Versión en castellano

Since May 25th, the day George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, there has been ongoing mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of protesters in the United States. Also as a result, there are 9,000 prisoners in various jails. And it is worth noting that the governors of several states have added 43,000 National Guard troops to the streets of many U.S. cities to guarantee order and curfew. However, Trump has not been able to get the army out on the streets, as the Pentagon itself has overruled him in his handling of the crisis. His Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was the spokesman for the decision. Evidently, the commanders of the armed forces have considered it inappropriate to add fuel to the fire of popular discontent that is spreading throughout the vast American territory, a mixture of dissatisfaction for the 1,900,000 infected, and 110,000 deaths from Covid-19, the 40 million unemployed and the racist police action. Deploying the army for internal repression would have meant exposing it to the same generalized social repudiation that the police is suffering and, potentially, to a breakdown of the order of command, as it happened when the army was used to repress demonstrators in 1968.

The breakdowns in police institutions and the National Guard itself have been an expression of the enormous popular momentum.

A sudden fit of conscience?

The New York City police chief, who has presided over bloody repression against the protesters, knelt before them, rehearsing a fraternization in full view of the media cameras. The same scene was played out in city after city, from one end of the country to the other.

The sheriff of Genesee County, Michigan, spoke in front of a demonstration, and the riot cops who accompanied him joined the protesters. Houston (TX) police chief Art Aceno took part in protests repudiating the murder of George Floyd. In Santa Cruz (CA) the police chief knelt before protesters. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam refused to send the National Guard to repress a protest. In Spokane County (WA), police officers knelt before protesters, and the same thing happened in Portland. The scene repeated in Des Moines. Escondido (CA) police chief condemned the murder of George Floyd. The San Diego Union Tribune reports that Sheriff Bill Gore emphasized that police will ban the use of chokeholds, which is common among police in all states, and was the method of murder used against George Floyd. This hold has now been prohibited by the New York City Council, where, in 2014 it was used to murder Eric Garner. The impact of the rebellion has been greatest in Minneapolis, where the city's mayor was repudiated for having declared that he “opposed abolishing the police”when he tried to approach protesters. The city council later approved the dissolution of the city's police force to which the murderers of George Floyd belonged. Beyond the fact that it is not clear what will be the form of the “community-led force” that will replace it, this is a step backwards of a political regime that has been unable to defeat the movement through repression.

New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, has refused to accept the presence of the National Guard in the city, and the state governor declared that he would abide by this position.  Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, renamed the street in front of the White House to Black Lives Matter in an act of opposition to Trump and of demagogic flirtation with the protesters.

After two weeks full of repression and arrests, the mobilizations continue, massive and more peaceful. At the same time, most cities lifted their curfews. In response to the proposals raised by large sectors of those taking to the streets to abolish the police force and prisons, a wide range of proposals for partial reforms have been deployed, aimed at appeasing the movement. From the movement itself emerged proposals to reduce the police budget. This measure, a lesser evil, has already been adopted by the city of Los Angeles. The $100 million dollars cut to the LAPD, one of the largest in the history of violent crime against the population, sounds strong but only means a little more than a 5 % reduction.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, told the media that she advocates for police reform laws, and has asked her party's black caucus to prepare bills that would appeal to protesters. The presented bill modifies elements of legal protection that make it difficult to bring a police officer to trial, includes the creation of violent police officers records and puts divisions in charge of speeding up investigations. With demonstrators who have drawn the conclusion of the racist and oppressive nature of the state, it is undeniable that with the Justice Department and the judges as guarantors, the fox is still guarding the henhouse. The package for a “more humane” police force put forward by the self-called socialist democrat Senator Bernie Sanders lays on a general increase in police salaries, contrary to the people's rebellion.

In turn, two former Democratic presidents, Carter and Obama, spoke about police reforms. One of them is that false allegations based on race will be considered hate crimes. New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that to combat police abuse, the secrecy of police records had to be released. Is it that governors and police suddenly changed their nature? Not at all. What has changed is the political situation, essentially the mood of the masses, which forces them to disguise without changing anything, but also pierces police discipline. But we have to keep in mind that while these events are taking place in the midst of almost two million infected, and more than a hundred thousand dead, and the misery is deepening, a section of the population has had enough and its institutions have begun to break down. Yet, those who are pushing these reforms have not demanded the prisoners’ freedom and have condemned the “violence” of the protesters.

The people's rebellion has struck a blow to Donald Trump's Bonapartist attempt. To be able to defend the regime questioned by the revolts, the famous recipe of the novel Il Gattopardo is imposed -to change something, so that nothing changes. The American opposition bourgeoisie is looking for a change of front, trying to reach the November elections, as a way to disarm the movement. The movement will have to overcome the traps and maneuvers presented by the Obamas, the Clintons or the Sanders or the current Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.

To overcome this attempt to strangle the movement into a bourgeois perspective, it must clearly demand the immediate release of prisoners, including the 54 political prisoners imprisoned since the 1970s. For the opening of police duty books to be investigated by the fighting masses organized in commissions, in order to unrestrainedly and energetically punish the police who torture and kill in all American cities. For the constitution of citizen security organizations emerged from the mobilizations, controlled by them and with revocable power positions, aimed to combat police torture and killings and racism, independent of the state, the governors and the mayors -a step towards the police dissolution. And for the immediate removal of the National Guard from the streets. This program of democratic nature must be integrated into a program of demands that includes the prohibition of layoffs and salary reductions, insurance for the unemployed that covers a family living costs, the conversion of the arms industry into an industry at the service of the Covid-19 fight, under workers' control, the nationalization of pharmaceutical laboratories and the health system also under workers' control to impose free health care, as well as the resolution of the housing problems of the homeless. In short, the struggle for George Floyd in the present crisis must have as its perspective the destruction of the imperialist colossus in its own guts and the opening of a workers’ government on the basis of the destruction of its state as part of the world socialist revolution. The construction of a revolutionary workers party, thus, is decisive.