Dear MoveOn member,
Last week, America reached the grim milestone of 100,000 lives stolen by the coronavirus. George Floyd's breath was stolen by another virus: racist police violence.
In broad daylight, for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the Minneapolis Police Department callously and cruelly asphyxiated Mr. Floyd using a chokehold which led to a lack of blood flow to Mr. Floyd's brain and caused his death.
Lamentably, Mr. Floyd's state-sponsored murder was not an isolated incident. It was but the latest chapter in a centuries-long history of white supremacist violence that has taken the lives of far too many Black people.
This moment demands that each of us—especially those of us who are not Black—act with great urgency in defense of Black lives, to support the work of ending police brutality and white supremacy, and to bring forth a world order in which Black people are truly free and liberated. There are many ways of participating in this work—and here's something you can do now that will have immediate impact:
The Movement for Black Lives was founded in response to the Ferguson Police Department's murder of Michael Brown and has since been at the forefront of the movement for Black liberation, working to protect the rights of protesters and organizing in cities and states to divest from the police.
National Bail Out is a Black-led and Black-focused organization that works to end the horrific policy of pretrial detention and cash bail that keeps so many people of color in jails and prisons without a conviction, simply because they cannot pay. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic they have been working to bail out Black mothers and caregivers, and they are also working to bail out protesters who have been arrested en masse over the past several days.
Mar, the degradation of Black life, including the murder of George Floyd—and Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many others before him—is nothing new in American history.
Beginning in the 17th century, European colonizers, seeking to amass untold riches, abducted people from the western shores of Africa and forcibly transported them to what is now the United States. Once here, those same European colonizers, through unspeakable crimes that offend morality itself, seized this land from the indigenous people.
It was here, in these stolen lands, where this country's founders legally declared that Black people were not fully human and, instead, declared Black life to be white property. The stolen labor of African slaves built this country.
After over two centuries of Black bondage, a civil war ended the barbarous system of chattel slavery. But in many deep senses, Black people in America remained deprived of liberty. For decades following the formal end of slavery, Black Americans were forced to live under a legal regime of segregation and under the terror of lynch mobs looking to hunt them down. Even children were not spared.
In this era, the police were of little help. Indeed, too often, the police themselves were the purveyors of violence.
In the decades since, thanks to Black leaders and a multiracial movement that supported them in the struggle, some laws have changed for the better.
But in other ways, our nation has regressed to its old racist habits. In recent decades, Black people have been the targets of an ill-conceived "war on drugs" that has torn asunder Black families and has needlessly put hundreds of thousands of Black people behind bars. Our health care system, too, continues to fail Black families, as Black people have been dying in disproportionately large numbers due to the coronavirus.1
The list of such racial injustices is nearly endless. That's why we must pledge ourselves to radically transforming our laws and our nation in the direction of racial justice.
The pandemic and its attendant economic collapse have devastated too many families across this nation, and we understand that money might be tight. But if you are able, your donation of any amount would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for all you do.
–Corinne, Ann, Allison, Eric, and the rest of the team
P.S. Thousands of local and national groups are working on the ground in Minneapolis, Louisville, and across the country to support this movement. As you chip in to support the Movement for Black Lives and National Bail Out, please also consider donating to local organizations—in your city or elsewhere—that are on the front lines.
Source:
1. "Black Americans dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of white people," The Guardian, May 20, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/134644?t=5&akid=265568%2E10220574%2Emx2pOA
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