Systemic racism goes far beyond the police

Case in point... Georgia voters, especially in majority-Black precincts, waited hours in the rain, in the midst of the pandemic, to cast their ballots yesterday. A harbinger of things to come in November in red states where racist Republicans control of the election apparatus. 

Another case in point... In Iowa, David Harkin, a white landlord stands accused of evicting a black businessman, Jeremiah Johnson, and his partners from their office in his building after seeing video of them at a Black Lives Matter protest. In a letter to his attorney, the landlord complained: "We live in a day and age where people demand rights who have never earned anything or done anything to deserve them."

Lining up to vote in Mississippi in 1965. 

For me, this embedded line of racist reasoning is as deadly as a cop's chokehold and harkens back to Mississippi and other southern states in the early '60s when African-Americans who attempted to register to vote were fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes and worse.

Speaking of Iowa...the state went heavy for Trump four years ago. But change is in the air since corona and the protests and polls are now showing the race tightening here.

According to Politico:

Since the start of the year, Democrats in Iowa have added about twice as many active voters to their rolls as Republicans, nudging ahead in total registration for the first time in years. The farm economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. And though Trump still holds a small lead in the state, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he’s now airing TV advertisements there — a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign anticipates a contest.

Since IL is in the bag for Democrats, IA-and=back might make for some good road-tripping for Chicago campaign workers come November.

The police, the courts, and the entire criminal justice system were and are being used as enforcers of systemic white racism and supremacy. Our protests in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor police killings are already driving some badly needed police reform and raising mass consciousness about racism and policy priorities.

But what kinds of reform and how deeply will they go? Demands for budgetary spending reforms and new priorities just touch the surface. And how do they move from slogans to successful policy initiatives?

Brother Fred and I will be discussing these questions and more on Hitting Left Friday, 11-noon CDT with our friends, the Stevenson brothers, Craig & Corey. We're still zooming but airing live at lumpenradio.com.