AFFIRMING BLACK LIVES MATTER

AF3IRM condemns the police triple murder of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry, and George Floyd.  We are aware that these three deaths are but the latest in the continuing lynch-mob and slavers mentality on which policing seems to rest for the majority of the US states.  We condemn this, we despise it, we commit to working toward its eradication.  There can be no compromise with racism, sexism, and classism — the three intertwined DNAs of Capital which continues to make profit off misery, suffering and death.  

The State, especially now under 45, is programmed to annihilate Black communities. Neglected during this pandemic. Already dying at an alarming rate as they are at the frontlines of keeping everyone safe and nourished under lockdown. Every direction they go, from the most mundane task of buying something from a convenience store, or even simply being inside their homes, state-sanctioned violence targets Black bodies.

Trump’s latest dismal tweet, with the threat “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” merely underscores the primal ideology of racism:  that black bodies are worth less than inanimate objects.  Trump has no idea in the slightest of what it means to carry a child for nine months, raise the child for 15 years at least, nurturing body, brain and spirit — only to have such a life snuffed out in five minutes because a critically empathy-impaired team of policemen chose to get their rocks off via murder.   

Through centuries, the lamentation of Black women, if and when they escape police predation,  over the massacre of brothers, husbands and sons, have resounded.  As have their lamentation over the sexual predation visited on their bodies by prostitution, sex, and breeding farms which thrived on the continued impoverishment of women of color.  Despite being the most educated population sector of the US, black women continue to bear the brunt of intersectional oppression, as the killing of Brionna Taylor shows.  There is just no moving those whose only language is based on oppression and exploitation.

As we emerge from the disaster of COVID-19, rendered worse by a petulant government leadership, we must work together to dismantle the infrastructure of classism, racism, and sexism, which has condemned large sections of our humanity to virtual and continuing slavery.  We must return to the original logic of humans banding together:  for the survival of the species.  Not of a race, an ethnicity, a color, a gender, a class — but of the species.  This means return as major concerns of our societies the means necessary for that survival:  care of the habitat, care of the next generation, care for our neighbors. 

Even as we share in the collective mourning of the black community, we affirm our commitment to change what needs to be changed, in this place and time, in this social organization we call “civilization.”  Never again shall we allow the world to rest while members of humanity live in disgraceful pain.  We join our black brothers and sisters in affirming:  Black Lives Matter.

ERADICATE POLICE VIOLENCE.

ONWARD TO A FEMINIST FUTURE.