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Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and we are joined by Eugene Poirier of Breakthrough News and July 4th is of course celebrated in the US as Independence Day every year for the past every year there are a lot of questions of course asked about this day what independence really means in the US context especially considering the history of slavery and racial prejudice too and this year these issues have especially come to the fore it's been over a month since the murder of George Floyd and protests that have completely taken over the country with almost revitalizing the space so to speak so we have Eugene to talk more about this Eugene so you attended quite a few of the protests you've reported on many of these protests talked to the families so one month down the line first of all how do you evaluate the kind of space that has emerged during these protests and the kind of demands that come up well you know you know first and foremost very happy to be here and you know I think that what I have seen has been you know remarkable I think that this is the most profound you know at least sort of street-based movement-based uprising of people for certainly the last two decades I mean certainly it has echoes and Occupy it has echoes in the first Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown you know we saw the massive movement of immigrants in this country in 2006 so it's not totally unprecedented but when I think of any of those particular movements none of them had the same level of penetration into society I mean we have seen these and it's falling a little bit out of the news now because the news is only once to cover it if something burns down but you know every single day here in the United States and many cities there are still many large demonstrations going on and we've seen you know every elite institution from corporations to the you know certain certain levels of government you know the whole gamut colleges universities all try to take mainly symbolic action most of it completely meaningless just attempting to act like they care but just the fact that pretty much every institution in society has to seem and feel even the Republicans who are trying to obviously destroy this movement are still trying to talk out of both sides of their mouth there's no one who wants to be completely unidentified with the movement and what we've seen from the point of view of the polling is more white people in America than ever are sympathizing with the struggle of black people and recognizing the existence of racism certainly in prisons and police but obviously in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in society more broadly so I mean this is really you know it's maybe as much a tectonic plate shift as a volcano it's a little bit of both but it really is remarkable right and like you mentioned one of the key aspects has been of course the demand to defund the police and the last time we had this conversation you did identify some of the issues around this demand as well as some of the possibilities and we see that for instance in the New York police budget I understand that there are many discussions going around on this in many other cities as well so right now what exactly is the status of that demand in most cities especially when the protesters are concerned you know I think that it has again at the superficial level been accepted by many officials here in the country on the local level where the biggest protests have been New York they allegedly cut a billion dollars out of the context the overall budget in New York's 88 billion dollars out of several billion dollars for the NYPD alone but it really is a smoke screen some of that was just moving programs from you know one department to another so it goes off the police budget line and so I think what we're seeing is there's not a lot of commitment from any of these officials to actually doing anything to change the nature of the police but they're trying to do whatever they can to make it seem like they are directing money away from the police and into more social programs they did some of the money that was sort of moved around in a shell game is being redistributed here in New York to some public housing but then on the same token they're doubly cutting uh you're not double but I mean they're massively cutting the funding for affordable housing tens of thousands of minutes 21,000 units for working class people going to be lost so you know it's a double edged short certainly we saw at Los Angeles similar they cut about 150 million dollars which meant that they ultimately are going to lose 200 police officers but they're still going to have 9700 as opposed to you know 9900 so it's not a huge change in terms of the overall role of the LAPD of course doesn't touch the LA Sheriff's Department Minneapolis is is trying to push forward with the plan that would replace the police department with a police department with another name and fewer officers and more civilians so I mean we're seeing it's it's so things are happening but they're happening still at the level of the officials being unwilling to grapple with the true central role of policing in society the unwillingness to depart from the idea that the police are the solution to any social problem I mean really the police in America they don't solve any crimes I mean it's really just like a containing and a regulating of certain behavior in certain neighborhoods it really is not related to crime and giving that up that that seems that these most of these mayors are unwilling to do it but on the cosmetic level many many there's a flurry of things happening at the local level and at the state level because again everyone is is fearful I think on the political scene if they don't appear to be doing something since this movement has not gone away it could continue to grow and ultimately overtake them right so you look at some of these aspects in an article you've recently written called from rebellion to revolution and that kind of seeks to ground some of these demands in the context of course the history and origin of the police on the one hand but also the kind of demands that are coming out as a movement right now so in this current context that you're that you're seeing right now how do you differentiate say what you would call a rebellion from a revolutionary process because that has been the question in front of many people across the world what is the next stage or what is the process involved here you know I think that's a great question and the way I approached it in the the piece which you can find at liberationnews.org is you know I think rebellions are things we separate usually because they celebrate because they didn't win while revolutions succeeded and the example I give is we revere Nat Turner's rebellion in the United States the slave rebellion Denmark Visi all of the great heroes of the slave rebellions of the Americas but we only call one of them a revolution that's the Haitian revolution and we call it a revolution because they completely overturned the system that ran their society and put a different one in place and so on a moral plane we don't sell a separate desailles or Nat Turner in any way shape or form their pantheons and the heroes of slaves who rose up in the Americas for freedom but we make a clear distinction between Nat Turner's rebellion or revolt and the Haitian slave revolution and I think that's how we have to look at it now like we're in certainly a rebellion stage in the United States I think I mean obviously this is broad and societal I think as I said earlier just the response that it's gotten shows that this is shaking society in a way that it at least is raising the question of changing everything like the slave revolts they didn't necessarily all win but they certainly every time one happened it raised the question and also the immediate aftermath of what was really going to happen everything could potentially change depending on what goes on and I think that's where we are but