If life before this was ‘normal,’ I don’t want to go back
Systemic racism, unfettered capitalism and environmental destruction have reached a boiling point in 2020.
There is no going back to “normal.”
2020 has been one of the most intense years of our lifetime. Yes, the world has experienced global health pandemics before, but never at the peak of our technological development. Yes, mass groups of people have taken to the streets to demand justice before, but not at this time, not in this way.
Things are different, and rightfully so. If “normal” refers to life before COVID-19, then normal across North and South America meant the ongoing targeted murder and imprisonment of Black, brown and Indigenous people and people of colour. “Normal” meant the ongoing expansion of unfettered capitalism, the destruction of the planet, gross inequality and the dominance of a 'profit over people' culture across the globe.
Normal meant that a man named Derek Chauvin, who had a history of violence against people of colour, could occupy a position that armed him with a uniform, a gun and a toxic power complex. It meant Chauvin was able to detain an innocent Black man named George Floyd and place his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight long minutes until he died face-down on the cement while Floyd and everyone around begged Chauvin to stop.
People have taken to the streets because that is how chemical reactions work. Ask any scientist. Do you ask fire why it blew up when it had alcohol poured into its face? Why do we question the reactions of people who are doing whatever they can with what they have, where they are, to speak out against injustice, to fight back against an armed military state, to take down corporate buildings in gentrified neighbourhoods where Black, brown and Indigenous people still sleep in the streets? Why do we question the ways victims of violence act out against their oppressors?
As academic, philosopher, political activist Angela Davis stated in a 1970 interview while she was detained in a prison in San Francisco for protesting the racist American state: “Because of the way this society is organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere, you have to expect that there are going to be such explosions, you have to expect these things as reactions.
“When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the goals you are striving for, not in the ways you reach them,” she said.
The media have focused on the buildings burned, but we must also remember what is fueling the fires: The pure rage of the injustice of George Floyd's death, a retraumatizing filmed event that reminded the world of every Black and Indigenous person who has been wrongfully killed without any kind of justice.....
