Shemon Salam - The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising

If you want to put the George Floyd rebellion in its proper political and historical context, this is one of the works that you have to start with. The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd uprising makes the unquestionable case that what we witnessed was not just a series of events aiming to reform the empire, or tamper its edges, as the bourgeois media would have us believe, but a mass movement that at its heart was and is aiming to eradicate the empire and construct a new, uncertain future. This work is a critical starting place to understand why, and further, it addresses how you can get deeper engaged. Kali Akuno, co-founder, Cooporation Jackson

Fanon says about decolonization that in trying to change the very order of the world it is clearly an agenda for total disorder. By this he means it is an absolute demand, unable to be mediated by policy modifications. Such a demand returns in the flames of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, in the summer of 2020. No one has come closer than Shemon and Arturo to capturing this unfolding struggle, to naming the extraordinary and contradictory character of the George Floyd Uprising how it escapes the very history that produces it, both unique and inevitable, a true insurgency, progenitor to a hundred counterinsurgent formations. These communiqus from the rebellion offer clarity regarding the desperate and extraordinary victories, and the forms that the enemy will take. This text is a bearer of the summers possibilities, proposals, and problems; I can imagine no better fate for writing. Joshua Clover, author of Riot.Strike.Riot: the New Era of Uprisings.

The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising by Shemon Salam & Arturo Castillon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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Cover design: Kate McDonnell
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ISBN 978-1-988832-95-1 (softcover)
ISBN 9781988832968 (PDF)
A pamphlet in the Thinking Freedom Series and the Moving Beyond Capitalism Now! Series

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The revolutionary meaning of the George Floyd uprising / Shemon Salam & Arturo Castillon.

Names: Salam, Shemon, author. | Castillon, Arturo, 1988- author.

Description: Series statement: Thinking freedom

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210113898 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210114088 | ISBN 9781988832951
(softcover) | ISBN 9781988832968 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Black lives matter movement. | LCSH: Protest movementsUnited StatesHistory21st
century. | LCSH: Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory21st century. | LCSH: African
AmericansSocial conditions21st century. | LCSH: United StatesRace relationsHistory21st
century. | LCSH: RacismUnited StatesHistory21st century. | LCSH: African AmericansViolence
against. | LCSH: Racial profiling in law enforcementUnited States. | LCSH: Police brutality
United States. | LCSH: Police shootingsUnited States.

Classification: LCC E185.615 .S25 2021 | DDC 323.1196/073dc23

At least 28 people died in the wave of social unrest that rocked the United States from late May until late July in 2020. In this 10-week period, there were 574 riots; 624 arsons; 2,382 incidents of looting; 97 police vehicles set on fire; and 16,241 people arrested for protest-related activities. In addition, at least 13 police were shot, 9 were hit by cars and 2,037 were reported injured in the riots, mostly because of the tossing of rocks, bricks, and other projectiles.[1]

In early May few would have predicted that by the end of that month widespread riots would sweep across the country. Even those expecting something like this were caught off guard by the sheer ferocity and intensity of the riots. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown, skyrocketing unemployment, and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life, the George Floyd uprising flashed across the sky like a blazing meteor, opening up a new chapter in the revolutionary history of the US proletariat[2] (or working class) which was finally joining the global wave of revolt that had convulsed the worldin places like Haiti, Sudan, Lebanon, and Chilesince 2019.

Beginning in Minneapolis on May 26th, the day after the video of the brutal police murder of George Floyd went viral, protesters began vandalizing the third precinct police station where the officer that murdered Floyd worked. The police dispersed the crowd using tear gas, but that night dozens of buildings were set on fire in the surrounding area. Over the next three days, the third precinct was overtaken and set ablaze, and hundreds of businesses were looted and burned throughout the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan areas.[3] By May 30th, these tactics had generalized throughout much of the nation, with riots hitting almost every major city, as well as dozens of smaller cities and suburbs. Cop-cars, courthouses, municipal buildings, and retail stores all went up in flames.

The first two weeks of the uprising were unprecedented in terms of property destruction. By June 8th, a week and a half after the rebellion began in Minneapolis, people across the country had inflicted upwards of $2 billion in property damagethe highest recorded damage from social unrest in US history.[4] Though this included damage to some middle-class peoples homes, most of the property damage was suffered by the capitalist class, big and small businesses alike, and to a lesser degree, the police state.

Police departments were quickly overwhelmed and out-maneuvered as multi-racial crowds stormed the commercial centers of countless cities, big and small. When police came to quell the rioting in one place, the crowd would break apart and spread the revolt elsewhere. In cities like Rockford, Chicago, Louisville, and Philadelphia, people formed looting caravans which travelled throughout the city and suburbs, converging on particular shopping centers and then driving off together to other locations.

By early June, 200 cities had imposed curfews.[5] Since it was clear that the police could not control the situation, at least 96,000 National Guard troops were mobilized in 34 states,[6] in addition to those that had already been deployed to the capital,[7] where protesters had clashed with Secret Service agents, injuring at least 50 of them, as others rushed President Trump into the bunker of the White House.[8] As the National Guard occupied dozens of cities throughout the country, the intensity and reach of the riots began to subside, while lawful, non-violent protests led by politicians and non-profit organizations began to dominate the political landscape once again. In contrast to the concrete actions of the uprising, these protests focused more on performative displays of radicalism, diversity, and anti-racist virtue, while shunning the illegal and confrontational tactics of the riots. Still, whether by carrot or stick, the counterinsurgency did not fully stamp out the insurrectionary upsurge of the proletariat. In response to continued instances of police violence, localized rebellions continued to pop up in specific cities, like Atlanta in mid-June; Portland throughout June and July; Chicago and Kenosha in August; Rochester, Lancaster, and Louisville in September; and Wauwatosa and Philadelphia in October.