in the final analysis, how was Chapo on the George Floyd 2020 protests?
in the final analysis, how was Chapo on the George Floyd 2020 protests?
(I apologize in advance if talking about the podcast is discouraged. I don't know if that's a joke or if most hexbears feel that way). But anyway, next month marks the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's awful murder. Listening to the show in the summer of 2020, and later reading some stray commentary on this site, it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests. But idk, is that fair to say? I believe they participated in some marches in NYC, but I also remember Matt saying that "defund the police" was dead-on-arrival as a slogan, because cops will always be around as long as capitalism exists. I also remember there being a pretty rancid take about "working class" cops in a Taibbi episode, as well as an episode that dunked on a racial sensitivity/workplace training book. Fair enough about the capitalism opinion, and the book, which was no doubt written by a rich neolib that lacked any material analysis. I understand that CTH is a news commentary/comedy/dirtbag show co-hosted by white people, so it's not going to be the best resource on racial theory. I also understand that a big part of CTH is entertainment. But I'm curious if you have thoughts about Chapo's reaction to the 2020 protests. And thanks for sharing them.
it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests
Tbf as an active organizer of some of the actions in Los Angeles, the protestors whiffed it harder on the protests.
They had the opportunity of a fucking lifetime, their fucking energy was so incredible in those first few weeks that politicians were drafting legislation to placate these people without any concessions of voting for some demon who wouldn't follow through. We had an overwhelming amount of the country in support of burning down that police station ffs. If the fucking focus and energy would've been kept tight and consistent there would've been real fucking change.
But what happened? "Leftists" and Libs basically sabotaged the movement without realizing it. They decided to "branch out" in terms of protest topics from a very tight topic of police brutality to everything and anything even tangentially related to oppression, started tone policing the shit out of eachother for everything and anything, started shitting on leaders of orgs because they wanted to have leadership of things without any of the responsibility etc. We had fucking dumbfuck insane people like Tia Turner actively shitting things up by constantly picking fights and blacklisting protestors/orgs she had a personal beef with and even actively dismantled an entire protest coalition because of her own paranoia against one of the leaders of the orgs. I still don't know why to this day why so many "leftist" protestors and activists engaged with this objectively spiteful and destructive person and why they still follow her around.
But nothing will beat RevCom in 2020 nearly killing people in Hollywood by making them march (along the sidewalk) in 107 F heat (while giving out nothing but mini-bottles of lukewarm water) while shushing people when they tried to say fuck the police next to the police station and taking 3+ hours to march 10 city blocks (It took 15 minutes to walk back after they tried talking about Bob Avakian or whatever). They had all the most useless white people there to speak about the most inane of topics (No extincition rebellion I dont want to hear about how people should commit suicide to save the planet, thanks) the dumbest of tactics (an anti-Trump protest in Hollywood?) and the stupidest of arguments (people as a whole refusing to coalesce around one direction and one org and instead forming 10,000 individual mini-orgs of 1-3 people).
Then we had fucking Libs. Oh man the fucking Libs. Who would waltz in to groups and protests with expressed radical goals and decide that akshually guyz the biggest threat rn is Donald Fucking Drumpf, and we should be doing voter outreach in.....California. These were people with more time and money than anyone else and had the luxury of zipping around from protest to protest kvetching everything to their personal neuroses, demanding stupid shit like starting "conversations" with the cops to try to ??? because they didn't like the idea of being hostile to cops and instead we should be forming "dialogues". Which ultimately was turned into pro-cop PR stunts that the police unions milked the shit out of.
The movement blinked and faltered and the end result was that the brokers of power dismissed their impact 4 months into the protests if that. They thought for a moment it was a genuine moment they would have to concede to the demands of a popular uprising. But then the protestors showed their ass, demonstrated they had no fucking clue what they were doing, constantly conceded on ideology and material grounds, and worst of all even acted in the service of the very people they were supposed to be against.
Its very hard for me to ascertain what material or political changes the protests and uprisings accomplished besides the reactionary backlash that followed in the summer after 2020, where even supposed elected "allies" in the Squad are voting for police budget increases, and just about every city in the USA has increased police budgets while spreading the lie that they were actually decreased.
They had the chance of a fucking decade and they punted it to the opposing team