear gas, rubber bullets, etc, and while I was thankful that none of those tactics were deployed, I was frustrated that we never gave the pigs the slightest reason. To be absolutely clear, I'm not advocating for adventurism or needlessly endangering your comrades - I just think that a protest without agitation is more performance than politics. And of course, nothing changed as a result.
With that said, I'm extremely proud of some of our comrades around the country!