how do we really address this issue and it's tricky because the police you know the state as it were like the police are the final analysis of the state and you know the government the our capitalist societies exist based around the law right like that's what governs what goes on and the legitimacy of the system even if people hate it is basically reflected by the fact people more or less follow the law and so ultimately the police are the final instrument that says well if you don't follow the law there will be consequences and I think that that that process of policing is then so layered over top of the history of racism the the use of the police for class oppression I mean the police in America are basically a product of two things slaves and urban areas that were living in their own neighborhoods so people thought they were uncontrollable in cities like Charleston so they formed the first real police department the Charleston city guards and big northeastern cities with the rise of factory system and immigrants coming from other countries and them saying that these are ungovernable uncouth people who must be controlled with the force of the police and so since that so when you look at the role of the police it's not just the issue of any other reform I mean it's not just the minimum wage which obviously you know you can change the minimum wage and it won't matter for the capitalist at all but to drastically change the role of the police is to ultimately talk about drastically changing the role of like what are the rules and what are the consequences like I think what people are saying on the street now is a lot of the things that are affecting communities are social problems that are rooted in capitalist exploitation and shouldn't be dealt with by the police and so ultimately when you're talking about that kind of shift you're talking about a complete transformation of how resources are used how structures are put together and basically just the way everything's approached so I think it cuts even though it seems like a narrow issue it cuts to the core of what kind of society are we gonna have a capitalist one that's profit over people that has one set of consequences and rules or a pro people people over profits that's going to have a total different system of incentives and disincentives and how the society is run and I think that that question really hits at revolution and I think that's what is happening in this moment because people keep asking it's been 400 years since black people were brought to this country how are we still talking about this what can we do and the normal liberal solutions I think for many millions even many people who would like for those to work it just seems like it's not and it's raising this new question and that's what I really wanted to put on the table is what does it take to actually solve these problems not just put a band-aid over them absolutely and on a connected note you're also associated with the party for socialism and liberation and I understand that there are major protests planned tomorrow also over the weekend raising key questions about freedom itself like we discussed in the beginning so could you one talk about what these protests are centered on and to also talk about the idea and the practice of class politics at this point to stage in the movement itself well you know I think this weekend obviously is July 4th and and you know it's an interesting thing when the first July 4th happened many people don't know this it was actually around the same time of the largest slave revolt in the history of the United States and that was the 20 000 African-Americans who fought on the side of the British against their slave masters who were the so-called patriots here in the American Revolutionary War unknown history very interesting history the vast majority of blacks fought on the side of the British because they offered them freedom obviously the British were terrible in every possible way but you know these slaves were using whatever lever they had to try to free themselves and push themselves forward it's a very interesting story Gerald Horn great author gets very into this and the connection between the rise of colonialism in India and the slave revolts in America very close but anyway not to get aside so July 4th is an interesting date this year because I think to make that connection because more than ever you have the sort of patriotism of the country in question and I think going back to that foundational piece so in New York the PSL along with about a dozen other organizations you know we're marching under the slogan of freedom for who and and really questioning that foundational reality maybe more so certainly more so than it has been I think since the 60s and really from the very beginning what was the basis of this country who was the freedom for and what does that really mean about what it means to transcend transcend our current society how much of our patriotism and nationalism and American exceptionalism do we have to question and and ultimately move beyond it and give up and I think it's an important umbrella and I think Philadelphia on Sunday actually there'll be a large there's an event for political prisoners on July 4th on Sunday there'll be another event that's taking place where the police were brutally repressing people for peacefully protesting and protesters will be going back to that spot saying we have the right to speak we have the right to be here there's car caravan protests happening in Denver I've heard it could be huge around the issue of the murder of Elijah McClain and others that we have heard about recently many many killings especially not just the black community the Mexican-American community and Chicano community in Denver so really all over the country there are large demonstrations and we're pleased to be a part of it because you know ultimately the there's a rising tide of socialism in this country and I think that many people are surprised to see like socialist groups playing a big role in society now you know in in France in India in any of these countries it wouldn't be strange for someone to be like a journalist and also a communist or anything you know a train driver a bus driver a janitor a professor you know it's a it's a more part of the cultural life here in the United States that's considered like insane normally like no one would ever be a socialist or a communist or anything like that because this is America we're not about that um but really we've seen and it's heavily rooted in the youth but not just the youth tens of millions of people really take up the banner of socialism um this movement in the streets around black lives has been infused from top to bottom in anti-capitalist rhetoric you can't go to one of these demonstrations and not hear someone just railing against the capitalist system very righteously and i think we're seeing socialist organizations start to rise more prominently um you know obviously i'm a part of the party for social liberation as you mentioned there's the democratic socialist of america in seattle there's a socialist council member um shama savant and that's you know almost unheard of for there to be a social selected official in um the united states and we're seeing you know i i would say everyone who is flying the red flag is if it were is is seeing a new renewed interest because more and more people are recognizing that the climate the inequality the poverty the wars that all of this is it's intrinsic it's systemic and that it's not you know unreasonable to start questioning capitalism and looking beyond it and bernie sanders it is maybe the palest echo of some of the most radical edge of that but it's a way for people i think looking around the world to see like this is not a small phenomenon he's not a flash in the pan there really are millions of people here in the u.s. that are starting to say we got to start to look at this thing from top to bottom thank you so much jude for talking to us oh my pleasure that's all your time for today keep watching people's dispatch