Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
The overnight news means there is a nation-wide uprising going on,
Trump is so far teasing people, partly because he can’t help himself from threatening even more violence – that’s what his ego lives on -- and partly because he may think he can fire up his base and enough other whites out of fear of the “out-of-control” Blacks to win the election without needing to send the Army. Or he is biding his time and will send the Army in a week. I think we need to make clear five things:
• Our experience in myriad movements of the mid-20th-century and later shows that “nonviolence” worked, and now needs a fuller expression in the “culture of love and eco-systems" where everybody counts precisely because of their differences, instead of the "culture of hierarchy, domination, subjugation, and violence.”
• We built empowerment of some of the powerless through the vote. Supreme Court decisions that encourage huge amounts of money from the Hyper-wealthy to buy elections and that cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have weakened but not eliminated that success. But it needs to be enormously expanded beyond 1965 anyway, We must do what we can to create a massive vote, and if after the election Trump has lost but tries a coup to hold power we need to be ready with a national strike with local neighborly resilience.
• Our experience was built on a mostly friendly national government, not an utterly hostile one. In the present moment, we need to be opposing use of the Army or federalization of the National Guard, calling on mayors and governors to turn to teachers, public employee unions, activists, etc to create peacekeeping networks in the cities, not police and not the Natl Guard, to point toward a NEW kind of order, not the old one.
• There is increasing evidence, some eyewitness and some by journalists, that much of the arson and looting is being done by RIGHT WING neo-fascists hoping to bring about a race war. Some of those reports will be posted tomorrow morning in the Shalom Reporton June 1. If you don't get it already, click on "Sign Up for Weekly Emails" banner on left margin this page, Note that Trump has mentioned outside intervention in Minneapolis, probably based on FBI reports he has seen, but carefully refrained from saying it’s by right-wing whites – leaving the implication it is Black radicals. This is important for the public to know.
• We ought also to urge the creation soon of a series of linked national conferences that brings together the Black community in one, immigrant/ Spanish-speaking and other communities of color in another, Earth-oriented groups in another, women, faith communities, GLBTQIA communities, etc with links between and among them, to energize voters immediately and a new culture/ Constitution soon.
