No, We Should Not Condemn Uprisings Against Police Murders Like George Floyd's
No, We Should Not Condemn Uprisings Against Police Murders Like George Floyd's
The uprising in response to George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis
police officer this week has led to predictable calls to condemn
looting. But the real looting in our society comes from the military,
the police, the pharmaceutical companies, private equity, the landlords,
the real estate speculators, and the billionaires — not protesters
against police brutality.
In the aftermath of a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George
Floyd, some of our nation’s media have turned to some crucial questions
which must be addressed:
Should we condemn looting?
Yes, we should condemn the looting of the Global South by Western
militaries and multinational corporations. We should fear the terrifying
possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine will be enclosed, privatized, and
sold for profit; and the looting of underdeveloped nations and
underinsured people that would ensue.
We should fight back against the looting of underdeveloped nations’
coffers by odious debts and structural adjustment programs being drawn
up and imposed by international institutions at this very minute.
But should we care about the other kind of looting?
It would take a heartless monster not to care about the looting of
homes and buildings by vulture capitalists. We should organize against
the impending wave of evictions that will crash into our communities as
soon as courts reopen. And we should fight back against the theft of
stable homes and schools; the unnecessary destruction of lives due to
their prioritizing food over rent.
We care that whole working-class communities will be gentrified,
their buildings replaced with housing for wealthier, whiter families,
who bring in a bigger haul of loot for the landlord. We should be
outraged that police are looting homeless people’s encampments, and we
must demand that safe vacant homes and rooms no longer be hoarded away
from unhoused people.
Should we care about actual looting?!?
Of course! Private equity stands to make a fortune off the bankruptcy
of businesses around the country. By firing workers and raiding their
pensions, they’ll make off with the bag. We care about the attempt to
loot the United States Postal Service, for example, destroying countless
good union jobs and an essential public service in order to dismantle a
publicly owned institution and turn it into a private business to
generate profit.
We are outraged by the ongoing looting of local and state government
welfare programs by a federal Republican Party that wishes to see them
destroyed and a House Democratic leadership whose solution to this issue
is to give the rich in blue states a gigantic tax break. We are
disgusted that representatives who claim to stand for workers and
oppressed people will gladly allow their standards of living to collapse
while passing tax cuts for the rich.
Without organizing a powerful labor fightback, we will see the actual
looting of public coffers while the billionaire class has become $434
billion richer during the pandemic.
Protesters are shot with pepper spray as they confront police outside
the Third Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Stephen Maturen / Getty
