Five years ago on Sunday, George Floyd was brutally murdered at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Led by Black working class youth and nurtured by decades of Black leadership and organizing, millions of people across the world rose up against police brutality and white supremacy.
This included millions of white people who, defying their conditioning and families, took action against anti-Black racism for the first time.
Five years later, MAGA’s consolidation of authoritarian power was made possible by a cross-class coalition of white voters. They are running an overtly racist strategy, attacking people of color daily and successfully telling a false zero-sum story that people of color advance at the expense of white people. Just this week, we watched Trump accuse Black South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of “white genocide” based on white nationalist conspiracy theories.
As we approach this anniversary, I am sitting with renewed conviction for the need for us to organize white people. We have a white people problem in this country. If we are not real about what we are facing, there is no end to the rightward trajectory that could last decades.
So what do we do?
We must stop relying on the same old playbook that got us here. Mainstream Democratic leadership like James Carville is saying the way to win the “working class” – too often Democratic consultant code for white people– is to focus on economic issues only, to the exclusion of race or gender.
But the very reason Trump has been so successful is because he strategically addresses race, gender, immigrants and trans people– and too many of us are afraid to. Using a race neutral strategy is morally reprehensible and unjust. It’s also unstrategic. Anyone on a proverbial battlefield knows you have to anticipate your opposition’s strategy and cover for your weaknesses, not by pretending they are not there, but by readying yourself for them and attacking them head on.
To win, we need a bold, populist economic justice agenda that also takes on races and gender– that actively builds solidarity in the face of the well-resourced efforts to break it.
Our work towards that vision is to address racism directly as a strategy to divide us. To provide community and support for white people to step into bold, courageous action alongside communities of color. To lift up stories that are about, as Howard Zinn would say, times when people behaved magnificently and showed up for each other in times of crisis.
Five years ago, we learned that it is possible– even for white people deeply conditioned by a white supremacist society– to be shaken out of complacency and for solidarity to materialize in ways that can shake the foundations of society.
We have seen what’s possible when we organize white people into multiracial movements. This moment has made it clearer than ever what is at stake if we do not.
I am proud of the work SURJ is doing to bring white people from every corner of this country and every class background into the multiracial coalitions we need to block authoritarianism and build towards liberation.
Thank you for being a SURJ donor this past year. Can you level up your commitment today and join us as an official National Member?
In solidarity,
Erin Heaney
SURJ Executive Director
Showing Up for Racial Justice
PO Box 1376
Buffalo, NY 14205
United States