Pro athletes have gone on strike before over economic issues, but these protests are about racial justice. This time Black players, who have talked about their own experiences being racial profiled by police officers, lead the organizing.
While protesters hold up the simple message “Black Lives Matter,” organizers in the Movement for Black Lives make clear that this fight is as much about ending racial capitalism as it is anything else.
These two books are helpful background sources for the issues involved in today's protests for black lives. Although each is a few years old, they are both worth a second look.
We need to move beyond rhetoric and start to evolve into a movement for racial justice in practice, but what does that mean? Be proactive in addressing racial tensions, stop tokenizing members, and build a union to address everyday issues.
Let's put Black, women of color, Indigenous, anti-capitalist and queer-centered feminist politics at the heart of the overall struggle for justice in the coming year. What could that look like?
The Movement for Black Lives is calling on cities to launch participatory budgeting processes to make public spending fairer.
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