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Until white people outraged by Trump are outraged by the racist, murderous system of policing in this country, then the root causes that brought Trump to power will continue to thrive, regardless of who’s president, will continue to take Black lives, will continue to be a nightmare of structural inequality destroying democracy and stealing human dignity.
If we are to build a movement powerful enough to end the hate, the violence, the reactionary agenda of Trump, then we need white people in the millions outraged and protesting the legalized murder of Black people, outraged and protesting anti-Black racism that, in the words of James Baldwin, turns white people into “moral monsters”.
We need white communities raising hell protesting the hell of white supremacy in this country. Will we, who are white, be moral monsters, or will we join the Freedom Side, will we join the multiracial movements for justice that can get us all free, will we say “Black Lives Matter, and I refuse to be silent, I refuse to be indifferent, I refuse to be a progressive, to be a liberal, to be a “not my president” person of conscious, and ignore the racial apartheid all around me”
And we, who work in white communities, must bring all we can to align the hearts, minds, values, aspirations of white people to multiracial democracy, the long legacy of the Black freedom movement, and the Movement for Black Lives, of our time.
We must free all of our people from the roles that white supremacy works day in and day out to assign us and equip us to fulfill. We must build the resilience of white communities to be courageous for racial justice, courageous for collective liberation, and to be enraged by verdicts like today’s, a verdict that echoes the thousands of anti-Black racist verdicts before it.
#Justice4Philando #BlackLivesMatter
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